Band of Outsiders: Women Crime Writers

June 29–August 17, 2017

Adaptations of tales by Patricia Highsmith, Vera Caspary, Dorothy B. Hughes, and others reveal the dark side of "women's writing."

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  • Purple Noon

  • The Reckless Moment

  • Strangers on a Train

  • Laura

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

Past Films

  • The Reckless Moment

    Max Ophuls
    United States, 1949

    Based on The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

    Thursday, June 29 7 PM

    Housewife Joan Bennett must cope with a killing, blackmail, and the everyday pressures of domesticity in this stunning suburban noir. “An underrated gem” (Phillip Lopate).

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  • Strangers on a Train

    Alfred Hitchcock
    United States, 1951

    BAMPFA Student Committee Pick
    Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith

    Saturday, July 1 5:30 PM

    A tennis star and a stranger offer to kill off each other’s relatives in Hitchcock’s polished adaptation (cowritten by Raymond Chandler). “A gripping, palm-sweating piece of suspense” (Variety).

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  • Purple Noon

    René Clément
    France, 1959

    Based on The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

    Saturday, July 1 8:15 PM

    Clément’s adaptation is a dazzling sea-blue film noir starring Alain Delon as an idle, lethal young American in Europe.

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  • The Blue Gardenia

    Fritz Lang
    United States, 1953

    Based on “The Gardenia” by Vera Caspary

    Wednesday, July 5 7 PM

    Switchboard operator flatmates Anne Baxter, Ann Sothern, and Jeff Donnell mix with predatory sketch artist Raymond Burr and cynical newspaperman Richard Conte in  Lang’s combination of women’s picture and film noir.

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  • Daisy Kenyon

    Otto Preminger
    U.S., 1947

    Studio Vault Print
    Based on the novel by Elizabeth Janeway

    Sunday, July 9 6:45 PM

    Joan Crawford is torn between married lawyer Dana Andrews and tormented army gunner Henry Fonda. “That rarest of Hollywood entities: a realist romance” (Los Angeles Times).

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  • Night Nurse

    William Wellman
    United States, 1931

    Based on the novel by Dora Macy (Grace Perkins)

    Thursday, July 13 7 PM

    Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell expose Hippocratic hypocrisy—and plenty of skin—in this medical melodrama, also featuring Clark Gable.

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  • Bedelia

    Lance Comfort
    United Kingdom, 1946

    Archival Print
    Based on the novel by Vera Caspary

    Friday, July 21 6:30 PM

    A beatific housewife, a smitten husband, and a trail of dead spouses dwell in an isolated Connecticut house in this gothic tale of “disordered emotions.”

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  • Laura

    Otto Preminger
    United States, 1944

    Based on the novel by Vera Caspary

    Friday, July 21 8:30 PM

    Detective Dana Andrews is enthralled by a portrait of elusive Gene Tierney in Preminger’s sleek noir, a study in duplicity that asks not just whodunit, but what “it” is. Featuring Clifton Webb and Vincent Price as preening rivals.

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  • The Fool Killer

    Servando González
    United States, 1965

    Based on the novel by Helen Eustis

    Sunday, July 23 7 PM

    In post–Civil War Tennessee, a young boy escapes abuse at home only to encounter Americana gone berserk in this eerily faithful rendering of Eustis’s novel. Anthony Perkins costars.

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  • Don’t Bother to Knock

    Roy Ward Baker
    United States, 1952

    Based on Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong

    Friday, July 28 7 PM

    Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark make an unstable pair in this psychological thriller involving a suicidal young woman and the jaded pilot who hopes to use her as a quick fling.

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  • Ride the Pink Horse

    Robert Montgomery
    United States, 1947

    Based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes

    Friday, August 4 6:30 PM

    Luckless veteran Robert Montgomery heads for a border town during its annual fiesta to avenge a friend’s death in this atmospheric postwar noir scripted by Ben Hecht.

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  • The Hanged Man

    Don Siegel
    United States, 1964

    New Print
    Based on Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes

    Friday, August 4 8:40 PM

    Siegel provides his usual tense, no-nonsense direction in this early made-for-TV movie adaptation of Ride the Pink Horse, starring Robert Culp and set in New Orleans. With Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz in performance.

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  • In a Lonely Place

    Nicholas Ray
    United States, 1950

    Archival Print
    Based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes

    Friday, August 11 6:30 PM

    Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame forge a fragile romance in Hollywood. “Never were despair and solitude so romantically alluring” (Time Out).

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  • The Breach

    Claude Chabrol
    France, 1970

    Based on The Balloon Man by Charlotte Armstrong

    Sunday, August 13 7 PM

    A young woman is gaslighted by her scheming in-laws after trying to leave her mentally unstable husband in Chabrol’s powerful noir. “Chabrol’s most audacious experiment with narrative form—a modernist reworking of the melodrama” (Dave Kehr).

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  • Band of Outsiders

    Jean-Luc Godard
    France, 1964

    Digital Restoration
    Based on Fools’ Gold by Dolores Hitchens

    Thursday, August 17 7 PM

    Anna Karina, Sami Frey, and Claude Brasseur are unlikely burglars in Godard’s “reverie of a gangster movie” (Pauline Kael).

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