Please note: This was screened in
Paul Schrader’s second directorial work following Blue Collar (1978), this psychological neo-noir sees a devout Calvinist businessman, played by George C. Scott, leave his Midwestern town to find his teenage daughter, who has vanished on a church-sponsored trip to California.
His worldview is upended when the search becomes a nightmare odyssey through the sleazy underbelly of California, as the realisation that his daughter’s whereabouts are worse than he could imagine. Often framed as a 70s retelling of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), Hardcore paints a bleak portrait of the American Dream and its fragile promise of moral certainty.
A personal work for Schrader, who was brought up Calvinist, the film explores a number of themes - faith (and crisis of), alienation, repression and the possibility of redemption - that were introduced in his writing of Taxi Driver (1976) and would later become his directorial signature.
This event is part Other Ways of Seeing, an initiative supported by BFI awarding funds from National Lottery co-curated by Ellen Smith and Andy Willis (Professor of Film Studies at the University of Salford and Senior Visiting Curator at HOME).
