Event | Film and Video Screenings Film screening: Where Danger Lives (1950)

WHERE DANGER LIVES (RKO – Westwood Productions, 1950). Directed by John Farrow. Screenplay by Charles Bennett, from a story by Leo Rosten. With Robert Mitchum, Faith Domergue, Claude Rains, Maureen O’Sullivan, Charles Kemper, Ralph Dumke. (84 min, black & white, 35mm print from the BBC Archives Collection)

A physician falls in love with a beautiful woman after treating her for attempted suicide and becomes enmeshed in the murder of her husband. “One of the darkest and most unrelenting examples of the film noir genre,” in the words of Robert Mitchum’s biographer Lee Server, “Where Danger Lives” paired Mitchum, by then a noir veteran having already starred in classics such as “Crossfire,” “Out of the Past” and “The Big Steal,” with the 25-year-old newcomer Faith Domergue, a protégé of Howard Hughes, who had acquired RKO two years earlier. Leo Rosten’s original story was adapted by English writer Charles Bennett, best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock, and the film was directed by John Farrow, another old hand at film noir (“The Big Clock,” “Alias Nick Beal”). Cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca is often credited with defining the visual conventions of the genre with his black and white photography heavily influenced by German Expressionism.

Seating is on a first-come first-serve basis.  Doors open at 6:30 pm.