Artist Amy Sillman calls Scarlet Street “the best and most tragic artist movie ever made.” Directed by Fritz Lang in 1945, the film has an unlikely premise: a gold-digger after the money of an ordinary middle-aged painter. (For the art nerds and critics in us, we even get to see the painter at work.) While the plot may sound rather unexciting at first, Scarlet Street takes some jarring and thrilling turns, including a scheming boyfriend and vicious murder. At the time the film was released, it was censored by New York State for being “indecent” and “immoral.”
The film returns this weekend to the Lower East Side’s arthouse cinema Metrograph, where Sillman will introduce the screening with personal, painterly insights of her own. She will also be signing copies of her new book, The ALL-OVER, which surveys her large-scale abstractions, animations, and more.
When: Sunday, March 4, 1:45pm
Where: Metrograph (7 Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan)
More info at Metrograph.
Correction: A previous version of this article misattributed a quote by Amy Sillman to Robert Smithson. This has been amended.
The post The Return of an “Indecent” Fritz Lang Film About a Painter and a Gold-Digger appeared first on Hyperallergic.
