UNDER THE MINK: FILM NOIR AT COLUMBIA PICTURES

This Noirvember we’re screening a selection of five films noir from the heyday of Columbia Pictures, with the theme of doomed romance at their centre. Celebrating the centenary of the studio in 2024, and featuring a rich shared palette of stars, from Humphrey Bogart to Rita Hayworth, the noirs made by Columbia Pictures in this postwar period have proven endlessly popular over the decades, perhaps because their existential despair and geometric visual style never feel antiquated.

That sense of doomed romance, romance with dirt under its fingernails and a cut on its face, haunts the world of film noir. Starry-eyed expectations are rarely met; rage, lust, and thwarted desire simmer beneath the surface. If noir is about the underside of urban life, and its seedy darkness seeps into the brightly-lit wholesomeness of mid-century American life in the daytime, then its gender relations are equally unlovely. With their slinky femme fatales and dime store pulp source material, Columbia noir is chock-full of curdled optimism and exquisite fatalism; men and women regard each other with suspicion. That fact of life - as of cinema - may never go out of style.

Notes and curation by film critic Christina Newland.