The Cinefamily (Venue Partner)
611 N Fairfax Avenue
323.655.2510
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Film: Double Feature
Footsteps In The Fog (1955) + The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
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Footsteps In The Fog
- When
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Saturday Oct 17, 2009 (7–10:30pm)
- Where
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- Price
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$12
- Links
WATCH TRAILER FOR "FOOTSTEPS IN THE FOG"!
With its eerie staring portraits, hissing black cats, ghostly bells and an angry mob hunting down a murderer through the streets of this London “pea souper,” Footsteps in the Fog lurks just outside the box of balls-out Gothic horror. Stewart Granger plays an Edwardian cad who has murdered his wife, Jeanne Simmons is the ambitious scullery maid who knows he did it and, like Eliza Doolittle's evil twin, she sees it as a way to raise her station quicker than learning an accent. But beyond its raging paranoia and perversity (the screenplay was adapted from a tale by W. W. Jacobs, author of "The Monkey’s Paw") this is a love story, or at least a lust story -- Simmons and Granger's real-life marriage may have helped them generate the smoldering heat that blazes under all their stiff button-down clothes. Captured in gorgeous Technicolor photography by Christopher Challis, who shot many a hypersatured classic for Michael Powell, so you can envelop yourself in all those black carriages, smutty subtext, fog, and muuuuuuurder.
Dir. Arthur Lubin, 1955, 35mm, 90 min.
Though The Picture of Dorian Gray came several years after a cycle of “classic” horror films like Dracula, Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Albert Lewin’s version of Oscar Wilde’s strange tale is psychological horror at its best. Lewin, a friend of the Surrealists and collector of their art, began directing after decades of working as a writer-producer. His penchant for high stylization and his fascination with unusual protagonists with dark obsessions made for the best, and most faithful adaptation of Wilde’s famous novel to date. Harry Stradling’s deep focus photography earned an Academy Award while the infamous Technicolor reveal of the eponymous portrait is an iconic fright film image; the painting itself -- an original by American magical realist Ivan Albright -- is one of the most horrifying images ever featured in film, a surreal reflection of what each of us can become if we lose our humanity to careless egotism.
Dir. Albert Lewin, 1945, 35mm, 110 min.
Co-presented by Arbogast On Film
