FILM NOIR AND NEO NOIR IN THE THEATERS

FILM FESTIVAL

Noir goes silent

The Film Noir Foundation will copresent a screening of Josef von Sternberg's gangster-film-cum-sensuous-love-triangle Underworld (1927) as part of the 14th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Von Sternberg went on to direct two noirs with radically different tones: the darkly decadent The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and the comedic Macao (1952). Two other creative collaborators on this silent picture, cinematographer Burt Glennon and screenwriter Ben Hecht, also made significant contributions to the noir genre. Underworld will screen at 5 p.m. on Saturday, July 11, with live musical accompaniment by the pianist Stephen Horne. Tickets here.

Noir City meets the Windy City

Noir City will spread its dark mantle over Chicago's historic Music Box Theatre July 31 through August 5.  FNF bigwigs Eddie Muller and Foster Hirsch will be on hand to introduce the screenings. The FNF will present four pairings of widely known film noirs with a lesser known but thematically linked second feature: femme fatales take the forefront with Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Richard Wallace's Framed (1947); adulterers attempt to get away with murder in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1941) and Joseph Losey's The Prowler (1951); Ernest Hemmingway provides the source material for Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946) and Michael Curtiz's The Breaking Point (1950); and Chicago provides the setting for both Henry Hathaway's Call Northside 777 (1948) and Fred F. Sears's Chicago Syndicate (1955). Scheduled dates and ticket information are available here.

FILM SERIES

Mason noir

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art will screen a noir double feature during its tribute series Bigger Than Life: James Mason. Friday, July 24, at 7 p.m. is Max Ophuls's The Reckless Moment (1949), in which Mason blackmails Joan Bennett after she disposes of her daughter's paramour who died by accident in her garage. Carol Reed's Brit noir Odd Man Out (1946) follows at 9 p.m. Reed's film tells the story of an Irish nationalist wounded during a bungled robbery who is hunted both by the authorities and by the woman who loves him.

Women, narrative, and noir

The Pacific Film Archive in Berkley will include several noirs in their series Into the Vortex: Female Voice in Film, July 15 through August 26, a set of 1940s Hollywood films whose female narrators complicate and subvert the traditional male point of view associated with Hollywood films of the period. As noirs tend to feature both first-person narration and women who threaten the patriarchal order, their inclusion here seems inevitable. Of special interest to noir fans:

Fri, July 17, 7 PM
THE LOCKET(1946) Dir. John Brahm

Wed, July 22, 7 PM
ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO(1940) Dir. Anatole Litvak

Sun, July 26, 5 PM
HUMORESQUE(1946) Dir. Jean Negulesco

Fri, July 31, 7 PM
CAT PEOPLE(1942) Dir. Jacques Tourneur

Fri, July 31, 8:30 PM
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE(1943) Dir. Jacques Tourneur

AT THE REP HOUSE

"Le cinéma c'est Nicholas Ray"

New York's Film Forum pays homage to one of Hollywood's greatest directors with its series Nick Ray, playing July 24 through August 6. The series includes everything from Ray's indescribably campy Western Johnny Guitar (1954) to his watershed teenage angst drama Rebel Without a Cause (1955) to his noir contributions. The late director's wife, Susan Ray, will introduce the 7:40 screening on Friday, July 17, of In a Lonely Place (1950), a heartbreaking noir about an alcoholic screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) and the woman (Gloria Grahame) who loves him but fears he may be a murderer.

Fri, July 17-Thu, July 23, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50
IN A LONELY PLACE(1954)

Fri, July 24-Thu, July 25, 1:30, 3:30, 5:40, 7:50, 9:50
BIGGER THAN LIFE(1956)

Sun, July 26, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50
Mon, July 27, 1:10, 3:20, 10:00
JOHNNY GUITAR(1954)

Mon, July 27, 6:00, 7:50
BORN TO BE BAD(1950)

Tue, July 28, 2:40, 6:00, 9:20
ON DANGEROUS GROUND(1955)

A WOMAN'S SECRET(1949)

Wed, July 29, 1:30, 5:15, 9:00
Thu, July 30, 1:30, 5:15
THEY LIVE BY NIGHT(1949)

KNOCK ON ANY DOOR(1949)

Thu, July 30, 7:15, 9:15
WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES(1958)

Fri, July 31-Sun, Aug 2, 1:10, 3:20, 5:30, 7:40, 9:50
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE(1955)

AT AN ARTHOUSE NEAR YOU

Christian Petzold's Jerichow (2008) retells James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice, transplanting the action to northeastern Germany. This time around the triangle centers on the Turkish owner of a fast-food chain, his beautiful wife, and the disaffected ex-soldier he hires to drive him when he loses his license. One assumes this won't end any more happily then the original. Check out the film's official site to find out when it's playing at your favorite theater.

BEYOND THE CINEMA

If you love the brevity of vintage B programmers, check out the Four Minute Film Noir series from the ZBS Foundation. The first effort of their second season is the droll and politically satirical Nightmare on Stool Pigeon Street (2009). Fans of the TV series The Wire will recognize star Bill "The Greek" Raymond. You can watch the first season on YouTube or Blip.tv, or order it on DVD from ZBS.

Performance artist Corrie Van Ausdal is currently staging Lucille Fletcher's legendary radio play "Sorry, Wrong Number" as a one-woman show in her Fishtank Theatre, a converted storefront space in Kansas City. Performances are planned for Fri, July 3 (8:30 and 10 p.m.), Mon, July 6 (8:30 p.m.), and Sat, July 11 (8:30 p.m.).

Currently available from Northwestern University Press, Jeffrey Couchman's The Night of the Hunter: A Biography of a Film offers an in-depth and multileveled examination of a brilliant noir. The book tackles the question of the film's authorship by detailing the journey of the film from James Agee's original screenplay, adapted from Davis Grubb's bestselling book, to the finished film by first time director Charles Laughton. Crouchman both details the process of the making of the film as well as offering an analysis of the final product. Check out a review of the film and the book at the website Noir of the Week.

On July 7, the Warner Archive will make offer for the first time on DVD three great noirs. In Vincent Sherman's The Hard Way (1943), Ida Lupino plays a woman obsessed with making her younger sister, Joan Leslie, a star. Jack Carson steals the show playing Leslie's sweetly tragic first husband who Lupino sacrifices on the altar of Leslie's career. In Raoul Walsh's The Man I Love (1947), Lupino stars as a sexy torch singer who returns home to find all her siblings in a variety of predicaments. In between solving everyone else's problems she falls for an embittered jazz pianist and fights off the advances of her boss, a sleazy night club owner. In Vincent Sherman's Nora Prentiss (1947), the terminally straight-laced Kent Smith plays a man pushed over the edge when he becomes obsessed with a beautiful singer. What won't he do to possess her? Warner will also offer these as an "On Demand" release, in other words as a digital download.

On June 30 VCI released British Cinema: Renown Pictures Crime & Noir, a collection of six classic Brit noirs. The two-disk set includes Robert S. Baker's Blackout (1950), Henry Cass's Bond of Fear (1956), Terence Fisher's Home to Danger (1951), Charles Saunders's Meet Mr. Callaghan (1954), and John Gilling's No Trace (1950) and Recoil (1953), and the films' original trailers. VCI also releases on the same day another Brit noir, Terence Young's Serious Charge (1959).

Wire in the Blood: The Complete Sixth Season (2009) debuts on DVD on July 14 from E1 Entertainment. This British detective series, based on the books by Val McDermid, follows Tony Hill, a socially inept but highly talented psychological profiler, and his investigative team through some rather grisly cases.

Warner Home Video releases its comic-book noir Watchmen (2009) on DVD July 21. While director Zack Snyder did fumble considerably in his direction of a surprisingly good script by David Hayter and Alex Tse (adapted from the legendary graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Gibbons), the film is still definitely worth seeing. The two-disk set includes the director's cut of the film, “The Phenomenon: The Comic That Changed Comics,” webisodes, the music video for My Chemical Romance's "Desolation Row," and a digital copy of the theatrical version. The Blu-ray edition includes a third disk with additional extras.

Also on July 21 Criterion will release on DVD Jean-Luc Godard's incomprehensible Made in U.S.A. (1966). This surrealistic, loose adaptation of Donald E. Westlake's The Jugger pays homage to both American film noir and Godard's ex-wife, the actress Anna Karina. This special edition includes a restored high-definition digital transfer of the film, interviews with stars Anna Karina and László Szábo, a video rumination on the personal and the political, original and rerelease theatrical trailers, an improved English subtitle translation, an essay by film critic J. Hoberman, and the visual essay 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), which catalogues the film's many references and allusions.

Keep us posted on noir news and events in your area! Email Anne Hockens, Film Noir Foundation news and events editor.