Fatality hangs over Criss Cross like a thickening mist. Love-weary Steve
Thompson (Burt Lancaster), haunted by the memory of his calculating ex,
Anna (Yvonne De Carlo), draws her new lover Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea) into
a bank heist in the hope of winning Anna back. “From the beginning,” Steve
concludes, “it all went one way. It was in the cards, or it was fate, or a
jinx, or whatever you want to call it.” Set in a cramped slice of Los
Angeles—a flophouse on Bunker Hill, a sliver of a dim bar, the vertiginous
Angel’s Flight funicular—the city becomes an inescapable reminder of
life’s appalling indifference.
Written by Daniel Fuchs, from the novel by Don Tracy. Photographed by
Franz Planer. With Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo, Dan Duryea, Stephen
McNally. (87 mins, B&W, 35mm, From Universal Pictures)
(In conjunction with) Dark Past: Film Noir by German Emigrés
As Hitler’s influence grew in 1930s Germany, artists and intellectuals
fled the country; whether because they were Jewish or held contrary
political views, they saw their lives or livelihoods threatened by the
emerging fascist reign. The German film industry was not immune to this
flight and the decade witnessed the exodus of a host of important
filmmakers—directors, cinematographers, screenwriters, and others.
Hollywood became a haven for these hasty émigrés—by the early forties
tinsel town had a thriving contingent of German-speaking filmmakers,
including Otto Preminger, Max Ophuls, Douglas Sirk, Billy Wilder, Robert
Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Edgar G. Ulmer, and many others. Grateful for any
assignment, these veteran directors took on low-budget B-movies, turning
them into highly effective, emotionally resonant, darkly dramatized
mysteries and crime stories, later to be known as noirs. It’s said that
the greatest contribution of this group of directors was the shadow-laden
mise-en-scène with its brooding urban cityscapes distilled from German
Expressionism. But as you shall see from these eight noirs by eight
directors, much more than rain-spattered streets and crepuscular lighting
links them. Many of these bristling features, from Max Ophuls’s Caught to
Curtis Bernhardt’s High Wall, from William Dieterle’s Dark City to Otto
Preminger’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, share a belief that authority is
necessarily corrupt, that institutions are to be mistrusted, that what is
worst in us will come to light, and, finally, that no one can shake their
dark past.
Theater Admission Prices
Single Feature
$5.50 BAM/PFA Members, UC Berkeley Students
$9.50 Adults (18-64)
$6.50 UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and retirees
Non-UC Berkeley students
Senior citizens (65 & over)
Disabled persons
Youth (17 & under
Additional Feature $4.00 All Patrons
PFA General:
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 92027
(510) 642-1412
