Fat Chance

  • 64'
  • Canada
  • 2021

Laird Cregar was one of studio-era Hollywood’s heavies – with a double meaning in his case, for he was a huge guy who resented what life and the film industry had to offer men like him. Cregar died aged 31 from subjecting his rotund body to a crash diet that he believed would thin him down to romantic-lead size – at exactly the moment he was heading for a different kind of stardom thanks to a pair of very sinister noir milestones by John Brahm: The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945).

Using various techniques of mainly chemical image manipulation, Stephen Broomer took excerpts from these two films and others featuring Cregar, and turned the actor’s anguish and anxieties into a black-on-grey delirium of shadows, silhouettes, spectres and blots, with operatic music adding disturbing moments of grandeur and despair. Call it materialist noir.

  • 64'
  • Canada
  • 2021
Director
Stephen Broomer
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Canada
Year
2021
Festival Edition
IFFR 2021
Length
64'
Medium
DCP
Language
English
Producer
Stephen Broomer
Sales
Stephen Broomer
Editor
Stephen Broomer
Sound Design
Stuart Broomer
Music
Stuart Broomer
Director
Stephen Broomer
Premiere
World premiere
Country of production
Canada
Year
2021
Festival Edition
IFFR 2021
Length
64'
Medium
DCP
Language
English
Producer
Stephen Broomer
Sales
Stephen Broomer
Editor
Stephen Broomer
Sound Design
Stuart Broomer
Music
Stuart Broomer