Film Details

Today is the first-ever Art House Theater Day, a nationwide celebration of the small, independently owned specialty film theaters that enrich many U.S. cities. Organized by the Art House Convergence (a consortium of independent, community-based, mission-driven movie theaters), this special day will be celebrated at the Cinematheque with three unique programs: a collection of recent French animated shorts and a two-part, three-film “Cahn Film Festival” (Edward L. Cahn, that is). Cahn (1899-1963) is best known as the director of scores of B-movies. But he began his career at Universal, where he made the “three shockingly grim and startlingly good films” (Imogen Sara Smith), which we will show. According to Smith, these three Pre-Code movies “form a kind of unholy triptych, three variations on the bottomless theme of American corruption and violence.” Film curator Dave Kehr, who recently programmed this trio of Cahn classics at MoMA, concurs: "Eddie Cahn's films are amazing. This guy was a major, major talent who just got washed out of the business because he was so far ahead of his time and so grim. They are just jaw-dropping…unbelievable."

Unavailable on video, Cahn's unforgettable Pre-Code classic Laughter in Hell has to be seen to be believed! Based on a hardboiled novel by Ohio-born writer and vagabond Jim Tully (1886-1947), Laughter in Hell is one of the bleakest and most unrelenting films of the Depression era. Set in Tennessee, the movie tells of a locomotive driver (Pat O’Brien) who gets sentenced to a brutal chain gang after impulsively killing his wife and her lover. Though the unsavory original ending was cut, the film still proved downbeat enough to get Cahn demoted to Our Gang comedies and scores of Poverty Row potboilers. With Gloria Stuart (Titanic). Print from the Universal Pictures studio archive. 70 min.