Film
Beyond The Canon: One False Move + Touch of Evil
- 6:30PM
Dir. Carl Franklin
With Bill Paxton, Cynda Williams, Billy Bob Thornton
1992, 105min, 35mm
This masterfully wrought thriller from black filmmaker Carl Franklin ranks among the most striking—and overlooked—American independent films of the 1990s. It’s a tightly coiled neo-noir that cuts between three killers on the run and the three cops—a small town Arkansas sheriff who joins forces with two LAPD officers—on their tail. Through a command of character, mood, and the complex racial dynamics at play, Franklin crafts a crime saga of uncommon depth.
Dir. Orson Welles
With Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles
1958, 112min, DCP
Orson Welles’ sublimely sordid noir masterpiece opens with the most explosive tracking shot in all of cinema and ends with one of the most immortal lines. In between there’s a cascade of pulpy delights: the atmospherically sleazy border town setting, Marlene Dietrich’s shady-lady madam, and, at the center of it all, Welles in a show-stopping performance as the monstrously corrupt cop Hank Quinlan—“some kind of a man” if ever there was one.
Guest writer Michael Gillespie examines film noir’s history of boundary crossing in this close-up look at Carl Franklin’s One False Move and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil.
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