The New-Harboiled-Newsletter

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The New Hard-Boiled

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By Ben Elliott

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When things get tough in America, we make the art to match the moment — and few genres capture that response more vividly than film noir. The rampant corruption and desperation of Prohibition and the Great Depression gave rise to hardboiled detective fiction, stories that later made their way to the screen during the turmoil of World War II and its aftermath.

Chinatown, 1975

While the golden age of film noir closed during the prosperity of the 1950s, a second wave of cynical crime stories emerged as the idealism of the 1960s collided with the disillusionment of the Nixon era. Unbound by censorship codes, this new breed of detectives and femme fatales reflected the nation’s growing distrust in the American dream — protagonists shaped by a sense that you can’t change the rules of a rigged game, but you might be able to play it to your advantage.

The Long Goodbye, 1973

We explore this cultural moment in The New Hard-Boiled: The Birth of American Neo-Noir, coming to The Triplex October 22–November 19. From the money-fueled revenge of Point Blank to the paranoia-laced investigation of Klute, the moral murk of The Long Goodbye, the corrupt power brokers of Chinatown, and the desperate schemes of Night Moves, each film in the series captures a different facet of the discontent that defined the era.

Just as those films echoed the anxieties of the 1930s and ’40s, these neo-noirs have plenty to say about our own age of uncertainty. The clothes may have changed and the technology may be sleeker, but the central question at the core of this genre — how do we move forward in a world that feels wrong? — remains as urgent as ever.

Showtimes

Showtimes Blue Moon | 2:00PM, 8:30PM Bugonia | 2:15PM, 5:15PM, 8:00PM Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere | 2:30PM, 5:30PM, 8:15PM Klute | 5:00PM

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