The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-29, 2023 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland – and for the first time since the 2020 pandemic – for its traditional full ten days.
Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.
Past Noir City fests have been built around themes, like international noir and heist cinema. In this year’s fest, all of the films were released in 1948. As an audience, we get to sample films from peak year in the Noir Era and appreciate film noir as a distinct movement within American filmmaking.
These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them:
- Larceny,
- The Spiritualist,
- Road House,
- So Evil My Love,
- Sleep, My Love,
- The Hunted,
- I Love Trouble,
- Night Has a Thousand Eyes,
- All My Sons,
- The Velvet Touch,
- Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, (my favorite title this year).
If you can make it for just one night, I’d recommend one of these four:
- Friday, January 20 (Opening Night): Two classics that are famous for a reason – Key Largo (Bogart and Bacall, Edward G. Robinson, Claire Trevor’s heartbreaking performance as a gangster’s moll aging out of her looks and an underappreciated supporting turn by Thomas Gomez) and The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles’ noir adventure with his glamorous ex, Rita Hayworth, and the stunning hall-of-mirrors climax). You’ve almost certainly seen both of these, but probably not in a vintage movie palace with hundreds of other noiristas.
- Saturday, January 21: Three movies that I have not yet seen and are not streamable – Larceny (John Payne, Dan Duryea), The Spiritualist and Road House (Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, Cornell Wilde) – are sandwiching a more well-known film, The Big Clock, with Ray Milland being hunted down by the minions of the nefarious Charles Laughton.
- Monday, January 23: Two more non-streamable films which I haven’t seen: So Evil My Love (Ray Milland) and Sleep, My Love (Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche in a noir?).
- Saturday, January 27: Two of my favorite Overlooked Noir: Raw Deal (some of the best dialogue in all of film noir, a love triangle and the superb cinematography of John Alton) and He Walked By Night (more John Alton, with the LAPD hunting down a nerdy wacko).
Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.
Claire Trevor in KEY LARGO