Noir City Opens Tonight at SIFF: Pitfall & Larceny

Tonight, SIFF Cinema's annual Noir City Film Festival begins with a double-feature, and everything you could want from Noir: Adulterers, Con Men, Grifters, Private Eyes, Ex-Cons, and of course, Dames.

John Payne

Tonight's films, Pitfall and Larceny are both from 1948 and both not on DVD, so get yourself to SIFF Cinema (McCaw Hall at Seattle Center). Pitfall stars Dick Powell as an insurance man who has a disastrous affair with Lizabeth Scott; Larceny, with John Payne and Joan Caulfield, tells the story of con man who lets his romantic entanglements get in the way of his work.

Worth paying special attention to is dreamboat John Payne, an actor known to most of the world for playing the heart-of-gold lawyer Fred Gailey in the 1947 Miracle on 34th Street. But in my family, he's known as the guy my grandmother called "a terrible kisser." (Way to go, grandma.) Go see for yourself. Noir City continues through next Thursday.