Hidden Gems

PRIVATE PROPERTY

• Director: Leslie Stevens
• USA / 1960 / DCP / B&W / 79´ / English; Turkish s.t.

• Screenplay: Leslie Stevens
• Director of Photography: Ted McCord 
• Editing: Jerry Young
• Music: Alec Compinsky
• Cast: Corey Allen, Warren Oates, Kate Manx
• Producer: Stanley Colbert
• Production Co.: Daystar Productions, Kana Productions
• World Sales: Arbelos Films

Private Property, which was a lost film until 2015, is a Hitchcockian psychological suspense that scrutinises the superficiality of the American Dream. Upon its release in 1960, it was trashed by the critics and The Catholic Church tried to get it banned for violating the Motion Picture Production Code. When its distributor Citation Films went out of business, the film disappeared until a 35mm copy of it found in the UCLA Film Archive in 2015 was restored. When it was re-released in 2016, it was quickly hailed as a pioneering work of 1960s’ American cinema. This inventive noir, which was ahead of its time with its stylistic and thematic inquiries, is one of the first films that brought a New Wave influence to modern American cinema that stretches to Truffaut and Chabrol.

This film was a Meetings on the Bridge participant.