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Preservation funded by The Film Foundation and the Franco American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the Directors Guild of America (DGA); Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (SACEM); The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA); and the Writers Guild of America—West (WGAW)

Ruthless (1948)

Ruthless (1948)
April 18, 2009 - 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater
In-person: 
Arianne Ulmer Cipes, daughter of director Edgar G. Ulmer.

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer

Director Edgar G. Ulmer's complex psycho-melodrama Ruthless is undoubtedly worthy of rediscovery. A flashback-structured tale of a sociopath's remorseless drive for station and wealth, Ruthless (often referred to as Ulmer's Citizen Kane) employs a relentless undercurrent of emotional violence. As relayed in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Ulmer envisioned his feature as "a Jesuitic morality play… a very bad indictment against 100 percent Americanism—as Upton Sinclair saw it." The film's chilling, malevolent tone is personified in a starkly muted performance by lead—and frequent screen cad—Zachary Scott.

Eagle-Lion Films. Based on a novel by Dayton Stoddart. Producer: Arthur S. Lions. Screenwriter: Alvah Bessie, S.K. Lauren, Gordon Kahn. Cinematographer: Werner Janssen. Editor: Francis D. Lyon. Cast: Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn, Sydney Greenstreet, Lucille Bremer.

35mm, 104 min.

Preceded by:

Preservation funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

News of the Day - Vol. 19, No. 257 "Red Crisis Stirs Nation!" (1948)

35mm, 8 min.

Preservation funded by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation

Popular Science, Vol. J6-5 (1948)

Subjects include the bathroom of the future, a one-man haybaler and "V-2" rocket research at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico.

35mm, 10 min.

Part of: 
2009 UCLA Festival of Preservation