Negative Space + Out of the Past

The film critic and painter Manny Farber wrote jazzy, freestyle appreciations of cinema, more concerned with moments and gestures than stories or directors. A lover of slapstick, B-movies and Chuck Jones cartoons, his best-known legacy is a...

Dir. Christopher Petit / Jacques Tourneur

UK 1999, 39 mins / USA 1947, 97 mins

Feat. Manny Farber; Robert Mitchum

The film critic and painter Manny Farber wrote jazzy, freestyle appreciations of cinema, more concerned with moments and gestures than stories or directors. A lover of slapstick, B-movies and Chuck Jones cartoons, his best-known legacy is a distinction between ‘White Elephant Art’ (self-conscious masterpieces, what we might call Oscar-bait) and ‘Termite Art’, which springs from "buglike immersion in a small area without point or aim”. To mark Farber’s passing last August here is a Friday-afternoon double-bill for all you termites out there.

Firstly, Negative Space, a fascinating 1999 portrait by British filmmaker Chris Petit (Radio On). Followed by one of Farber’s favourites; the sublime film noir Out of the Past (dir: Jacques Tourneur, 1947), with Robert Mitchum as the most insanely quotable hardboiled hero you ever saw.