Get Out: Film Noir @ SIFF, starting Friday

Not so long ago--even into the 1980s--it seemed certain that the Western would stand the test of time as the quintessential American cinematic form. After all, the story of cowboys, outlaws and Indians on the great rolling plains between the coasts and the travails of those courageous families crossing the country in covered wagons is as much a part of our creation story as defeating the British; Independence and Manifest Destiny go hand-in-hand, and John Wayne, with his swaggering bravado, not only represented the embodiment of American masculinity, but his unwavering devotion to righteousness (even, perhaps especially, when begotten by violence) spoke to the American sense of our own virtue and uniqueness. Even when the Italians got their hands on the genre, and Clint Eastwood gave the cowboy a dark edge, that moral ambiguity never really changed the fundamental sense that there is a right and wrong; the innocents, after all, are still innocent. The change that Sergio Leone wrought was simply one of transforming the West into a wide open space into which the damned could escape their demons, even in death. The figure of the dying cowboy, gut-shot, riding into the sunset slumping atop his steed is still an image of freedom and hope.

So it's surprising that in the last 20 years, film noir (despite its French name) has utterly trounced the Western to lodge itself into the core of the American imagination. It's a classic case of the conflict between what we want to be, and what we secretly believe we are. If the Western is a story of hope and promise to be carved out of a new land (even at the expense of genocide, as Cormac McCarthy proposed in his masterpiece Blood Meridian, which represents the apex of the genre in literary form), then film noir represents the claustrophobia of our daily lives. Cowboys live on enough money to get nice and drunk in town and take advantage of a dancing girl's service. The rest of us fear not being able to pay rent. Cowboys wanted for murder in one jurisdiction hop on their horse and ride out into the great wide-open to start over somewhere else; for the rest of us, violence has real consequences. Whereas cowboys in the movies put their six-shooters to the service of good against the narrow interests of greed and evil, the rest of live in a world of deep and abiding moral ambiguity. And whereas Westerns propose a creation myth of territorial expansion and the promise of a new life in the West, noir at its best told a different sort of creation story, one mired in corruption. What's Polanski's Chinatown if not the story of the birth of LA, inextricably linked to incest?

The early years of noir are about to on display in an exciting and ambitious new program at SIFF, Noir City, running Fri., Feb 15 through Thurs., Feb. 21. Featuring 14 films over seven days from the heyday of the genre, 1941 to 1953, Noir City offers a crash course through noir, from iconic masterpieces like Humphrey Bogart's High Sierra to minor and little-seen films like The Prowler. Organized by the Film Noir Foundation, a preservation society, and hosted by founder Eddie Muller, Noir City offers viewers the chance to experience the classics which have inspired everyone from Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino to the Coen Brothers.

Schedule and more info below the fold.