Essential Cinema: A series of Hollywood classics that every true film fan must see is screening this March at the IFI

During March the IFI, in conjunction with the National Film School at IADT, will be showing four classic Hollywood films that are essential viewing for any film fan. The films will be introduced by Tom Kennedy of IADT to provide a brief background and context for why these films have emerged as landmark classics in the Hollywood canon.

Essential Cinema kicks off with The Roaring Twenties; a gripping gangster film starring James Cagney and featuring familiar Hollywood themes of Prohibition, the Great Depression, the Jazz age and saloon bar life. Cagney is the post-war protagonist who is lured into corrupt ways and becomes a magnetic gangland leader with Humphrey Bogart as his sidekick. Screenwriter Mark Hellinger drew on his experiences as a New York news reporter during the 1920s for this superb melodrama.

Next up is Out Of The Past (aka Build My Gallows High), a classic of the film noir genre. Robert Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, the world weary former detective who escapes to a small town Bridgeport to start a new life. But, in true noir fashion, the past won’t let him go.

They are young. They’re in love. They rob banks. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway feature in the third Essential Cinema film, Bonnie and Clyde, as the archetypal lovers on the run who blaze a violent trial across Depression-era America. This action-packed crime drama broke new ground in cinema terms for its truthful depiction of violence and its real impact and remains one of Hollywood’s greatest creations.

The final film in the series is The Searchers that brings together two of Hollywood’s most important figures: director John Ford and John Wayne as civil war vet Ethan Edwards. Determined to rescue his niece who has been kidnapped by Chief Scar of the Comanche, Edwards search becomes an obsession that only increases when the young woman he finds has assimilated into the tribe.

Essential Cinema Schedule
1st March       6.30pm          The Roaring Twenties
8th March       6.30pm          Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High)
15th March     6.30pm          Bonnie and Clyde
22nd March    6.30pm          The Searchers