Defying media reports about the demise of repertory cinema and 35-millimeter film, the latest edition of NOIR CITY: Chicago, coming to the Music Box Theatre August 23–29, presents another astounding lineup of classic films noir—including the three brand new 35mm restorations funded by the Film Noir Foundation, which joins forces each year with the Music Box to present NOIR CITY: Chicago. As always, NOIR CITY features both celebrated classics and wonderful rarities: some newly rescued from extinction and presented in glorious new film prints, others screening for the first time in gorgeous digital restorations. NOIR CITY: Chicago celebrates its 5th anniversary with the Chicago premieres of the FNF's latest film restoration projects: Try and Get Me! (1950), Repeat Performance (1949) and High Tide (1948). We'll post a link to the complete schedule on the Music Box website when it's available.
FNF prez Eddie Muller returns to TCM with a fistful of pulp. "The Czar of Noir" will host Turner Classic Movies' "Friday Night Spotlight" in June, presenting 16 movies over four nights, all highlighting the work of seminal or significant noir writers. Muller, who was TCM host Robert Osborne's guest this past January for "A Night in Noir City," was asked by the network to solo-host one month of its new "Spotlight" feature, in which a guest host both programs and presents a festival of thematically linked films. The segments were recorded in March at TCM headquarters in Atlanta, and it should be no surprise that Muller stayed within his usual noir milieu, choosing to aim his "spotlight" at writers Dashiell Hammett, David Goodis, James M. Cain, Jonathan Latimer, Raymond Chandler and Cornell Woolrich. The shows air on June 7th (Hammett), 14th (Goodis), 21st (Latimer and Cain) and 28th (Woolrich and Chandler). Check out the schedule on TCM.
San Francisco's Roxie Theatre presents two weeks of electrically eclectic film noir programming with I Wake Up Dreaming 2013, May 10— May 23. The festival features 30 films comprising familiar favorites as well as titles unfamiliar even to noir die-hards. Programmer Elliot Lavine pays tribute to pulp fiction master Cornell Woolrich, radio writer/genius Arch Obler, MGM glamour girl turned hardcore noir goddess Joan Crawford, and the dynamic duo of Hugo Hass and Beverly Michaels among others. Best of all, I Wake Up Screaming opens the festival, besides being an outstanding film noir and featuring a character named after Woolrich, it rhymes. Visit the Roxie's website for full details.
TV NOIR/NEO-NOIR
Check our monthly listings for noir and neo-noir films coming up on TCM and the Fox Movie Channel.
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20th Century Fox is bringing Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (1950) on Blu-ray. In this tense noir, a policeman (Paul Douglas) and a doctor (Richard Widmark) race against time to find two gun-happy hoodlums (Zero Mostel and Jack Palance) who are somewhere in the streets of New Orleans carrying the pneumonic plague. Score by Alfred Newman and cinematography by Joseph MacDonald. Release Date: March 26, 2013.
Criterion is now offering a new 2K digital restoration of Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear (1944) on both DVD and Blu-ray. In this effectively paranoiac and suspenseful noir, a recently released mental patient (Ray Milland) finds himself embroiled in a fantastic espionage plot after getting his fortune told at a fete. Watch for a wonderfully chilling performance by Dan Duryea as a conspiratorial tailor. Extras include an interview with Fritz Lang scholar Joe McElhaney, trailer and an essay by critic Glenn Kenny.
+ MORE CRITERION RELEASES.
Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956), scripted by the renowned pulp writer Jim Thompson, features both one of the best heists in film and one of the best portrayals of men undone by their own fears and illusions. The film comprises notable performances by Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Marie Windsor and
Elisha Cook Jr. The new Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions feature a high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack.
Special features include: new video interviews with producer James B. Harris and film scholar Robert Polito; excerpts of French television interviews with actor Sterling; a restored transfer of Stanley Kubrick's 1955 noir feature Killer's Kiss; and a new video appreciation of Killer's Kiss with film critic Geoffrey O'Brien. The booklet includes a reprinted interview with actress Windsor and essay by film historian Haden Guest.
In 1963 Akira Kurosawa adapted one of Ed McBain's bestselling 87th Precinct novels, Kings Ransom. Re-titled High and Low, the film resets the novel from a fictional American big city to Tokyo, but retained the same story and class conflicts. Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), a wealthy shoe manufacturer, finds himself facing a devastating moral dilemma. A kidnapper (Tsutomu Yamazaki) has taken his chauffer's son, mistaking him for the industrialist's. He demands a cash ransom, the exact amount that Kingo just raised for a hostile takeover of another company. So it's the boy's life or the corporate coup. Available on Blu-ray for the first time on July 26 from Criterion. Extras include: a high-definition digital restoration; audio commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince; a making of documentary; video interviews with actor Toshiro Mifune and actor Tsutomu Yamazaki; and a booklet featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien and more.
Criterion brings newly restored high-definition digital transfers of two Sam Fuller classics to DVD and Blu-ray. First, Constance Towers stars as a prostitute trying to go straight in The Naked Kiss (1964). She must overcome her past, hidden perversity and small town hypocrisy. Extras include: a video interview with Constance Towers; excerpts from the BBC’s The South Bank Show (1983); two interviews with Fuller from French television; the original theatrical trailer; and illustrations by cartoonist Daniel Clowes (Ghost World).
In Robert Aldrich's apocalyptic film noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955), a vain and corrupt Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) fights to solve the murder of a beautiful hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) with a mysterious connection to the Mob. The newly restored Criterion release, available on DVD and Blu-ray, includes: audio commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini; a video tribute from director Alex Cox; excerpts from The Long Haul of A. I. Bezzerides (2005), a documentary on the film's screenwriter; excerpts from the documentary Mike Hammer's Mickey Spillane (1998); the alternate ending and the theatrical trailer. There's also a booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman and a 1955 reprint by director Robert Aldrich. Release date: June 21.
A desperate press agent (Tony Curtis) stoops to new depths to help an egotistical columnist (Burt Lancaster in an emotionally repugnant, but brilliant, performance) break up his sister's romance, in Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Suitably noirish cinematography by James Wong Howe and an acidic script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman combine with an excellent cast to deliver a remarkable film. Criterion’s release on DVD and Blu-ray boast a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition. Extras include: audio commentary by film scholar James Naremore; two 
documentaries- Mackendrick: The Man Who Walked Away (1986); and James Wong Howe: Cinematographer (1973); a video interview with film critic and historian Neil Gabler; a video interview with filmmaker James Mangold and the original theatrical trailer. The supplementary booklet includes an essay by critic Gary Giddins; two short stories and notes on the film by Ernest Lehman; and an excerpt from Mackendrick’s On Film-making.
In Shock Corridor (1963), a reporter (Peter Breck) fakes insanity to investigate a murder committed in an asylum. While there, he meets a variety of inmates including a group of menacing nymphomaniacs and a black man who’s a white supremacist. Extras include a new video interview with co-star Constance Towers, excerpts from the documentary The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera (1966); the original theatrical trailer; and illustrations by cartoonist Daniel Clowes.
Olive Film has released Anthony Mann's atmospheric film noir—and NOIR CITY 9 favorite—Strangers in the Night (1944) on DVD and Blu-ray. World War II veteran John (William Terry) visits a California town to meet his cherished wartime pen pal Rosemary. At her creepily gothic home, he finds a painting of her and her mother who tells him that Rosemary is gone but will be back soon. As the days go by, John becomes suspicious, but unsure of exactly what he is suspicious of. Helen Thimig gives one of the most impressive performances in film noir as the mother. + MORE OLIVE FILM RELEASES.
Olive Films recently released the Film Noir Collection: Volume One on Blu-ray. The set comprises Rudolph Mate's Union Station (1950) with William Holden, Nancy Olson and Barry Fitzgerald; Lewis Allen's Appointment with Danger (1951) with noir regulars Alan Ladd and Jan Sterling; William Dieterle's Dark City (1950) featuring Charlton Heston in his first Hollywood picture and co-starring noir regular Lizabeth Scott; and William Dieterle's Rope of Sand (1949) with Burt Lancaster, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and Peter Lorre. No extras on the set, but with that line-up, who cares?
Noir goddess Ida Lupino chalks up another sympathetic tough girl performance as nightclub singer Lilli in Don Siegel's tight little noir Private Hell 36 (1954), a film produced by her ex-husband Collier Young who co-wrote the screenplay with her. Their marriage ended shortly after they co-founded their independent film company The Filmmakers, but their professional relationship lasted five years. The film also co-stars Lupino's husband at the time Howard Duff as Jack, a cop whose partner Calhoun (Steven Cochran) draws him into a web of deceit and corruption when Calhoun steals part of a robbery haul that the pair recovers during a criminal investigation. Interestingly, Lupino plays Cochran's love interest and not Duff's. Sadly there no extras on Olive Films' DVD and Blu-ray release.
In Abraham Polonsky's Force of Evil (1948), a crooked lawyer (John Garfield) tries to protect his numbers running brother (Thomas Gomex) from a ruthless crime boss (Roy Roberts), only to be destroyed by a citywide system of graft and corruption. Noir siren Marie Windsor spices up the proceeding as the racketeer's flirtatious wife. The Blu-ray and DVD editions from Olive Films feature an on-camera introduction by film director Martin Scorsese who explains the influence of this particular film noir on his own work.
In Tay Garnett's noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), illicit lovers (John Garfield and Lana Turner) plot to kill the woman's older husband. She wants to own her own restaurant, the eternal ambition of heroines created by James M. Cain, author of the original novel. The producers managed to stay quite faithful to the book while excising the sado-masochistic nature of the character's sexual relationship. Extras on Warner's newly released Blu-ray include an introduction by film historian Richard Jewell, two TCM documentaries—The John Garfield Story and Lana Turner: A Daughter's Memoir, and the original radio adaptation of the film on the OTR series, Screen Guild Theater Broadcast (1947) with Turner and Garfield reprising their roles. Warner was originally slated to release Bob Rafelson's 1981 re-make co-starring Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lang on Blu-ray concurrently, but there's no sign of it yet.
In Nicholas Ray's Born to Be Bad, an ambitious girl (Joan Fontaine) steals her cousin's (Joan Leslie) husband (Zachary Scott), but keeps her lover (Robert Ryan) on the side. No need to tell you that this won't end nicely. Bonus features: Contains an alternate ending with never-before-seen footage! + MORE WARNER ARCHIVES RELEASES.
The Warner Archive has also released Ray's A Woman's Secret (1949)—a woman's picture mixed with humor and noir elements. Director Ray's future wife Gloria Grahame plays the ditzy but sly singer Esterllita who is shot at the opening of the film, presumably by her agent and mentor Marian (Maureen O'Hara). The police arrest Marian. But did she do it? A series of flashbacks reveal the complicated nature of the women's relationship with each other and pianist Luke Jordan (Melvyn Douglas). Ray and Grahame would later work together on the seminal film noir, In a Lonely Place (1950).
In addition to the Ray films, Warners has also released three more newly remastered noirs: Boris Ingster's Southside 1-1000 (1950) starring Don DeFore and Andrea King and two helmed by Robert Stevenson, Walk Softly, Stranger (1950) which reteamed The Third Man co-stars Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli as well as The Las Vegas Story (1952) which pairs up two gorgeous brunettes—Jane Russell and Victor Mature. The Archive is also offering two noirs from Sony's Choice Collection, Budd Boetticher's Escape in the Fog (1945) starring Nina Foch and The Crooked Web (1955) with Frank Lovejoy and Mari Blanchard.
The Warner Archive has released three film noirs helmed by Jean Negulesco including two starring the talented and underused Geraldine Fitzgerald. Noir strays into the supernatural realm in Three Strangers (1946), a fantastic tale of three strangers (Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Fitzgerald) whose fates entwine with a mysterious Chinese idol and a winning lottery ticket. John Huston and Howard Koch provided the deeply cynical screenplay.
Fitzgerald is at her most luminous as an innocent war widow lured into a confidence game by a shady ex-GI (John Garfield) in Nobody Lives Forever (1946). Is it any surprise that the grifter ends up falling for his magnificent mark? Or that the betrayed gang ends up wanting them both dead? Director Negulesco ladles atmospherics onto pulp great W. R. Burnett's savvy screenplay. The movie also features memorable supporting turns from Walter Brennan, George Coulouris, Faye Emerson, and George Tobias.
The third Negulesco film, The Conspirators (1944), clearly inspired by the studio's own earlier box office hit, Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942), reunites three of the iconic film's cast: Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Paul Henreid. After committing an act of sabotage against the Nazis, Vincent Van Der Lyn (Henreid) escapes from the Netherlands to neutral Portugal. In short order, he falls in love with the beautiful Irene Von Mohr (Heddy Lamarr), joins the resistance movement headed by Ricardo Quintanilla (Greenstreet), and then begins a hunt for the traitor in that underground cell.
In Sidney Gilliat's Brit noir, She Played with Fire (aka Fortune is a Woman) (1958) insurance agent Oliver Branwell (Jack Hawkins) visits Louis Manor to investigate an electrical fire and runs into his old flame Sarah (Arlene Dahl), now married—sex, violence and insurance fraud follow. It's now available from the Warner Archive along with the MGM on demand title The Last Mile (1959). Helmed by Howard W. Koch, this men-in-prison film (based on the 1930 John Wexley play) stars Mickey Rooney as 'Killer' Mears who leads a desperate escape attempt by a group of death row inmates.
More romantic caper than film noir, but with so many favorite people of the genre in and behind the film, we had to give its on demand release from the Warner Archive a mention, Jules Dassin's Two Smart People (1946). Lucille Ball stars as a grifter who upends the plans and hearts of a cop (Lloyd Nolan) and the con man (John Hodiak) whom he's transporting to his date at the courthouse. The film co-stars noir regulars Elisha Cook, Jr and Hugo Haas and was penned by Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint. Speaking of Carteris, the Archive has also recently released The Saint Double Feature: The Saint's Vacation & The Saint Meets The Tiger (1941 & 1943). These are the films that moved the action to England and replaced departing star George Sanders with Hugh Sinclair.
Also from the Archive, the WB Film Noir Double Feature: Homicide & The House Across the Street. The disc pairs up a couple of the studio's 1949 "B" pictures. In Felix Jacoves' Homicide, LAPD Detective Michael Landers (Robert Douglas) realizes a suicide he's investigating is really a murder when he notices something suspicious at the crime scene in a remote desert town. He romances a cigarette counter girl at the local hotel, Jo Ann (Helen Westcott) and tangles with a tough ex-G.I., Andy (Robert Alda). In Richard L. Bare's The House Across the Street a big city newspaper's advice columnist (Wayne Morris), recently demoted from managing editor, uncovers a big story of fraud and murder with the aid of his girlfriend and fellow reporter (Janis Paige).
Andrew Stone's The Steel Trap (1952) is now available on demand from the Warner Archive. Jim Osborne (Joseph Cotten), an assistant manager of a bank, decides to steal a million from his employers on a Friday, figuring that he can escape to Brazil over the weekend to start a new life with no one the wiser until Monday. He takes his unsuspecting wife (Teresa Wright) with him. When she discovers the theft during what she believes to be a vacation, she tries to persuade him to return the money to the bank before it's too late. You can watch a preview of the film at the Warner's site.
TCM and Universal teamed up to release Dark Crimes Film Noir Thrillers, a 3-disc set comprising Stuart Heisler's adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett hard-boiled classic The Glass Key (1942) with Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Brian Donlevy and William Bendix; Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady (1944) based on the novel by Cornell Woolrich and starring Ella Raines, Alan Curtis and Franchot Tone; and George Marshall's The Blue Dahlia (1946) which reunited Glass Key co-stars Lake, Ladd and Bendix with a screenplay by Raymond Chandler. Extras include an introduction by Ben Mankiewicz and a Digital Image Gallery with behind-the-scenes photos, TCM Database articles, publicity stills, lobby cards, movie posters and scene stills. You can order it here.
+ MORE TCM RELEASES
TCM's Women in Danger box set focuses on the distaff side of film noir, presenting four thrillers featuring noir legends Ida Lupino and Joan Crawford and two actresses in uncharacteristically dark roles, Esther Williams and Merle Oberon. Lupino plays a wealthy woman who takes it on the lam when she discovers her new hus band (Stephen McNally) wants to kill her in Woman in Hiding (1950). Recently widowed Lynn Markham (Crawford) moves into a beautiful beach house and starts to dally with a gorgeous beach bum (Jeff Chandler) who may have been involved in the recent "suicide" of the former tenant in Female on the Beach (1955). A socially privileged teen (John Saxon) harasses his teacher (Esther Williams). Could he be the one responsible for the recent murder of a woman, the most recent victim of a serial rapist? In Price of Fear (1956), Oberon portrays a woman trying to frame the already down on his luck co-owner of a race track for the hit and run she committed. Available June 4 exclusively from the TCM Vault.
Turner Classic Movies and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have teamed up to release a new line of DVDs as part of the TCM Vault Collection. The series kicked off with the Humphrey Bogart Columbia Pictures Collection, and, in collaboration with the FNF, Film Noir Classics III. Both sets comprise full restored and re-mastered Columbia noir titles previously unreleased on DVD. The Bogart set consists of Love Affair, Tokyo Joe, Knock on Any Door, Sirocco and NOIR CITY 7 fan favorite, The Harder They Fall.
The Noir Classics set includes the rare and wonderful noir The Burglar (1957) (Dir. Paul Wendkos), featuring Dan Duryea and Jane Mansfield, adapted by David Goodis from his own novel. The other films on the set are My Name is Julia Ross, The Mob, Tight Spot, and Drive a Crooked Road. Both sets are available exclusively at TCM's online store.
Film Noir meets Hollywood Gothic meets biting satire in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950), now available on Blu-ray from Paramount. A failed, and drowned, screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) tells us how he fell into a mercenary romance with a faded silent-film star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) who probably would have told us a rather different story. Admirable support provided by Erich von Stroheim as Max, her devoted butler and chauffer. Paramount went all out with the extras which include an audio commentary track by Wilder biographer Ed Sikov, a baker's dozen of featurettes, and a deleted scene.
In Michaël R. Roskam's Oscar nominated Bullhead (2011), steroid fueled cattle farmer Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts) becomes involved with a meat racketeer and, shortly later, embroiled in criminal investigations of the shooting of a police officer and of the local illegal hormone trade. The reemergence of a childhood friend, and Jacky's interest in his friend's sister, complicates Jacky's already unstable life. Special features include a making of featurette, interviews with star Schoenaerts and director Roskam, director's commentary, as well as Roskam's 2005 short film The One Thing to Do (2005)—also starring Schoenaerts. Now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Image Entertainment.
MGM's has added several noir titles under their Limited Edition Collection brand. The films are available on demand from various retailers, including Amazon and the Warner Archive. In Budd Boetticher's The Killer is Loose (1956), a seemingly mild mannered embezzler (Wendell Corey), recently released from prison, tries to avenge his wife's accidental shooting by Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotton) by killing Sam's wife (Rhonda Fleming). Can Sam stop him? + MORE MGM RELEASES
Then in Arnold Leven's Down Three Dark Streets (1954), a FBI agent (Kenneth Tobey) pursues there separate cases that lead him to the discovery of a murder. The victim of an extortion racket (Ruth Roman), that he takes more than a professional interest in, proves the key to unlocking the mystery. John Payne co-produced and starred in Byron Haskin's The Boss (1956), a gritty crime thriller depicting the rise and fall of racketeer Matt Brady during the Roaring 20s. The screenplay, by the then blacklisted Donald Trumbo, was largely based on Kansas City's Irish organized crime racket, The Prendergast Machine.
MGM is also offering William Ahser's rather bizarre late period noir Johnny Cool (1963). Harry Silva stars as a Sicilian bandit given a new identity by an exiled mobster. The mobster offers to make him his heir in exchange for killing the men back in the states who betrayed him. Things get weird when the newly christened Johnny Cool meets a sexy divorcee (Elizabeth Montgomery) while on his deadly mission. On the neo-noir side of things is Hickey & Boggs (1972), written by Walter Hill and directed by Robert Culp. In this cynical films, a lawyer hires two private dicks (former I Spy compatriots Bill Cosby and Culp) to find his missing girlfriend. The missing person case soon turns into a search for the proceeds from an armored car robbery. Along the way, the film explores the broken-down lives of the deeply flawed protagonists.
MGM has finally released Blue Velvet (1986) on Blu-ray and it's about time. Back when David Lynch was a genius, he created this neo-noir about a small-town boy back from college (Kyle MacLachlan) who gets sucked into the dark world festering in the heart of his home town. Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper play his underworld guides. Laura Dern plays his Beatrice. The extras include: newly discovered lost footage; Mysteries of Love documentary; the original Siskel & Ebert review; vignettes; trailer & TV spots; and outtakes.
Kino International recently released Alberto Cavalcanti's tense thriller They Made Me a Fugitive (aka I Became a Criminal) (1947) on Blu-ray. In this Brit noir set in Post-WWII Soho, ex-RAF flyer turned petty criminal Clem (Trevor Howard) escapes from prison and sets out for revenge against Narcy (Griffith Jones), the head of a black market ring who framed him for a policeman's murder. Two women with agendas of their own aid him in his flight—Mrs. Fenshaw (Vida Hope) who wants him to kill her unwanted husband and Narcy's ex-girlfriend Sally (Sally Gray) whose out for her own vengeance after being replaced in Narcy's affections by another woman. Sadly, the Blu-ray features no extras.
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment recently introduced Fox Cinema Archives, a line of manufacture-on-demand (MOD) 
DVD-Rs available from retailers including Amazon.com and Movies Unlimited. The second wave of films will include André De Toth's Slattery's Hurricane (1949). While trying to atone for his sins by taking on a suicide mission, flying into a hurricane to report its exact location to the Navy, an ex-war hero (Richard Widmark) recalls his recent past. He has pursued his ex-flame (Linda Darnell) despite her marriage to an ex-Navy buddy (John Russell) and his own relationship with a vulnerable drug addict, Veronica Lake in an outstanding performance. Based on the novel by Herman Wouk.
In Gerd Oswald's hallucinogenic noir Screaming Mimi (1958), beautiful stripper Virginia Wilson (Anita Ekberg) is committed to an asylum after her step-brother Charlie shoots a man about to knife her in the shower. Her therapist, Dr. Greenwood (Harry Townes) falls in love/becomes obsessed with her and continues to treat her after she leaves the asylum to work in El Madhouse, owned by Gypsy (played by legendary striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee). A series of ripper like murders ensues linked to a bizarre sculpture of a woman called The Screaming Mimi and Virginia is soon suspected of the crimes. Can handsome reporter Bill Sweeny (Phil Carey) find the real killer? Seasoned noir cinematographer Burnett Guffey (Brothers Ricco, In a Lonely Place) shot this adaptation of the novel by Fredric Brown. Now available on DVD-R from SPHE.
Get ready to be severely depressed by two landmark films now available on Blu-ray for the first time: Roman Polanski's critically lauded neo-noir Chinatown (1974) and Fritz Lang's masterpiece Scarlet Street (1945). In the first, a private eye (Jack Nicholson) unwittingly sets up an innocent man for murder and then joins his widow (Faye Dunaway) in unearthing the corruption behind the crime in this physically beautiful but emotionally bleak neo-noir set in a morally bankrupt 1930s Los Angeles. Extras from the Paramount release include: an audio commentary with writer Robert Towne; the documentary "Water and Power" about the historical events that inspired for the film; and four short docs, "Chinatown: An Appreciation", "Chinatown: The Beginning", "Chinatown: The Filming" and "Chinatown: The Legacy".
The only film more cynical and hopeless in its depiction of humanity than Chinatown must be Lang's seminal film noir Scarlet Street. A henpecked cashier and weekend painter, Christopher Cross (Edward G. Robinson), falls for heartless tramp Kitty (Joan Bennett) whom he meets by chance. She and her pimp/boyfriend Johnny (Dan Duryea) play the sucker for everything he has. Then Chris starts to embezzle to keep his lady love happy and things go from bad to worse, then eventually to nihilistic. Extras on this Kino release comprise an audio commentary by film historian David Kalat and an image gallery of stills and posters.
In Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive (2011), an enigmatic Hollywood stunt driver (Ryan Gosling) also moonlights as a wheel man. When he accepts an offer to drive during a million dollar heist, a miasma of greed and betrayal soon engulfs him. Critics compared Gosling existential anti-hero to the likes of those portrayed by Clint Eastwood, Steven McQueen and Alain Delon. It's now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Both formats include five behind the scenes featurettes. The Blu-ray also includes a UV copy and special BD-Live content.
The critically acclaimed Congolese neo-noir Viva Riva is now available on DVD from Music Box Films. This film details, with plenty of twists and turns, the attempts of the anti-hero, Riva (Patash Bay), to both seduce femme fatale Nora (Manie Malone), the mistress of a crime lord, and to get his hands on a stash of petrol that could make him and his partner a fortune on the black market. First time director, Djo Munga also penned the screenplay. Sadly, the DVD has no extras and the film is not available on Blu-ray.
Available from Amazon on demand, Andre de Toth's Pitfall (1948) plays effectively with noir expectations, leaving the audience to savor some unexpected twists. Dick Powell stars as a married insurance executive who strays when he meets a beautiful dame, Mona Stevens (Lizbeth Scott). When her thieving boyfriend and a private dick (Raymond Burr), who's obsessed with her, enter the picture, things get even seamier.
Barbara Stanwyck gives a heartrending performance in Mitchell Leisen's No Man of Her Own (1950), based on Cornel Woolrich's novel I Married a Dead Man, written under the pen name William Irish during his peak 
period of artistry and productivity. Helen Ferguson (Stanwyck) finds herself unmarried, pregnant and ruthlessly abandoned by her lover, Steve Morley (Lyle Bettger). A bizarre twist of fate involving a train accident gives her a second chance, when she's mistaken for the bride of a now deceased wealthy man. His family takes her in, she and the dead man's brother (John Lund) tentatively fall in love and then—Steve appears—threatening her (and her child's) new found security. Now available from Olive Films.
In Robert Siodmak's The File on Thelma Jordon (1950), Barbara Stanwyck plays Thelma who, as Miss Stanwyck is wont to do, seduces a married Assistant District Attorney (Corey Wendell) and pulls him into her dangerous world of crime. After he manipulates a trial to save her from prison, Thelma's boyfriend, a jewel thief, reenters the scene. Things, of course, go badly. Artiflix is now offering this rare film noir on demand, in the DVD-R format, via Amazon.com.
Joseph Losey's 1951 noir masterpiece, The Prowler, is finally available on DVD from VCI. The source of the digital transfer is the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s restoration, funded by the FNF and the Stanford Theatre Foundation. The lonely wife (Evelyn Keyes) of a nighttime DJ falls for the beat cop (Van Heflin) who responds to her report of a prowler. Unknown to her, he finds a murderous way to get rid of the husband. The extras include a "Making of..." documentary; audio commentary by the FNF’s Alan K. Rode and Eddie Muller; a documentary about the FNF's preservation partnership with UCLA ; Bertrand Tavernier’s video critique of the film; the theatrical trailer; and an interactive version of the film's press book. Order now!
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