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:

• Shakedown (1950)
• Night Editor (1946)
• Slightly Scarlet (1956)
• Dispatches from Noir City 7
• Deadline-USA (1952)

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

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…

I have launched a second blog exploring non-noir films: anothercinemablog.com.

The debut posts are pieces I have posted on other blogs and other short pieces not previously published.

On Sabbatical I will be tweeting on Twitter at FilmsNoirNet.

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The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, and their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreaths that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up the hidden walls.

I am taking a sabbatical from FilmsNoir.Net, and going to Gormenhgast to further my studies in the dark arts.

For those desparate for a noir fix, I recommend Coleman’s Corner in Cinema.  Alexander Colemnan is at Noir City 7 and reporting daily.

Cover of The Door’s album Strange Days

As a child of the 60s, my favorite rock band is The Doors. The band’s innovative music and the dark subterranean lyrics of Jim Morrison never cease to enthrall me.  In previous posts I have featured lyrics from the band’s last album LA Woman:

• LA Woman: “so alone…”
• LA Woman – Cars Hiss By My Window

At this year’s Sundance Festival, veteran feature-filmmaker Tom DiCillo will release his first documentary, When You’re Strange (2009), which documents the LA band’s rise in the mid-60s.

In an interview on SPOUTblog, DiCillo said: “I’ve always, always been turned on by music, and by film. The Doors’ music is extremely cinematic. Their music is very dense and highly emotional. It deals a lot with character, and blood, murder and a lot of crazy things.”

Ray Manzarek, the band’s keyboardplayer, agrees that The Doors were inspired and influenced by cinema.  Both he and Jim Morrison came out of the UCLA film school. “That’s where we became friends”, Manzarek said, “We’re definitely cinematic.” Morrison and Manzarek took film classes taught by director Josef von Sternberg.  Manzarek said von Sternberg inspired many of The Doors lyrics regarding moral ambiguity and dark eroticism.

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.

A great trailer for Wicked as They Come is posted on YouTube:

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.

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

Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror (1946 ), for Republic Pictures, is one of the early psychological noir thrillers. The story of two attractive young women, identical twins, implicated in a murder explores the extremes of personality – the dark side, the wraith in the mirror.   A theme of the entrapment of the disturbed mind and it’s insatiable demands add a decidedly noir feel to the film. A crisp script from Nunally Johnson, the solid camera-work of  Milton Krasner, and a Dimitri Tiomkins score provide competent support.  The original story by Vladimir Pozner received an Oscar nomination.

Siodmak’s direction is workman-like with some flair reserved only for the opening scene and the climactic scenes towards the end. The fluid opening scene sees the camera pan from a cityscape at night to a building in the foreground, through a window into a darkened room, up to a smashed mirror, and then down to a man dead on the floor. The smashed mirror is also a book-end in the film’s closing scene – the dark reflection has to be destroyed.  As the drama heightens towards the denouement, the insanity of one of the protagonists is melodramatically rendered in a darkened room at night, where key lighting focuses attention on the crazed eyes of a psychopath.

The picture is carried by an elegant and accomplished performance from Olivier de Havilland in the double role of the twin sisters. As their personalities diverge with the story’s progression, so her performance strengthens. By the climax, she is breathtaking.  Thomas Mitchell is entertaining as the cop investigating the murder.

Interesting use of a psychologist’s tool-set, Rorschach inkblots, word association, and a polygraph, carry the centre of the film to its dramatic conclusion.

Worth seeing for de Havilland’s subtle performance alone.