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Film - No Down Payment
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“There’s no place like home.” – Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz The idea of what makes a house a home, and explorations of how and where Americans live, have powerfully informed many significant films over the years, in ways both subtly thought-provoking and farcically over-the-top. The National Building Museum is proud to partner with the American Film Institute (AFI) Silver Theatre and Cultural Center to present a film series associated with the Museum’s exhibition House & Home. "Reel Estate: The American Home on Film" presents a wide-ranging series of films focusing on the American home, from nostalgic classics like Gone With the Wind, to post-WWII suburban melodramas like No Down Payment, and to subversive comedies like Hal Ashby’s The Landlord. No Down Payment In stark contrast to the smiling families of 1950s television, director Martin Ritt (blacklisted at the time from television work) turns a scathing eye on the suburban American Dream in NO DOWN PAYMENT. New to the southern California suburb of Sunrise Hills, Jeffrey Hunter and wife Patricia Owens attend a barbeque hosted by their neighbors Pat Hingle and his wife Barbara Rush. There they meet alcoholic, amoral cars salesman Tony Randall and his long-suffering wife Sheree North, and crude auto mechanic Cameron Mitchell and his embittered wife Joanne Woodward. Hunter considers himself lucky to be able to buy a house in the neighborhood, but reconsiders that opinion in the face of the anger, resentment, neuroticism, racism, snobbishness, substance abuse and violence he and his wife discover there. DIR Martin Ritt; SCR Philip Yordan, Ben Maddow (uncredited), based on the novel by John McPartland; PROD Jerry Wald. US, 1957, b&w, 105 min. NOT RATED Ticket Information: The AFI Silver Theatre is located at 8633 Colesville Road in Silver Spring, Maryland, Silver Spring Metro, Red Line.
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