L.A. Noir: Point Blank

L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise

Presented by Greg Olson Productions

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) is an L.A. tale somehow told by a dead man, and director John Boorman’s Point Blank explores a similar physical/metaphysical neighborhood, where there’s a scent of ultimate mystery in the sultry air. A master thief (Lee Marvin) is shot by his partner (John Vernon), who takes of with “their” $93,000 and Marvin’s wife (Sharon Aker), and heads for L.A. Marvin pursues them, his hard leather shoes clacking and echoing in the LAX airport hallway. His name is Walker, and like a hungry ghost or avenging angel, so cool he could frost palm trees, he keeps striding forward, unstoppable. He embraces a luscious, helpful woman (Angie Dickinson), and makes a parade of powerful men wish they’d never seen him. He’ll tear apart corporate skyscrapers with his hands if he as to—but answers, like he himself, remain elusive. Boorman makes stunning use of widescreen color, moving on from the more “square” frame format of classic film noir and making the expansive frame a signifier of Neo-noir.

Individual Tickets: $15
Passes: $125 | $85 SIFF, SAM, Swedish Club, UW Cinema Studies, NWFF, SFI, TheFilmSchool, Festa Italiana, Alliance Francaise de Seattle, Scarecrow Video, & KING FM members