It’s more than a film fest, it’s a feast of film noir.
This June, Turner Classic Movies’ Friday Night Spotlight will focus on Noir Writers. The guest programmer and host will be San Francisco’s Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. It also sponsors Noir City, an annual festival of film noir in San Francisco, which often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD. (My favorite part is Noir City’s Thursday evening Bad Girl Night featuring its most memorable femmes fatale.)
Muller (the Czar of Noir) has selected films from the work of noir novelists. Friday night, he kicks off with films from the novels of Dashiell Hammett: the 1931 and more famous 1941 versions of The Maltese Falcon, plus the 1936 version (Satan Met a Lady) and After the Thin Man and The Glass Key. (Muller informs us that Hammett pronounced his first name da-SHEEL.)
On June 14, Muller continues with the work of David Goodis, The Burglar, The Burglars, The Unfaithful, Shoot the Piano Player and Nightfall. (You may have seen Goodis’ Dark Passage with Bogie and Bacall.)
On June 21, we’ll see films from the novels of Jonathan Latimer (Nocturne, They Won’t Believe Me) and James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice).
TCM and the Czar of Noir wrap up on June 28 with movies from the novels of Cornell Woolrich (The Leopard Man, Deadline at Dawn) and Raymond Chandler (Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep, Lady in the Lake, Strangers on a Train).
These two movies aren’t part of the Friday night series, but on June 11, TCM features two of the nastiest noirs: Detour and The Hitchhiker.
Set your DVR and settle in for dramatic shadows, sarcastic banter and guys in fedoras making big mistakes for love, lust and avarice.
