The 8th Annual Palm Springs Film Noir Festival over May 29 - June 1, 2008 features a number of rare and obscure titles only available on the big screen. The festival will screen 12 features at Camelot Theatre, 2300 Baristo Road, Palm Springs Ca. - Telephone (760) 325-6565.

The program is a veritable feast of intriguing movies that have not been available for many years - two are so obscure I couldn’t find a poster:

Thursday May 29 7:30 pm - OPENING NIGHT
Special Guest: Angie Dickinson
The Killers (1964) 95m.
DIR: Don Siegel
Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Clu Galager, Ronald Reagan

Remake of the Siodmak noir based on the Hemmingway short story.

Friday May 30 10:00 am
The Chase (1946) 86m.
DIR: Arthur Ripley
Robert Cummings, Steve Cochran, Peter Lorre, Michele Morgan

A down-and-out roustabout (Cummings) is hired by a vicious gangster (Cochran) and quickly gets down-and-dirty with his lovely wife (Morgan). Restored 16mm print.

Friday May 30 1:00 pm
The Threat (1949) 66m.
DIR: Felix Feist
Charles McGraw, Michael O’Shea, virginia Grey, Julie Bishop

Ruthless killer escapes prison, kidnapping the cop and D.A. who helped jail him while leading a wild escape into the California high desert. The action moves at a breakneck pace; a veritable highlight reel of malicious mayhem courtesy of ultimate noir baddie, CharlesMcGraw.

Friday May 30 4:00 pm
Special Guest: Margia Dean
Treasure of Monte Cristo (1949) 79m.
DIR: William Berke
Glenn Langan, Adele Jergens, Steve Brodie, Margia Dean

A freighter officer, (Langan) a descendant of the Count of Monte Cristo, is framed for murder and tries to puzzle it out. Shot on location in San Francisco and starring the husband and wife team of Langan and Jergens.

Friday May 30 7:30 pm
Special Guest Jayne Meadows
Lady in the Lake (1947) 105m.
DIR: Robert Montgomery
Robert Montgomery, Lloyd Nolan, Audrey Totter, Jayne Meadows

Robert Montgomery offers a terse rendition of Philip Marlowe from an unusual first-person camera perspective via Steve Fisher’s screen adaptation of Chandler’s novel of the same title.

Saturday May 31 10:00 am
Smooth as Silk (1946) 64m.
DIR: Charles Barton
Kent Taylor, Virginia Grey, Jane Adams, MIlburn Stone

Respected attorney (Taylor) concocts a plot of vengeance after learning his sweetheart has jilted him for a wealthy producer.

Saturday May 31 1:00 pm
Dead Reckoning (1947) 100m.
DIR: John Cromwell
Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Morris Carnovsky, William Prince

Bogart is a mustered out vet who heads down south searching for a buddy who took a powder on the Medal of Honor. He runs into big trouble with femme fatale Scott and gangster Carnovsky.

Saturday May 31 4:00 pm
Special Guest Karen Sharpe Kramer
Man in the Vault (1956)
DIR: Andrew V. McLaglen
William Campbell, Karen Sharpe, Anita Ekberg, Barry Kroeger

An innocent locksmith (Campbell) is seduced into participating in a robbery by femme fatale (Sharpe) to his eternal regret.

Saturday May 31 7:30 pm
Special Guest Carol Lynley
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) 107m.
DIR: Otto Preminger
Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Noel Coward

Lynley and her brother report the apparent disappearance of her daughter from a British preschool. The only problem is Police Supt. Olivier can find no evidence that the girl existed.

Sunday June 1 10:00 am
Without Warning (1952) 77m.
DIR: Arnold Laven PRODUCERS: Arthur Gardner and Jules Levy

Professional gardener Carl Martin (Adam Williams) ably portrays a vicious psychopath with a thing for young blondes… and garden shears. One of the first Hollywood send-ups of the redoubtable serial killer, superbly crafted and almost never shown theatrically.

Sunday June 1 1:00 pm
Special Guest Billy Gray
Talk about a Stranger (1952) 65m.
DIR: David Bradley
George Murphy, Nancy Davis, Billy Gray, Lewis Stone, Kurt Kasznar

A compelling tale about a young boy, convinced his new neighbor poisoned his dog, which launches a quest for justice that careens out of control. Camera work by John Alton.

Sunday June 1 4:00 pm
Night Editor (1946) 66m.
DIR: Henry Levin
William Gargan, Janis Carter, Jeff Donnell, Coulter Irwin

Police detective (Gargan) can’t report a murder he witnessed because it would involve exposing an adulterous affair he was having with a socialite (Carter) with an overactive libido.

Sunday June 1 7:30 pm
Appointment with a Shadow (1958) 73m.
George Nader, Joanna Moore, Brian Keith, Frank DeKova

While trying to score the lowdown on a big story, an alcoholic reporter becomes the target of a diabolical murder plot.

Get full program details from the Palm Springs Festival Film Noir site.

View the full size posters by clicking here: Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite

Escaped con holds a motley crew hostage in a Nevada ghost town on the eve of an atomic bomb test

First time director Dick Powell delivers a powerful crime melodrama from RKO, ably assisted by veteran noir cameraman Nicholas Musuraca. A solid ensemble cast is led by Stephen McNally as Sam Hurley, a fugitive on the run.

McNally dominates this movie as the brutal but complex killer: the noir motifs of the damaged war veteran and nuclear paranoia are deftly interwoven in an intelligent script from William Bowers and Irving Wallace from a story by Wallace and Chester Erskine.

Not a cop is to be seen and cruel destiny deals with the protagonists in an explosive finale. In one scene, Hurley tells his hostages that he doesn’t like heroes, and this movie doesn’t have any. Retribution is in the hands of fate and the weather.

A must see cult classic. Watch the trailer at TCM.

A documentary, Trumbo (2007),  on HUAC-blacklisted screenwiter, Dalton Trumbo, who penned the noirs, The Prowler (1951) and The Brothers Rico (1957), opens in NY and LA on June 27. Scripted by Trumbo’s son, and based on letters from his father, this movie is said to be a highly emotive account of the years Trumbo spent in exile:

A number of celebrities take turns narrating from the script, including [Nathan] Lane, Paul Giamatti, Brian Dennehy, Donald Sutherland and others. As a visual accompaniment, the film intercuts home movie footage from the Trumbos’ lives, incisive interview material with Trumbo, his family, friends and collaborators; and haunting glimpses of the HUAC trial hearings with the Hollywood Ten, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; as well as extracts from The Sandpiper, Johnny Got His Gun, Spartacus and other productions authored by Trumbo. Peter Askin, who helmed the stage play, directs. - Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Update 27 June 2008: In today’s NY Times Stephen Holder reviews Trumbo in an interesting article that looks basck at the dark days of the HUAC in the early 50’s:

Trumbo emerges as a fervently resolute, highly literate man of principle who, along with the other members of the Hollywood Ten, cited the First Amendment, protecting free speech, and not the Fifth, protecting self-incrimination, as his defense…If only the movers and shakers of Hollywood…  had stood together like the slaves in “Spartacus” and all claimed to have been Communists, the blacklist might have been averted. But they didn’t. Fear can make people instant cowards and informers. Resisting it may be the ultimate test of character. Today few would dispute Trumbo’s assessment of that very dark period: “The blacklist was a time of evil, and no one who survived it on either side came through untouched by evil.”

From Friday 23 May to Monday 26 May, the Harvard Film Archive will host at the Carpenter Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge, MA, the Unseen Noir series of ten lesser known films noir:

While the selected films display film noir’s signature chiaroscuro style and explore classic noir themes—cruel fatalism, the femme fatale, brutal violence—they also offer some of the more unexpected and inventive variations on noir concepts, revealing subtleties and complexity of the genre and leading us down dark, lonely streets where we’ve never been before.

The featured movies are:

Double Feature Friday May 23 at 7pm:

He Ran All the Way
Directed by John Berry.
With John Garfield, Shelley Winters, Wallace Ford
US 1951, 35mm, b/w, 77 min.

Try and Get Me (aka The Sound of Fury)
Directed by Cy Endfield.
With Frank Lovejoy, Lloyd Bridges, Kathleen Ryan
US 1950, 35mm, b/w, 92 min.

Double Feature Saturday May 24 at 7pm:

My Name Is Julia Ross
Directed by Joseph H. Lewis.
With Nina Foch, Dame May Witty, George Macready
US 1945, 35mm, b/w, 65 min.

Nightfall
Directed by Jacques Tourneur.
With Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith
US 1957, 35mm, b/w, 78 min.

Double Feature Sunday May 25 at 3pm:

Stranger on the Third Floor
Directed by Boris Ingster.
With Peter Lorre, John McGuire, Margaret Tallichet
US 1940, 35mm, b/w, 64 min.

Crack-Up
Directed by Irving Reis.
With Pat O’Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall
US 1946, 35mm, b/w, 93 min.

Double Feature Sunday May 25 at 7pm:

Pitfall
Directed by André de Toth.
With Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott, Jane Wyatt
US 1948, 35mm, b/w, 87 min.

Tomorrow Is Another Day
Directed by Felix Feist.
With Ruth Roman, Steve Cochran, Lurene Tuttle
US 1951, 35mm, b/w, 90 min.

Double Feature Monday May 26 at 7pm:

99 River Street
Directed by Phil Karlson.
With John Payne, Evelyn Keyes, Brad Dexter
US 1953, 35mm, b/w, 83 min.

The Brothers Rico
Directed by Phil Karlson.
With Richard Conte, Dianne Foster, Kathryn Grant
US 1957, 35mm, b/w, 92 min.

Get full program details from the Harvard Film Archive site.

There also two excellent preview articles in the local press:

• Series shines light on hoods, dames, and dark deeds of film noir by Leighton W. Klein of The Boston Globe
• Darkness visible: The HFA’s ‘Unseen Noir’ unveils America’s post-war gloom by Michael Atkinson of the Pheonix

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The authoritative University of California Berkeley hosted collection of essays by John J. Blaser, No Place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir, has been re-launched with updated content as Film Noir Studies. While the focus is still on essays, new features include a film noir time-line, a comprehensive glossary, and an open invitation for the submission of new essays. Highly recommended.

This article by Stanley Crouch on Slate.com is one of the best written and most entertaining surveys of film noir I have read: Noir America: Cynics, sluts, heists, and murder most foul. An extract follows:

Noir’s popularity was inevitable. How could American audiences resist the combative stance of an unimpressed hero whose ethos could be reduced to: “Is that so?” How could they fail to be lured by all of the actresses cast as Venus’ flytraps? Everything in film noir takes place at the bottom, in the sewers of sensibility. It holds that the force of the world is not only indifferent to, but obviously bigger than, the individual, which is why personal satisfaction, whether illegal or immoral, is the solution to the obligatory ride through an unavoidably brittle universe.

The film site Offscreen.com has published an interesting collection of articles on film noir:

• Touch of Evil: A Cognitivist Approach
• Dark Tales from Hollywoodland
• A Left-Handed Form of Human Endeavour: Narrative Comparisons & Contrasts Between the Noir Heist Film An analysis comparing the narrative structures of two seminal noir heist films, The Asphalt Jungle and The Killing.
• Film Noir: A Study in Narrative Openings, Part 1
• Film Noir: A Study in Narrative Openings, Part 2
• Lost in the Dark: The Elusive Film Noir
• The Third Man: Citerion DVD Review

New York-based film writer, Dan Callahan, has written a penetrating article on the films and life of film noir regular, Gloria Grahame, for the May edition of Bright Lights Film Journal, Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame.

Callahan concludes his article with stunning directness:

Gloria Grahame lived on the sidelines of her films because it was there that she could cause the most trouble; she might appear in any movie, young and sullen, aged and insistent, under a pound of make-up or plain-faced, fucking the pain away, putting out a cigarette in someone’s eye, giggling for no reason. She’s inescapable, a disruptive force, and when I hear her in my head, she seems to say, “C’mon, you know you want to . . .”

Noir filmography for Gloria Grahame:

Crossfire (1947)
In a Lonely Place (1950)
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
Macao (1952)
Sudden Fear (1952)
The Big Heat (1953)
Human Desire (1954)
Naked Alibi (1954)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Related FilmsNoir.Net posts:

The Big Heat (1953): Film Noir As Social Criticism
The Big Heat (1953) Revisited
Crossfire (1947)
In A Lonely Place (1950): The “Creative” Outsider
In A Lonely Place (1950): A Psychic Prison