THU—MON, MAR 19—23, 2015 ▪ ROXIE THEATER
Presented by Mid-Century Productions and I Wake Up Dreaming

FRIDAY, MAR 20 PERILOUS LOVE

THE SCARLET DOVE / TULIPUNAINEN KYYHKYNEN  6:00, 10:15

Dir. Matti Kassila (1961) 86 min.

Finland and Hong Kong are next on the "world noir" tour, where "bad marriages" take on both operatic and oneiric dimensions.

In THE SCARLET DOVE, Tauno Palo gives a towering performance as a suspicious husband who clearly should have buried his marital discontent and left well enough alone. Director Matti Kassila, one of the giants in post-WWII Finnish cinema, keeps the action taut despite the increasingly surreal elements that Palo's character encounters in his dark, tortured journey—including a sequence with a mysterious, flirtatious girl (Helen Elde, pitch-perfect in her film debut) that can be seen as the epitome of emasculation anxieties.

Kassila and Palo combine brilliantly to put the "hell" in Helsinki and deliver a twist that will be familiar to noir aficionados (but somehow much more satisfying than in any of its previous manifestations).

THE WILD, WILD ROSE / YE MEI GUI ZHI LIAN  7:45

Dir. Tian-Ling Wang (1960) 128 min.

Nothing—and we mean nothing—will prepare you for the charisma and intensity of Grace Chang's performance and presence in THE WILD, WILD ROSE, Hong Kong's 1960 noir reworking of CARMEN. Woe to any man who falls in love with the Wild, Wild Rose, and yet—whose fault is it, really? Is it her fault that she's such a superheated ball of fire? Chang sings, dances, smolders—and leaves all other incendiary performers in need of a new fuel source as she blazes through the netherworld of Hong Kong nightlife.

THE WILD, WILD ROSE was screened in 2007 as part of SIFF, but we firmly believe that it shines more darkly (but blazingly) here, in what is its most appropriate context.

© MID-CENTURY PRODUCTIONS