FILM NOIR AND NEO NOIR IN THE THEATERS

When Serie Noire Meets Film Noir

In what is undoubtedly the biggest noir cinema event this month, New York’s Film Forum presents The French Crime Wave from August 8 through September 11, a diverse and comprehensive five-week overview of French film noirs and neo-noirs made between 1937 and 2000. Go here for details.

Mon, Sept 1
Jean-Luc Godard Double Feature
BREATHLESS (1959)

BAND OF OUTSIDERS (1964)

Tues, Sept 2
Jacques Becker Double Feature
CASQUE D’OR (1952)

GOUPI MAINS ROUGES (1943)

Thurs, Sept 4
QUAI DES ORFÈVRES (1947) Henri-Georges Clouzot

PÉPÉ LE MOKO (1937) Julien Duvivier

Thurs, Sept 4
THE WAGES OF FEAR (1952) Henri-Georges Clouzot

Fri, Sept 5 and Thurs, Sept 11
SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER (1960) Francois Truffaut

Heavy Weather Ahead

It’s time again for Seattleites to buy their tickets for a one way ride to desperation and despair. Series passes for the Seattle Art Museum’s annual fall noir series, this year entitled Night Wind: The Film Noir Cycle, go on sale August 19th. The series screens at 7:30 every Thursday night, October 2nd through December 4th.

Don't get stranded on the side of the road, going nowhere, pick up your full series pass by either emailing or calling the SAM Box Office at 206.654.3121. Single-film tickets are sold day of show at the auditorium (cash only). Be warned, if you want to try to get in the day of show, go early—this series sells out faster then a double-crossing dame. Tickets are also available through Scarecrow Video 206.524.8554. Here’s the full line-up:

Tribute to Jean Gabin

The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angles will screen a tribute to French film icon Jean Gabin September 6th and September 7th. Probably most famous in America for his gangster with the heart of gold role in Pepe Le Moko, Gabin actually managed to transcend type casting and play a wide range of characters. He combined a cynical and hardened exterior similar to American tough guys like Bogart and Cagney with a dreamy romanticism typical of the French poetic realism movement. The Cinematheque has programmed films that show the breadth of the roles Gabin impersonated. A book signing with Charles Zigman, author of The World's Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin Vol. 1 & 2 precedes each night’s screenings.

Saturday, September 6 – 7:30 PM

(1969) 20th Century Fox, 118 min. New 35mm Print!
Dir. Henri Verneuil. Not on DVD.

MOONTIDE
(1942) 20th Century Fox, 94 min. Dir. Archie Mayo.

Sunday, September 7 – 7:30 PM

(1955) 94 min. Dir. Edmund T. Gréville. Not on DVD.

(1954) Rialto Pictures, 88 min. Dir. Jacques Becker.

››Go here for full program notes.

Noir Art

Artist Wim Griffith shows Wim Noir-Men in Suits, his series of paintings inspired by film noir and its often homoerotic under-pinnings, at at Flazh! Alley Studio in San Pedro, California, July 28 through September 6. It will be open to the public from 7-11 p.m. on San Pedro’s First Thursdays Art Walk Nights on August 7 and September 4, and by appointment. 18 and over only.

Noir City Sentinel Looks at
The Dark Knight

The biggest film with a strong noir influence, still playing in theatres everywhere, is Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. This latest take on Batman presents a morally equivocal hero pitted against a truly psychotic villain in the Dan Duryea or Richard Widmark vein, the Joker. Oscar buzz currently surrounds Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. If you can’t find where it’s playing on your own, which is fairly unlikely, go here. The current issue of The Noir City Sentinel, the Film Noir Foundation’s newsletter, features an in-depth review of this superhero noir. To receive The Sentinel, all you need to do is sign up for the Foundation mailing list, make a nominal donation to the FNF in any amount. To view a sample page from the April 2007 issue, go here.

In Other Film News

The Castro Theatre in San Francisco, the home of Noir City, will screen a double feature tribute to the leggy and talented Cyd Charisse. First up is Vincente Minnelli’s musical satire of Broadway, The Band Wagon (1953) co-starring Charisse and Fred Astaire. This film features a remarkable dance sequence set to Slaughter on Tenth Avenue that tells a decidedly film noir tale of a detective and a femme fatale. The second feature is Nicholas Ray’s rarely seen film noir Party Girl (1958) featuring Charisse as dancer Vicki Gaye who inspires mob lawyer, Tommy Farrell (Robert Taylor) to go straight, but the mob doesn’t want to let him go.

Among the noir-influenced films still in wide release from the summer season is the French thriller Tell No One, which details a man’s desperate search for his wife, presumably murdered eight years earlier, after a mysterious email leads him to security camera footage of her. The film’s debt to noir is apparent in its use of flashbacks, the obfuscated depiction of the wife, and the convoluted plot. See it at Landmark Theatres or your local independent cinema.

Claude Lelouch’s Roman De Gare is another French thriller with noir overtones in art house release. Director Lelouch plays with the crime genre and the audience’s expectations of it to create a cleverly and tightly plotted film. Dominique Pinon and Fanny Ardant star as an unlikely couple caught up in a deadly game. Lelouch derived the title from the name given to pulp fictions sold in French train stations.

Also currently playing the art house circuit, and of interest to film noir fans, is Peter Askin’s documentary Trumbo. Trumbo details the life and political struggles of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter, Donald Trumbo from Hollywood royalty to political outcast to Oscar winner. Noir fans will be familiar with Trumbo for his screenplays for The Prowler and Gun Crazy.

Upcoming on DVD

VintageFilmBuff.com has given film noir Siren Ann Savage her due with their release of Apology for Murder - 7 Savages - The Official Box Set. This three DVD box set of seven Savage films includes the film noir, Apology for Murder. In this noir, heavily indebted to Double Indemnity, Savage plays the beautiful and scheming young wife to a much older man. Reporter Kenny Blake, Leave It to Beaver’s Hugh Beaumont, falls under her spell. She persuades him to help her get rid of her husband, trouble ensues.

Fox’s ninth wave of film noir DVDs, Boomerang!, Moontide, and Road House, will be released on September 2. Boomerang! (1947), directed by Eliza Kazan, stars Dana Andrews as a states attorney defending an out-of-towner accused of murdering a priest. The DVD features audio commentary by noted film noir historians Alain Silver and James Ursini. In Archie Mayo’s Moontide (1942), a fisherman named Bobo (Jean Gabin) wakes up after a binge fearing he may have killed a man. When he goes into hiding, he takes Anna (Ida Lupino) with him, sparking a dangerous jealousy in his friend Tiny. This DVD includes audio commentary by Foster Hirsch (author of The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir) and a making-of feature, “Turning of the Tide: The Ill-Starred Making of Moontide.” Jean Negulesco’s Road House (1948) stars Ida Lupino as a nightclub singer hired by small-town bigwig Richard Widmark to play at the bar in his bowling alley. He’s obsessed with her, but she only has eyes for his best friend (Cornel Wilde). Trouble ensues. This DVD includes audio commentary by film historians Kim Morgan and the FNF’s own Eddie Muller plus the documentary “Killer Instincts: Richard Widmark and Ida Lupino at Twentieth Century-Fox.”

September also brings an interesting assortment of traditional and untraditional film noirs and neo-noirs. On September 9th, Universal Studios will release a two disc 10th Anniversary Edition of the Coen Brother’s irreverent take on the film noir, The Big Lebowski. With the limited edition version, the discs come packaged in a bowling ball. On a more serious note, the same day marks Janus Films’ DVD release of Roman Polanski’s theatrical debut Knife in the Water (1962), an intense psycho-sexual thriller. On September 16th Sony will release The Garment Jungle (1957) a gritty film noir set in the garment industry and dealing with anti-union corruption. The notorious Pia Zadora vehicle Butterfly (1981), based on the novel by James M. Cain, makes its DVD debut on September 30th from Industrial Entertainment. Actually, this film is not as bad as you think. This release includes a feature length commentary with director Matt Cimber, star Pia Zadora, and Pia's former husband and Butterfly financier M. Riklis, as well as, on-screen interviews with Zadora and co-star Stacy Keach.

Huge news for film noir and James Ellroy fans! On September 23 Warner Home Video will release both a digitally remastered DVD two-disc special edition and a single-disc Blu-ray high-def version of Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), starring Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kim Basinger. This exceptional neo-noir won two Oscars and was nominated for another five, and it is certainly deserving of this sort of star treatment.

On October 8th, Universal will release a two disc DVD set of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil that includes all three versions of the film: the preview, the theatrical and the restored. This anamorphic edition will include a copy of Welles' legendary fifty-eight page memo to Universal's head of production detailing his vision of how the film should be edited. Welles wrote the memo after watching the version that the studios wanted to, and did, release. In 1998, editor Walter Murch, using the memo for his guide, re-edited the film to realize Welles' version. This stylish and convoluted noir unwinds the story of a crooked police chief, Orson Welles, who attempts to frame an innocent man to protect his own criminal interests. Charlton Heston portrays an earnest lawyer trying to stop him inadvertently putting his bride, Janet Leigh, in great danger.

Sony Pictures and Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation have combined forces to bring a series of classic films to DVD under the “Collector’s Choice” banner. The sets will include previously unreleased titles from Sony’s catalog, newly restored and remastered with commentaries and introductions by Hollywood professionals influenced by the films. Their first effort will be The Films of Budd Boetticher, a boxed set of five Westerns to be released on Nov. 4. The set includes The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome and Comanche Station, released theatrically between 1957 and 1960, and will feature introductions and commentary from Scorsese, Clint Eastwood and Taylor Hackford. The Sony and Film Foundation duo plan further classic DVD releases including film noir collections.

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