Fritz Lang’s America

June 21–August 11, 2019

This lineup of Lang’s films made and set in the United States amounts to a noir tour of the psychosocial landscape of twentieth-century America, a land of systemic corruption, thwarted aspiration, and frustrated desire.

 

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  • The Big Heat

  • You and Me

  • The Woman in the Window

  • Clash by Night

  • Fury

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Big Heat

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1953

    Digital Restoration

    Friday, June 21 6:30 PM

    A noir masterpiece, and not a pretty picture, as cop Glenn Ford prowls the underworld for his wife’s killers. Gloria Grahame delivers a memorable performance as the girlfriend of brutal gangster Lee Marvin.

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  • Human Desire

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1954
    Wednesday, June 26 7 PM

    Lang’s remake of Renoir’s La bête humaine stars Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame (both from The Big Heat) as a Korean War veteran and the sultry femme fatale who leads him toward his doom.

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  • Fury

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1936

    Archival Print

    Sunday, June 30 7 PM

    Lang’s first Hollywood film stars Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney in a powerful indictment of mob justice. A vivid social melodrama with many visual elements of Expressionism-turned-noir.

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  • You and Me

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1938
    Wednesday, July 3 7 PM

    George Raft and Sylvia Sidney are ex-cons employed in a department store in this Brechtian/Runyonesque fairy tale, with music by Kurt Weill.

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  • You Only Live Once

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1937

    Archival Print

    Sunday, July 7 5 PM

    Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney are outlaw lovers on the run in this much-loved classic, a film of “tragic intensity and visual creativity” (Andrew Sarris).

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  • The Woman in the Window

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1944
    Friday, July 12 8:30 PM

    A mild flirtation draws a college professor (Edward G. Robinson) into a hopelessly tangled web of blackmail and murder in Lang’s claustrophobic noir. “A thriller with the logic and plausibility of a nightmare” (Pauline Kael).

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  • Scarlet Street

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1945

    Archival Print

    Friday, July 19 6:30 PM

    A middle-aged cashier and amateur artist (Edward G. Robinson) finds himself caught between a bewitching beauty (Joan Bennett) and a psychotic thug (Dan Duryea) in one of Lang’s most visually intense works, inspired by Renoir’s La chienne.

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  • Secret Beyond the Door

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1948

    Archival Print

    Friday, July 26 6:30 PM

    A recently married woman (Joan Bennett) begins to suspect her new husband (Michael Redgrave) is after her life in Lang’s take on the woman-in-peril gothic melodrama. “Lang’s direction is masterly. . . . A remarkable film” (Time Out).

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  • Rancho Notorious

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1952
    Sunday, July 28 7 PM

    Arthur Kennedy searches for the bandit who killed his fiancée, and finds Marlene Dietrich, in this brilliantly curdled western-psychodrama.

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  • Clash by Night

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1952
    Saturday, August 3 6 PM

    A killer cast—Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan, Marilyn Monroe—star as fated misfits in Monterey. A classic noir, shot on location, “brisk, tense, crackling” (Los Angeles Times).

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  • Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1956

    Archival Print

    Friday, August 9 6:30 PM

    A crusading newspaperman hopes to prove the cruelty of capital punishment—by framing himself for murder—in Lang’s last, low-budget, nihilistic noir. Dana Andrews and Joan Fontaine star.

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  • While the City Sleeps

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1956

    Archival Print

    Sunday, August 11 7 PM

    Ida Lupino, Dana Andrews, and George Sanders star in one of Lang’s personal favorites, in which big-city newshounds fight over a (literally) killer scoop. “Examined America’s unquenchable lust for greed, power, and corruption . . . a movie ahead of its time” (San Francisco Examiner).

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