“Victim” selected to open this year’s Cannes Classics

Cannes Classics, the program dedicated to landmark films of the past which have had a profound impact on film history, opens today in the Salle Buñuel with the presentation of a brand-new print of Victim, a 1961 feature by the British director Basil Dearden. Dirk Bogarde plays a successful English barrister whose thriving career is threatened when he receives a desperate call from Barrett, a young man he was close to in the past, and who is now the target of a blackmailing ring. The second feature on tonight’s bill is the 1970 thriller The Molly Maguires, directed by Martin Ritt. Based on a true story, it stars Sean Connery as an undercover detective sent to Pennsylvania coal mining country in 1876 to investigate the activities of a mysterious secret society bent on obtaining social justice.