Film noir fans, rejoice — or brood charismatically in front of a starkly-lit city street, at least. Noir City‘s back.
If you’re even familiar in passing with the film noir genre, you’re probably well-acquainted with the annual fest, curated by Film Noir Guru Eddie Muller and brimming with darkly-rich cinematic morsels. This year will prove no exception, with Muller bringing benchmark classics of the influential cinema sub-genre along with an impressive cabinet full of film noir curiosities and obscurities.
The program leans heavily towards the latter, and that’s part of its considerable lure. Muller and the movie preservation consortium he’s founded, The Film Noir Foundation, have excavated rarities and restored them to an impressive sheen. One of the undisputed highlights of Noir City will undoubtedly be its curator: Muller’s an exhaustive authority on the genre, and an unparalleled raconteur (check out our two-part interview with Muller circa Noir City 2010, here and here), so get to those screenings early.
Full-festival passes remain the biggest bang for your buck. A few are still available for $75 ($45 for SIFF members), but if you’re only interested in catching one night’s worth of noir, $13 gets you into one evening’s double-(or in some cases, triple-) feature.
A full schedule, and further details on ticket purchase options, can be obtained at SIFF’s website, but below are a few of the most exciting highlights of Noir City ’13’s line-up.
Try and Get Me (1950) and Hell Fighters (1957), screening tonight: Noir City-proper kicks off tonight with a double feature of rare films by Cy Endfield, an American director forced out of the states by the McCarthy witch hunts. Before emigrating to Britain, Endfield directed Try and Get Me!, a 1950 thriller in which a despondent hard-luck case (Frank Lovejoy) gets caught up in petty crime, a kidnapping scheme, and dire misfortune with a charismatic hood (Lloyd Bridges). If your knowledge of Bridges begins and ends with his comic turn in Airplane! (“I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue!”), his menacing performance here’ll blow the top of your head off.
Second on the bill is Hell Fighters, a 1957 rarity from Endfield’s British exile years. It’s a more straightforward drama with noir touches, as ex-con Tom Yately (Stanley Baker) runs into trouble attempting to expose the dirty dealings of his trucking-company boss. Early star-gazing bonus: a very young Sean Connery plays a supporting role.
Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Repeat Performance (1947), screening Saturday February 23: Billy Wilder’s immortal Sunset Boulevard follows a cynical schlub of a writer (William Holden) as he woos unstable faded silent-movie starlet Norma Desmond (an iconic Gloria Swanson). The movie seals its fascination with the decaying glitter of Old Hollywood in a hard-bitten noir shell, making it an essential genre pillar as well as the precursor to lurid Hollywood horror shows like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? You’ll never see a more corrosive vision of Tinseltown onscreen, ever.
The super-rare Repeat Performance, meantime, makes for a compelling partner on the bill. It plays like a creepy Twilight Zone mutation of It’s a Wonderful Life: Broadway actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) guns down her husband on New Years’ Eve, then finds herself given an unexpected chance at redemption when she’s catapulted back to the previous year to start over again.
Experiment in Terror (1962) and The Window (1949), Screening Tuesday, February 26: Director Blake Edwards reaped a fortune directing frothy comedies like the Pink Panther films and 10, but Experiment in Terror shows that the guy possessed mad skills at mounting suspense. Bank teller Lee Remick becomes a reluctant accomplice in a bank robbery to save her sister from the clutches of a criminal genius/nutcase, with FBI agent Glenn Ford in hot pursuit. The cat-and-mouse game between Ford and his shadowy quarry (and Remick’s affecting terror and helplessness) follow the Hitchcock template with panache.
The Window tells a taut story likewise infused with Hitchcockian flavor (it’s no accident director Ted Tetzlaff also served as cinematographer on Hitch’s Notorious). A young boy given to tall tales witnesses his neighbors committing a murder, and naturally, no one believes him (except, of course, for his homicidal neighbors). Anchored by a believable performance from child star Bobby Driscoll (whose life took as many sad turns as the most harrowing film noir), The Window could well be one of the unsung gems of Noir City ’13.
Man in the Dark (1953) and Inferno (1953), screening Wednesday, February 27: Two mid-1950’s thrillers shot in 3D receive a lustrous digital 3D makeover for this screening. In Man in the Dark, an ex-con (Edmond O’Brien) gets busted by the cops after a big theft and undergoes experimental surgery to remove his criminal instincts. He then finds that the surgery’s also removed his knowledge of where he hid the ill-gotten gains, a detail that’s got his partners in crime pretty pissed. Yeah, that’s one goofy premise, but it’s got O’Brien (star of the classic ’49 noir, D.O.A) at its center and director Lew Landers honed his knack for nail-biting action in numerous B films and cliffhanger serials.
Inferno throws on the eye-straining 3D in lurid color, as adulterous lovers William Lundigan and Rhonda Fleming leave Fleming’s husband (Robert Ryan) in the desert to die: Tough-as-nails Ryan has other ideas. Director Roy Ward Baker makes great use of Fleming, an eye-poppingly beautiful vixen with fiery scarlet hair and luminous eyes, and Ryan’s coiled intensity made him one of film noir’s most valuable (if underrated) go-to-guys.
