New York Noir: "Naked City"

Every year, the Beaune International Thriller Film Festival pays tribute to a city for its influence and mythological dimension within the thriller genre. After “Paris Noir” last year, the Festival is now to honour New York City with: New York Noir; “Naked City”.

“Here is the city and here are the lights”. A camera is hovering above New York, while a voice-over comments: “It is the story of several people, and it is the story of the city itself. With its apartment houses, its skyscrapers, the hot summer pavements, the children at play, the buildings in their naked stone, the people without makeup… The city has a pulse, and it never stops beating…”

In just a few words, everything is said in this prologue to Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948). Leaving behind tourism and postcards, this New York is the city of film noir, with its crime-ridden alleys (Underworld USA), muggy strip-clubs (Fear City), fashionable clubs (The Wrong Man), boxing halls (Body and Soul), shabby backyards (Killer’s Kiss), dubiouslooking police stations (Detective Story), elevated railway (French Connection), fire escapes (The Window), the violence in Queens (Kiss of Death) or Harlem (A Rage in Harlem), gangs in Little Italy (Mean Streets), or Brooklyn and its famous bridge, from which Dassin contemplates the “naked city”, warning us that “there are eight million stories in the unveiled city, and we have only told you one.”As early as in 1912 (Griffith and his Musketeers of Pig Alley), New York proved to be obsessed by darkness. And, either showing itself at dawn in the desert streets of Madigan, or hiding in the manholes fumes on the asphalt of Taxi Driver, it hasn’t stopped to share this obsession with us.

François Guérif
(Publisher, creator and director of the Rivages Noir collection, and member of the Festival’s Red Circle*)

FILMS MENTIONED

The Musketeers of Pig Alley, D.W. Griffith, 1912.
Kiss of Death, Henry Hathaway, 1947.
Body and Soul, Robert Rossen, 1947.
The Window, Ted Tetzlaff, 1949.
Detective Story, William Wyler, 1951.
Killer’s Kiss, Stanley Kubrick, 1955.
The Wrong Man, Alfred Hitchcock, 1956.
Underworld USA, Samuel Fuller, 1961.
Madigan, Don Siegel, 1968.
French Connection, William Friedkin, 1971.
Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese, 1973.
Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese, 1976.
Fear City, Abel Ferrara, 1984.
A Rage in Harlem, Bill Duke, 1991.

As part of the “New York Noir” tribute, a selection of emblematic films will be screened to festival-goers.

LE BAISER DU TUEUR by Stanley Kubrick

In collaboration with the University of Bourgogne, the Festival propose as part of New York Polar goers a screening of the film “Killer’s Kiss” by Stanley Kubrick. This screening will be followed by a discussion lead by Mr. Yann Roblou, lecturer at the University of Valenciennes, where he teach the history, aesthetics and theory of American cinema.

This screening-discussion will take place on Friday, April 9th at 4 pm at the Cap Cinema.

Cap Cinéma
13 bis, boulevard du Maréchal Joffre

Tel: 03 80 24 21 85