Telluride Film Festival Cinematheque at Wilkinson Library
Last season, the theme was French New Wave. This second season, the subject is film noir, a genre that emerged post WWII in the late 1940s when the mood in the country was dark. Post war malaise is the result of the atrocities of war and deeper understanding of the human nature's dark underbelly.
A defining characteristic of film noir is fatalism, one small step that leads to doom: an "ordinary Joe" protagonist, a predatory femme fatale.