Here’s a once-in-a-lifetime film noir experience, the opportunity to be a part of an audience to see films that haven’t been projected in a theater in over sixty years. Make plans to attend the Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 24-February 2. Noir City has become an irreplaceable Bay Area cultural treasure like Alcatraz or John’s Grill.
Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace, San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, with a thousand other film fans.
The 2020 Noir City will focus on international film noir, as it did so successfully six years ago. Then I was enthralled by the Argentine Bitter Stems and the Swedish Girl with Hyacinths, and must admit that I had never even imagined that vintage film noir from those nations existed. This year’s fest brings us titles from Argentina, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, England, West Germany, Sweden and Poland.
One of best things about Noir City is the opportunity to see a few films that are not available to stream. This year Noir CIty is outdoing itself by presenting EIGHTEEN films that can’t found on a streaming platform, most of them impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format.
- The Beast Must Die (Argentina 1952)
- The Black Vampire (Argentina 1953)
- Panique (France 1947)
- Razzia (France 1955)
- Any Number Can Win (France 1963),
- Black Hair (South Korea 1964)
- The Facts of Murder (Italy 1959)
- …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Czechoslovakia 1965)
- 90 Degrees In the Shade (Czechoslovakia 1965)
- The Long Haul (England 1957)
- Never Let Go (England 1965)
- The Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany 1957)
- Black Gravel (West Germany 1961)
- Another Dawn (Mexico 1943)
- Twilight (Mexico 1945)
- Night Falls (1952)
- Salon Mexico (Mexico 1949)
- Ashes and Diamonds (Poland 1958)
The films on this year’s program are SO difficult to find that only one of them (Pale Flower) is even on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.
“Difficult to find” doesn’t mean “obscure”. The program includes films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Pierre Melville and Roebert Siodmak and starring Ingrid Bergman, Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Peter Sellers, Emilio Fernandez, Victor Mature and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
The Film Noir Foundation has restored the Argentine films The Beast Must Die and The Black Vampire, and the opening night will feature these films. (These are coincidentally the most lurid titles on this year’s program.) Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see these films in over sixty years – and perhaps the first US movie audience ever.
This year, I predict that the Thursday night Castro Theatre audience will be THRILLED by the Japanese neo-noir Pale Flower. Writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece is a slow burn that erupts into breathtaking set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.
Noir City runs from Friday, January 24 through Sunday, February 2. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. Incidentally, the woman escaping with the loot on this year’s Noir City poster is Victoria Mature, daughter of movie star Victor Mature, whose best work was in film noir.
I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 20. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover both weekends.
