Halloween is history, sweetheart, so finish that candy. What comes next won’t be pretty. Winter is slicing our way like a razor blade. Better jam on your fedora, pull up the collar of your raincoat and light the darkness with a cigarette. Keep your hands where I can see ’em.
Feel that angst? Angst is all over the walls of the Angst Gallery, today through Nov. 26. An exhibit of film noir movie posters from the collection longtime of Portland theater maven Roger Paulson will shove that uneasy feeling right up in your face. Like a knuckle sandwich.
Lurid colors and promises of sex and violence. Spooky silhouettes and swooning femme fatales. Exclamation points! Italics and multiple exclamation points!!! That’s what you once needed in your cinema window to pull passersby off the sidewalk and inside for some low-budget thrills.
Poster collector Paulson is an old friend and colleague of Richard Beer, the director of marketing and programming at the Kiggins Theatre. Beer said that Paulson is the longtime owner of the Palace Theater in Silverton, Ore., and he started building this collection years ago — simply by saving the huge marketing images that others threw away or even repurposed as insulation. In 1980, Paulson acquired a poster collection that had been discovered literally embedded within the walls of a rural theater that was minutes from demolition.
Paulson’s “house is a museum. He’s got thousands and thousands of posters,” Beer said.
Many of those posters will be for sale at the Angst Gallery. So will original lobby cards, which are smaller posters featuring actual film scenes. Beer said he’s hoping that Paulson himself will attend the opening reception, which is set for 5-9 p.m. today, during the First Friday Art Walk.
Age of anxiety
What is “film noir”? It’s that frowning G-man (government man) in raincoat and hat, inching down a dark alley with his gun drawn. It’s the supposedly dead woman who slips back into her own apartment after midnight, hunting for clues to finger the real culprit. It’s the condemned criminal in his cell, dryly considering the gallows, while the weeping rain outside his window transforms into tears running down his face.
Twisting, turning plots that never let you rest. Tough guys with guns — maybe cops, maybe criminals — and tough broads with shady pasts. All rendered in a mysterious and brutal black-and-white palate.
All that cinematic angst traces back to the weird, troubled visions of German Expressionist artists and filmmakers after the devastation of World War I. Many of them eventually fled Europe and came to Hollywood, where they drove a new wave of deeply unsettling horror and gangster movies, like the original “Dracula” and the original “Scarface.”
Then America won an even bigger world war — by firebombing civilians and even vaporizing whole cities with science-fictional weaponry. The resulting peace felt anything but peaceful. Communism was on the rise and our social order was changing. Modern times were proving chilly, dangerous and morally chaotic. Poet W.H. Auden called it the “age of anxiety.”
Many would argue that we’ve never outgrown that age. Film noir was at its height during the 1940 and 1950s, but its dark influence is still with us. The movies “Body Heat,” made in 1981, “Pulp Fiction,” from 1994, and even “Drive,” from 2011, are all considered classics of “neo-noir.”
Second Mondays
You can really noir it up on the next three second Mondays, with three adjoining Main Street businesses getting into the act. Start by absorbing those garish posters at Angst Gallery (in November only). Then, absorb a nicer noir next door at Niche Wine Bar, where owner Leah Jackson will offer tasters of pleasing pinots from around the world. In noir lingo, this is referred to as “a stiff belt.” Sample three tasters; purchase more if you like.
Then, attitude properly adjusted, stagger next door to the Kiggins Theatre, which will screen film noir classics for your enjoyment and shock. Jackson said her wine offerings will be tastefully paired with the films. Package tickets including tastings and film are $10 each. Screenings start at 6:30 p.m., so give yourself enough time to enjoy your wine before the movie.
Alfred Hitchcock’s “Notorious,” featuring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and a tense scene in a wine cellar, screens on Nov. 14; “Christmas Holiday,” which sees Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly moving through the L.A. underworld, is Dec. 12; and on Jan. 9, it’s Howard Hawkes’ classic “To Have or Have Not,” starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and some unforgettably sleazy advice on how to whistle.
