Starring Barbara Stanwyck at BFI
Running from Friday 1 February – Wednesday 20 March, STARRING BARBARA STANWYCK will be a season dedicated to one of the most successful and memorable Hollywood actors of all time; Barbara Stanwyck’s career spanned more than four decades and her versatility saw her take on roles spanning genres from screwball to film noir to melodrama. The season will include an extended run of Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve (1941), which will be re-released in selected cinemas by the BFI on Friday 15 February, as well as classics such as Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937), Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) and Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952). The season will also include Barbara Stanwyck in the Spotlight, an afternoon of richly illustrated talks and discussions exploring key aspects of Stanwyck’s career and Barbara Stanwyck – a Modern Star is Born, a six-week evening course.
Ladies of Leisure (Frank Capra, 1930) was the first of Stanwyck’s five collaborations with Frank Capra and paved the way towards stardom. Stanwyck steals the show with an energetic performance as a dynamic, forthright and self-confessed party girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Other Capra films screening in February will include melodrama Forbidden (1932) and Capra’s artiest movie The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932). The pre-code film Night Nurse (William A Wellman, 1931) stars Stanwyck as a nurse who uncovers a plot to kill two sick children. The first of five films Stanwyck made with Wellman, it celebrates a woman unafraid to stand up for what she believes in. Night Nurse will screen in a double-bill alongside Alfred E Green’s Baby Face (1933), about an ambitious and tenacious young woman who climbs her way to the top by using men and turning situations to her own advantage. Censored upon its release, screenings of Baby Face during the season will be the uncut version, which will be followed by the shots that were removed by the censor.
A trio of classy card sharks targets the socially awkward heir to brewery millions for his money, until one of them falls in love with him.
A quintessential melodrama that came to define the cinematic depiction of maternal self-sacrifice, Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) sees Stanwyck play a millworker’s daughter who manoeuvers her way up the social ladder, determined to give her own daughter a better life. Rouben Mamoulian’s characteristically stylish yet sensitive adaptation of Clifford Odets’ play Golden Boy (1939) saw William Holden debuting as an impoverished young man torn between the fast money of the boxing circuit and his father’s hopes that he’ll become a great violinist. Another adaptation of a Clifford Odets play is Clash by Night (Fritz Lang, 1952), which sees Stanwyck play a defiant, cynical and disenchanted woman who soon finds herself unexpectedly caught up in a tangle of relationships. Stanwyck’s mature, complex characterisation is one of several excellent performances, which also includes Marilyn Monroe’s memorable portrayal of a trusting young woman.
A jealous and insecure newlywed man interferes with his wife's medical work in order to prevent her from seeing attractive male patients.
Adapting James M Cain’s novella alongside Raymond Chandler, Billy Wilder persuaded a reluctant Stanwyck – then Hollywood’s highest-paid female actor – to star in Double Indemnity (1944) as the deviously manipulative Phyllis Dietrichson, who seduces an insurance agent into a scam that necessitates her husband’s demise. The casting paid off, and the result was a noir classic. In an imaginative variation on the Double Indemnity theme, Stanwyck also played a devious femme fatale in The File on Thelma Jordon (Robert Siodmak, 1950), while the unusual noir No Man of Her Own (Mitchell Leisen, 1950) saw her star as a pregnant, single woman who is mistaken for a member of a wealthy family. In The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Lewis Milestone, 1946) Stanwyck appeared opposite Kirk Douglas (in his film debut) as a rich and controlling woman with a dark past. Completing the February line-up will be All I Desire (Douglas Sirk, 1953), in which an actor (played by Stanwyck) is beseeched by her estranged daughter to revisit their small-town home and the husband and family she abandoned years earlier – and that’s when gossip, conflict and forgotten passions flare up.
EVERY TUE FROM 5 FEB-12 MAR, 18:30-20:30 – COURSE: Barbara Stanwyck – a Modern Star is Born – a six-week evening course on Barbara Stanwyck discussing a wide range of her films
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