Category: News

The First Rule of Film Noir: “A Dame With a Past and a Hero With No Future”

Out of the Past

Check out this recent primer from BBC4:  The Rules of Film Noir.  Odd that it makes no mention of British Noir. I was also disappointed that little attribution was given to the film-makers with most of the attention on the stars.  The talking heads also spoke in generalities.  The best sequence is where a British cinematographer takes you through a series of tracking shots from The Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis in conversation as they walk-stop-walk on a Manhattan street. Pure artistry. But zero credit to the brilliant work of DP James Wong Howe!

Kiss Me Deadly’s Maxine Cooper Dead at 84

Kiss Me Deadly

Maxine Cooper, the actress who played the off-beat secretary to Ralph Meeker’s Mike Hammer in Robert Aldrich’s cult noir, Kiss Me Deadly (1955), died aged 84 on April 4.

More from the LA Times.

Huzzah!! NOIR: An exciting new graphic novel project

Huzzah!! NOIR
©2009 I.N.J. Culbard. Used with Permission.

A group of nine very talented graphic artists/writers have launched an exciting new blog project titled Huzzah!! NOIR.

Each contributor in turn will be contributing a page that develops the story of a washed-up 40s boxer searching for a dame in a dark noir metropolis. Shades of Murder, My Sweet?

So far four pages are up with stunning noir graphics and a promising pulp noir story-line.

Two John Alton Films On New DVD Set

The Amazing Mr X (1948) Reign of Terror (1949)

The Classic Film Noir, Vol. 3 2-DVD Box set to be released by VCI Entertainment on March 31, features upgraded transfers of two John Alton lensed movies that have until now been available only as poor quality public domain copies. The films are Bernard Vorhaus’s Amazing Mr. X (1948), also known as The Spiritualist,  and  Anthony Mann’s Reign of Terror (1949), aka The Black Book.   NY Times movie critic Dave Kehr reviews these new releases here (half-way down the page).

Film Noir Digest: Dassin Retrospective

Jules Dassin: 1911-2008

Rififi (1955)
Rififi (1955)

The New York Film Forum from March 27 to April 12 will host a Jules Dassin retrospective over 12 days.  March 31 mark the anniversary of Dassin’s passing. All of Dassin’s major features will be screened, including:

  • Brute Force (1947)
  • The Naked City (1948)
  • Thieves’ Highway (1949)
  • Night And the City (1950)
  • Rififi (1955)

Full program

The Femme Fatale: Gun Crazy in the UK

Gun Crazy aka Deadly is the Female

The British Film Institute will screen 19 classic noirs and neo-noirs from February 27 to March 25 at its Southbank London cinema during its The Femme Fatale series.  The 1950 cult pulp noir from Joseph H. Lewis, Gun Crazy, will headline the series, screening daily, and will also also receive a limited national release.

Movies to be screened are:

Body Heat
Chinatown
Criss Cross
Detour
Devil in a Blue Dress
Double Indemnity
The File on Thelma Jordon
Gilda
Gun Crazy
The Killers
The Lady From Shanghai
The Last Seduction
The Long Goodbye
The Maltese Falcon
Niagara
Out of the Past
Scarlet Street
Vertigo
Where Danger Lives


Film Noir Digest: News from Noir City 7

While the City Sleeps (1956)

Noir City 7: Best Essay

San Francisco Bay Guardian critic Max Goldberg has written what I think is the best essay to come out of Noir City 7 –  Late Edition posted on his text of light blog:

“… The newsroom is as much a part of noir’s topography as the police station, boxing ring or nightclub. Deadline-U.S.A. (1952), Scandal Sheet (1952), The Big Clock (1948), While the City Sleeps (1956):  the titles bow to the newspaper’s ubiquitous pulse by slinging shop-talk into nighthawk poetry. The press curries a surplus of centralized power in this cycle of films, exerting a primary influence over the whole urban mechanism…”

Noir City 7: Reports from Alexander Coleman

Noir fan and erudite film blogger Alexander Coleman has posted at Coleman’s Corner in Cinema some outstanding reports from and reviews of noirs screened at Frisco’s Castro Theatre at Noir City 7, including:

These posts and other noir reviews are also hosted at Dark City Dame’s Noirish City.

Noir City 7: Report by Hell on Frisco Bay

Brian from Hell on Frisco Bay in his report on Noir City has a lot of interesting news on upcoming noir-related events and impressions of some of the noirs screened this year.   Particularly exciting news is his report that Eddie Muller is working on an international noir series, and that while Muller was in Buenos Aires to meet the archivists who made last summer’s announcement of rediscovered footage lost from Fritz  Lang’s Metropolis, he came across a trove of  Argentine films from the 1930s made by the great noir cinematographer John Alton.

From The Vaults of Universal: Seven Classic Films Noir

Starting Monday February 16, the Heights Theatre in Minneapolis is screening a short series of classic films noir:

February 16 7:30pm This Gun For Hire (1942)
February 23 7:30pm Criss Cross (1949) | 9:15pm The Killers (1946)
March 2 7:30pm The Big Clock (1948)
March 9 7:30pm The Blue Dahlia (1946) | 9:15pm The Glass Key (1942)
March 16 7:30pm The Phantom Lady (1944)

Jean-Pierre Melville, Director: Notes on the French Auteur’s Career

This month’s edition of  Bright Lights Film Journal features an article by Garry Morris on Melville, whose noirs include Bob le Flambeur, Le Doulos, Le Samourai, & The Red Circle .

Robert Ryan: A Moon for the Misbegotten

This month’s edition of  Bright Lights also  features an article by Dan Callahan on noir icon Robert Ryan.

Lost Anthony Manne B-Noir to be Restored

Strangers in The Night (1944)

Eddie Muller announced at Noir City 7  that  The Film Noir Foundation together with the UCLA Film and Television Archive will restore Anthony Mann’s lost 1944 b-noir Strangers in the Night.  When I read this I was thunderstruck –  I have this movie recorded from somewhere and have never watched it!  You now know which movie I have lined up next for viewing…

Film Noir Digest: Wicked As They Come

Wicked As They Come (1956)

Noir City 7: Wicked as They Come Trailer

NOIR CITY 7, the 2009 San Francisco Film Noir Festival, kicks-off this Friday, January 23, at the Castro Theatre. On Saturday night at 7pm, special guest Arlene Dahl will introduce the pulp noirs Wicked as They Come (1956), and Slightly Scarlet (1956), in which she stars.

The Noir City program blurbs on these movies:

Wicked as They Come: Columbia, 94 min. Dir. Ken Hughes.“What she wanted out of life… she got out of men!” Arlene Dahl is a sizzling sensation as Kathleen Allen, a woman who learns early that sex is how she’ll get ahead in the world.

Slightly Scarlet: 1956, RKO, 99 min. Novel-James M. Cain, Dir. Allan Dwan. Arlene Dahl steals the show as sexy kleptomaniac Dorothy Lyons (opposite titian-tressed “sister” Rhonda Fleming) in this eye-popping adaptation of Love’s Lovely Counterfeit. Camera virtuoso John Alton translates noir into lurid, saturated color. It’s 50’s paperback covers come to life!in which she stars.

Seattle International Film Festival French Noir Series

This French Crime Wave 1937-1981 series at the SIFF traces the history of French noir from 1937 to 1981. Full details here.

Friday, January 16—Rififi, 7 p.m. Pepe le Moko, 9:20
Saturday, January 17—Mississippi Mermaid, 2 & 8 p.m.
Sunday, January 18—Le Cercle Rouge, 2:15 & 7 p.m.
Monday, January 19—Garde a vue, 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday, January 20—Classe tous risques, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, January 21—Elevator to the Gallows, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, January 22—The Sicilian Clan, 7:30 p.m.
Friday, January 23—Bob le Flambeur, 8 p.m.
Saturday, January 24—Diabolique, 1 & 8 p.m.
Sunday, January 25—Coup de Torchon, 2, 4:30 & 7 p.m.
Monday, January 26—Pickpocket, 7:30 p.m.
Tuesday, January 27—The Champagne Murders, 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, January 28—Riptide, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, January 29—La Piscine, 7:30 p.m.
January 30-February 5—Shoot the Piano Player, daily 7:30 p.m., Sat. & Sun., 2:15, 4, & 7:30 p.m.

Classe tous risques

Cornell Woolrich: Dreaming, then dying

Zac O’yeah has written an an interesting feature article on the life and work of noir novelist, Cornell Woolrich, for the Wall Street Journal.

More Film Noir at NY’s Dryden Theatre

New Yorkers can plunge into the murky waters of essential film noir every Thursday in January and February at the Dryden Theatre:

January 8 Murder, My Sweet
January 15 Ride the Pink Horse
January 22 Raw Deal | T-Men
January 29 Road House | The Hitch-Hiker

February 5 In A Lonely Place
February 12 Pitfall | Nightfall
February 19 Double Indemnity
February 26 The Lady from Shanghai

More info.

Deep Discount on Film Noir Classics Collection – Vol. 1 DVD Set

DeepDiscount.com is offering this 5 DVD set for half-price at US$24.95 – that’s a low 5 bucks for each movie!

The pack contains these classic films noir:

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE
GUN CRAZY
MURDER, MY SWEET
OUT OF THE PAST
THE SET-UP

One-Two Punch: Pulp Writers on Film Series

Phantom Lady (1944)
Phantom Lady (1944)

Thanks to Dark City Dame for this news.

The University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMP/PFA) will from February 13, 2009 to February 28, 2009  screen a series of movies adapted from the works of four great pulp writers: Fredric Brown, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford, and Cornell Woolrich

Friday, February 13, 2009
6:30 pm Crack-Up
In this hallucinatory noir based on a Fredric Brown story, Pat O’Brien is an expert in forged paintings with a tenuous grasp on the boundary between real and fake—in art and in life.

8:30 pm The Kill-Off
Maggie Greenwald captures Jim Thompson’s dismal vision of an off-season resort. “A nasty, claustrophobic little gem.”—Paper

Thursday, February 19, 2009
6:30 pm Miami Blues
Introduced by Don Herron. Fred Ward plays Charles Willeford’s detective Hoke Moseley, in pursuit of sociopath Alec Baldwin and collegiate call girl Jennifer Jason Leigh. “A pungent, blithely violent thriller.”—New Yorker

8:45 pm Black Angel
Introduced by Elliot Lavine. Dan Duryea and June Vincent in a booze-drenched B-movie version of the Cornell Woolrich novel.

Saturday, February 21, 2009
6:30 pm Phantom Lady
Robert Siodmak swathes a Cornell Woolrich mystery in Expressionist shadow.

8:30 pm Série noire
Introduced by Dennis Harvey. Patrick Dewaere is the perfect fall guy in “the darkest, daffiest, and downright dazzlingest adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel ever.”—S.F. Bay Guardian

Saturday, February 28, 2009
6:30 pm Screaming Mimi
Anita Ekberg goes from the madhouse to El Madhouse, a nightclub run by Gypsy Rose Lee, in this lusciously lurid psychodrama based on a novel by Fredric Brown.

8:15 pm The Woman Chaser
Introduced by Don Herron. A conniving used-car salesman turns his talents to the movie biz in this neon-drenched neo-noir, adapted from Charles Willeford’s novel.

Full details from BAMP/PFA

Film Noir Reviews Preview

The Dark Mirror (1946)

These are the films noir I have lined up for review on FilmsNoir.Net over the next few weeks (not necessarily in order):

The Lost Weekend (1945)
Dir: Billy Wilder
Cast: Ray Milland, Jane Wyman

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
Dir: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Lizabeth Scott, Kirk Douglas

Brute Force (1947)
Dir: Jules Dassin
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn

The Dark Mirror (1946)
Dir: Robert Siodmak
Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Lew Ayres

Nora Prentiss (1947)
Dir: Vincent Sherman
Cast: Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith

The Naked City (1948)
Dir: Jules Dassin
Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart

Port of New York (1949)
Dir: László Benedek
Cast: Scott Brady, Richard Rober, K.T. Stevens, Yul Brynner

Macao (1952)
Dir: Josef Von Sternberg
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix, Thomas Gomez, Gloria Grahame

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Dir: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish