By David Savage
One of the most anticipated genre film festivals on the North American circuit is Noir City, the annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival, hosted at the glorious Castro Theatre – itself a cinematic landmark and “character†in countless movies filmed in the City by the Bay. This year’s edition, with the theme of “Who’s crazy now?†kicks off January 21st and runs through the 30th, 2011. Over the 10 day span, a tantalizing lineup of twenty-four films will be screened – including three brand new 35mm prints funded by the Film Noir Foundation, High Wall (1947); Loophole (1954) and The Hunted (1948).
“We show films you can’t see anywhere else,†said Noir City co-founder and noted film historian Eddie Muller over the phone from his Bay Area home. “We are the only festival that goes out of its way to preserve rare titles, then uses those proceeds to restore other rare titles.†Festival attendees regularly turn up in period dress, Muller says, as proof of their devotion to the genre. For the Castro Theatre, built in 1922 and seating 1,400 people, it’s one of the biggest draws of the year.
Citing an arrangement his Film Noir Foundation has with a major Hollywood studio, Muller’s organization agrees to fund preservation and restoration prints to be made if the studio will deposit a print with UCLA’s Film & Television Archive – the premiere restoration facility in the world. The studio retains ownership but allows UCLA to grant screening licenses, such as the wildly popular Noir City festival in San Francisco. It’s an agreement, says Muller, that provides ongoing proof that restoration and preservation of rare and endangered films is a worthwhile effort. Still, he allows, it’s always a hard case to make to the studios, which are forever looking into the future for new revenue streams and not into the past. Once in a while, Muller says, a studio will step forward to fund the full restoration of a print, which is what Paramount did recently with Strangers in the Night (1951) when their archive heard that Film Noir Foundation was prepared to shoulder the $27,000 restoration cost on their own.
Other highlights include The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), considered by critical consensus to be the first American film noir, starring Peter Lorre; Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) with Marilyn Monroe in one of her strongest performances of her young career; and a handful of films not available on DVD, such as 1946’s The Dark Mirror, with Olivia de Havilland (directed by noir master Robert Siodmak), Beware My Lovely with Ida Lupino, and a bizarre puzzler from 1948, Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door starring Nightmare Alley’s Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave. According to the program literature, it’s a Noir City tradition to show one incomprehensible film each year – and this year this is it. Apparently Lang’s off-the-rails Freudian blowout is a cross between Rebecca and Bluebeard. Muller calls it “ridiculous but visually stunning.†Funded by The Film Noir Foundation, it was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Like a grim-faced police lineup, most of noir’s beloved Usual Suspects are to be found in 2011’s edition, like Barbara Stanwyk, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart. However, audiences will also appreciate some surprising names – actors, screenwriters and directors – not usually associated with noir, notably French director Jean Renoir’s The Woman on the Beach (1947); Otto Preminger with his Angel Face (1952) and A Double Life (1947), directed by George Cukor and starring an Ronald Colman in a dual role which won him an Oscar. The script was written by screwball comedy veterans Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
For Noir City 9’s complete 2011 festival lineup and more information on how you can join and contribute to The Film Noir Foundation, visit http:/www.noircity.com.