ROAD HOUSE on Nitrate
ABOUT THE EVENT:
6:00pm | Opening Night Reception
7:00pm | Introduction
7:10pm | ROAD HOUSE on Nitrate
ABOUT THE FILM:
Originally released November 4, 1948
A star-powered face-off between two film noir icons: sassy Ida Lupino and psychotic Richard Widmark. Sparks fly when itinerant songbird Lily Stevens (Lupino) takes a job crooning in Widmark’s rural roadhouse. When she rejects him and takes up with his boyhood chum (Cornel Wilde), the joint really starts jumping. “Love triangle” doesn’t even begin to describe the perverse psychological warfare that follows, especially with Widmark’s scorned man-child holding all of the cards. Things eventually turn violent in the climax, but it’s the trauma caused beforehand that makes his performance (and the film) so memorably unnerving. The studio-made roadhouse is a marvel of production design, the perfect spot for Ida to sing inimitable renditions of the classic ballads “One for My Baby” and “Again.”
35mm nitrate print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive
ABOUT THE EVENT:
6:00pm | Opening Night Reception
7:00pm | Introduction
7:10pm | ROAD HOUSE on Nitrate
ABOUT THE FILM:
Originally released November 4, 1948
A star-powered face-off between two film noir icons: sassy Ida Lupino and psychotic Richard Widmark. Sparks fly when itinerant songbird Lily Stevens (Lupino) takes a job crooning in Widmark’s rural roadhouse. When she rejects him and takes up with his boyhood chum (Cornel Wilde), the joint really starts jumping. “Love triangle” doesn’t even begin to describe the perverse psychological warfare that follows, especially with Widmark’s scorned man-child holding all of the cards. Things eventually turn violent in the climax, but it’s the trauma caused beforehand that makes his performance (and the film) so memorably unnerving. The studio-made roadhouse is a marvel of production design, the perfect spot for Ida to sing inimitable renditions of the classic ballads “One for My Baby” and “Again.”
35mm nitrate print courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive