Directed by Joseph Losey • 1957 • United Kingdom
Starring Michael Redgrave, Ann Todd, Leo McKern
On the day before his estranged son is scheduled to be executed for a murder he didn’t commit, an alcoholic writer (a riveting Michael Redgrave) embarks on a last-ditch attempt to save him, journeying into England’s criminal underworld in order to prove the young man’s innocence—and he is just unsteady enough in his thinking to make every twist of this powerful noir drama a source of ever-tightening suspense. Joseph Losey’s second British film after being blacklisted from Hollywood is forged with a feverish intensity, wringing maximum impact from the ticking-clock premise to make the audience feel the passage of every desperate second.
Up Next in Noir
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All Night Long
Directed by Basil Dearden • 1962 • United Kingdom
Othello is translated to the world of sixties London jazz clubs in Basil Dearden's smoky and sensational All Night Long. Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex (Pau...
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King of New York
Directed by Abel Ferrara • 1990 • United States
Starring Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, David CarusoRenegade director Abel Ferrara—working in collaboration with his regular screenwriter Nicholas St. John—brings his murky moral worldview and eye for pulp imagery to this kinetic, stylish...
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Demonlover
Directed by Olivier Assayas • 2002 • France
Starring Connie Nielsen, Charles Berling, Chloë Sevigny“No one sees anything. Ever. They watch, but they don’t understand.” So observes Connie Nielsen in Olivier Assayas’s hallucinatory, globe-spanning DEMONLOVER, a postmodern neonoir thriller and med...
