Film noir

Film noir, as a genre in its own right, was born in Hollywood in the 1940s. It was an offshoot of crime and gangster films, transfigured by expressionist photography that filmmakers from Mitteleuropa, fleeing Nazi Germany, brought back to Hollywood - French poetic realism was not far off either. Which makes it, first and foremost, an aesthetic. A sharp black and white, sharpened to chiaroscuro; later splashed with colour, passed to the red of the Queen of Spades.

Programming :

M le maudit (M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder)
Fritz Lang
1931. All. 118 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

The brilliant Peter Lorre and Fritz Lang's masterful shadow play. Film noir before its time. Mabuse is no more, and evil is now spreading through the streets. The film is based on a true story set in Düsseldorf. But Lang shifted the action to Berlin. A Berlin of working-class neighbourhoods rarely seen at the time. An ideal hunting ground for Hans Beckert, alias Mr M, who prefers to murder children and remains elusive. The police bungled, the underworld took charge... When the public enemy is both executioner and victim.

Screening presented in partnership with the Quinzaine franco-allemande d'Occitanie.

> Sunday 6 April at 4pm

> Sunday 20 April at 2pm

The Maltese Falcon
John Huston
1941. USA. 100 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

A new type of American film hero appeared on the screens, lucid and cynical, the hero without glory. It was the revival of the detective film: film noir. Bogart became Bogey. It was John Huston's first film. Based on Dashiell Hammett, the father of film noir. It was a film that nobody expected, but that changed everything. In San Francisco in the 1930s, with an amused smile hanging from a roll, Sam Spade crosses paths with adventurers in search of a fabulous statuette... But that's not what counts. It's the stuff that dreams are made of.

> Sunday 9 March at 2pm

> Friday 18 April at 6.30pm

Double Indemnity
Billy Wilder
1944. USA. 107 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

Based on the novel by James M. Cain. When Barbara Stanwyck manipulates Fred MacMurray. The story of an insurance agent who first falls in love with an attractive client who has come to take out life insurance for her husband... A major turning point in film noir, directed by Billy Wilder and co-written by Raymond Chandler, whose first screenplay this was. Here, the killer is no longer a gangster or a professional. He's not even someone driven to the brink by crisis, poverty or jealousy. He's a middle manager whose motivation is sex...

> Friday 7 March at 6.30pm

> Sunday 20 April at 4pm

Laura
Otto Preminger
1944. USA. 88 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

Another classic. The eternal first name of film noir, with Gilda. Laura is dead. Murdered by buckshot at point-blank range. ‘I'll never forget that weekend. I'll never forget the weekend she died’, began Lydecker, the famous New York columnist and pygmalion of the young woman. She was to have married a playboy. McPherson, a gruff cop, leads the investigation. But fascinated by a portrait of the victim, he ends up falling in love with her. And with the white magic of film noir, he may well see her resurrected...

> Friday 21 March at 6.30pm

> Saturday 19 April at 4pm

Gilda
Charles Vidor
1946. USA. 110 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

The other great name of film noir. An anthology musical number, Put the Blame on Mame, and a film entirely dedicated to the glory of star Rita Hayworth. She is Gilda, the ember beneath the satin sheath of a cult film noir. Rita is the sex bomb of the atomic age. A story of a glove removed in a sensual gesture and clandestine activities within a sinister establishment. Desire and fantasy... But for the time being, the boss of a Buenos Aires casino hires a little cheat whose life he has just saved.

> Saturday 15 March at 6pm

The Lady from Shanghai
Orson Welles
1947. USA. 87 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

This is the story of a sailor who is led astray by a beauty. A femme fatale, a jealous husband and a voice-over that knows from the start that it will all end badly. Film noir in all its splendour, but also a whodunit. A Shakespearean thriller. Two legendary scenes: the aquarium and the ice palace. Two legendary names: Welles and Hayworth, the genius and the anatomical bomb. The legendary couple were in the process of splitting up. Hollywood also wanted to divorce Welles. He left in a blaze of glory. By killing the myth to reveal the woman. Mission accomplished.

> Friday 28 March at 6.30pm

Mad Dog (Nora inu)
Akira Kurosawa
1949. Jap. 122 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

The quintessential Kurosawa thriller. A film at the crossroads of Italian neo-realism and American film noir, yet originally a novel under the obvious influence of Georges Simenon. Kurosawa reunites the pair from The Drunken Angel and looks post-war Japan straight in the eye. Inspector Murakami (Toshirô Mifune) investigates Tokyo's underworld to find his stolen gun. Superintendent Sato (Takashi Shimura) supports him in his obsessive quest. A great moment of pure cinema in the form of a breathless chase.

> Sunday 9 March at 4pm

> Friday 2 May at 6.30pm

Les Forbans de la nuit (Night and the City)
Jules Dassin
1950. USA. 95 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

A hunted man flees into the dark alleys of London. It's Richard Widmark, a lousy gambler, who never despairs of one day landing the big one. Film noir. The plan is to stage wrestling matches to compete with the wrestling matches organised by the powerful Kristo. Problem: everything goes wrong. Flee and hide. Flee into the London underworld like a worm stuck in the mud. The beautiful Gene Tierney can do nothing about it. Black is black. Escape along the docks of London's port. When the claws of the night are sharpened by the backwash of the Thames.

> Saturday 12 April at 4pm

The Black Vampire (El vampiro negro)
Román Viñoly Barreto
1953. Argentina. 90 min. B&W. DCP. VOSTF.

The black gold of Argentine cinema. After Peter Lorre's masterful performance in Fritz Lang's unforgettable film, how do you remake M le maudit? The gamble paid off for Román Viñoly Barreto and his Black Vampire. While the blind toy salesman and the whistling ritornello are still there, the whole Langian architecture is shaken to place a female character at the centre of the story. At once mother, witness and woman of action. Here, everything begins at the end - a trial - but the hunt for the child killer in a Buenos Aires overrun by shadows will be no less breathtaking.

> Sunday 6 April at 2pm

> Sunday 4 May at 2pm

The Doulos
Jean-Pierre Melville
1962. Fr / It. 108 min. B&W. DCP.

In slang, doulos means a hat but also a snitch. Double meaning. Double plot. ‘All characters are double. All characters are false’, said Melville. The filmmaker appropriates a novel from Pierre V. Lesou's ‘Série Noire’ to build his own mythology. Lesou to build his own mythology. Urban setting, trench coats, cigarettes, hyper-realistic sets and elaborate black and white. Belmondo no longer capers. Serge Reggiani even less so. Le Doulos is a tragic, existentialist urban western about the end of a friendship. A sad, brutal, admirable and black film... very black.

> Saturday 8 March at 4pm

> Saturday 12 April at 6pm

A man is dead
Jacques Deray
1972. Fr / It. 105 min. Color. DCP.

A concerto of guns for a settling of scores with the super sound of the 1970s. Driven by a soundtrack by Michel Legrand as groovy as Lalo Schifrin, Jean-Louis Trintignant arrives in Los Angeles to pay off a gambling debt. He has to murder a man called Kovacs. But once the contract is fulfilled, he himself becomes the target of a killer... Chases and shoot-outs in a leaden LA. Deray renovates the City of Angels by plunging his plot into a singular natural setting. And the duel between Jean-Louis Trintignant and Roy Scheider is one of the most delicious ever.

> Saturday 22 March at 4pm

> Saturday 3 May at 4pm

Mean Streets
Martin Scorsese
1973. USA. 113 min. Color. DCP. VOSTF.

Charlie, Tony and Johnny are bored. ‘The neighbourhood and my friends are all that matter,’ says Charlie. He's a sort of Saint Francis of Assisi come down to the gangsters. His cousin Johnny Boy, on the other hand, is out of control and getting more and more bogged down. Gambling debts, threats and murder. The underworld is no laughing matter. Neither does the family. Scorsese even less so. For the most part autobiographical, Mean Streets is a remarkable slice of life filmed straight from the pavement, with breathtaking technical precision. The angels, Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro, are absolutely remarkable.

Not suitable for children under 12 at the time of release.

> Friday 14 March at 6.30pm

> Saturday 3 May at 6pm

Black series
Alain Corneau
1979. Fr. 111 min. Color. DCP.

The art of desperate sarcasm. A remarkable adaptation by Alain Corneau and Georges Perec of the dark novel Des cliques et des cloaques by the American Jim Thompson. The long, slow descent into hell of Franck Poupart, a salesman and unpredictable loser. A charcoal portrait of the France of Giscard at the end of the Thirty Glorious, the France of crisis, unemployment and social unrest, carried at arm's length by an impeccable Patrick Dewaere supported by the remarkable Marie Trintignant. But it's also a dark crime thriller that lays bare the mechanisms of social domination.

The film was banned for under-12s at the time of release.

> Saturday 5 April at 6pm

> Sunday 4 May at 4pm

Sang pour sang (Blood Simple)
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
1984. USA. 97 min. Color. DCP. VOSTF.

The Coen brothers' masterpiece, their first film and their first masterstroke. Black as a film noir perverted by black humour. Destructive parody and respectful homage intertwine. The hallmark of the Coen brothers. It takes place in the land of black gold, in Texas. A bar owner suspects his wife of having a lover and hires a private eye to tail her. And murder her and her lover. But the private eye prefers to shoot his client once he's pocketed the bounty. Except that the corpse disappears... The art of quid pro quo or, as Hitchcock put it, it's difficult, painful and time-consuming to kill someone.

Not suitable for children under 12 at the time of release.

> Saturday 8 March at 6pm

> Friday 11 April at 6.30pm

Que Dios nos perdone
Rodrigo Sorogoyen
2016. Spain. 127 min. Color. DCP. VOSTF.

If Spanish film noir was built on the American model, it's clear that with Que Dios nos perdone the pupil far surpasses the master. Summer 2011. In Madrid, as the Left reinvents itself and the city prepares to receive a visit from Pope Benedict XVI, two police detectives, who are at odds with each other, track down a serial killer. With the omnipresence of the city, impeccable formal technique and impeccable direction from the actors, Que Dios nos perdone impresses with every minute. Between the sacred and the profane, between purity and corruption, a mirror held up to Spanish society.

Not suitable for children under 12 with warning.

> Saturday 22 March, 6pm

> Sunday 13 April at 2pm

Cairo Confidential (The Nile Hilton Incident)
Tarik Saleh
2017. Germany / Denmark / Egypt / Sweden. 106 min. Color. DCP. VOSTF.

Cairo, January 2011. A few days before the start of the revolution. In a room in one of the city's grand hotels, the body of a young singer. Inspector Noureddine investigates doggedly and stubbornly, and discovers that the culprits may well be linked to President Mubarak's inner circle... Egyptian society at the end of its tether, riddled with corruption, and through it Tarik Saleh reinvents the codes of the film noir, which is now intended to be political. In his role as a corrupt cop, Fares Fares impresses as a dark angel lost in a city on the brink of collapse.

> Sunday 23 March at 2pm

> Saturday 19 April at 6pm

The Nights of Mashhad (Ankabut-e moqaddas)
Ali Abbasi
2022. Germany / Denmark / France / Sweden. 115 min. Color. DCP. VOSTF.

When a psychopath embraces the madness of the society around him. In Iran in the early 2000s, a mason, a good family man, murders prostitutes to ‘rid the holy city of Mashhad of debauchery’. A journalist from Tehran investigates on the spot. Obscurantist delirium and murderous impulses in a crassly misogynistic society. Inspired by a real news story, this is a dark, chilling and uncompromising work that brilliantly broadens the scope of the simple crime film. As a shock reporter, Zar Amir Ebrahimi shines brightly in the dark nights of Mashhad.

Not suitable for children under 12 at the time of release.

> Friday 4 April at 6.30pm

All practical information: La Cinémathèque de Toulouse