Eddie Muller

Previewing this weekend’s Noir City

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The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

  • As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
  • This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
  • The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
  • Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

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.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.“

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

  • The Accused (1949)
  • Open Secret (1948)
  • The Sniper (1952)
  • Force of Evil (1948).

I particularly recommend the unfortunately prescient The Sniper, which presages the Texas Tower shooting, the Zodiac Killer and all manner of overtly misogynistic violence. Journeyman television actor Arthur Franz comes through in a career-topping performance as a woman-hater who can’t control his compulsions. Director Edward Dmytryk enhances the drama, Marie Windsor unleashes dazzling charm and the San Francisco locations are vivid. This is your best chance to see the rarely-seen The Sniper; (I have the French DVD).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

NOIR CITY returns in-person in January

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The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

  • As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
  • This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
  • The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
  • Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

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.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.“

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

  • The Accused (1949)
  • Open Secret (1948)
  • The Sniper (1952) – shot on location in San Francisco.
  • Force of Evil (1948).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER. Courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.

Rediscovered masterpiece of Argentine noir on DVD

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Photo caption: Carlos Cores in LOS TALLOS AMARGOS

Thanks to the Film Noir Foundation, two newly restored classics of film noir are available on DVD. Both are from Argentina – and one of them is a masterpiece.

The masterpiece is Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems), one of the most imaginative and psychological movies of the classic film noir era. Because of his insecurities, a man invents imagined threats, but his real nemesis is himself. The shocking and ironic ending that would have been far too dark for any Hollywood film of the era.

Los tallos amargos was listed as one of the “50 Best Photographed Films of All-Time” by American Cinematographer. Its storied dream sequence is one of the most surreal in cinema. Los tallos amargos won the Silver Condor (the Argentine Oscar) for both Best Picture and Best Director (Fernando Ayala).

Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Laura Hidalgo in THE BEAST MUST DIE

The other film newly available on DVD is The Beast Must Die, which begins with the murder of a man so despicable that every other character has at least one motive for killing him. A visiting detective novelist becomes a murder investigator. As he peels back the onion, the whodunit revolves around which motive propelled the act of murder. There is a big reveal and a shocking ending.

The Los tallos amargos and The Beast Must Die DVDs can be pre-ordered from the Film Noir Foundation, and they will ship beginning November 2, 2021.

dream sequence in LOS TALLOS AMARGOS

coming up on TV – THE BITTER STEMS, a lost masterpiece, rediscovered

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Photo caption: Vassili Lambrinos and Carlos Cores in BITTER STEMS

Turner Classic Movies brings us a rare treat this Saturday and Sunday, July 17-18, the recently recovered Argentine masterpiece of film noir – The Bitter Stems (Los tallos amargos). TCM will air it on Eddie Muller’s Noir Alley.

The Bitter Stems was listed as one of the “50 Best Photographed Films of All-Time” by American Cinematographer. It won the Silver Condor (the Argentine Oscar) for both Best Picture and Best Director (Fernando Ayala).

The Bitter Stems was thought to be lost until a print was discovered in a private collection in 2014 and restored with the support of Muller’s Film Noir Foundation. I saw it – and was enthralled – at the 2016 Noir City film festival in San Francisco. That was probably The Bitter Stem’s US premiere and probably the first time that it was projected for any theater audience in over fifty years.

There is often an Icarus theme in film noir, with protagonists who over-reach and risk a lethal fall. Here, Gaspar (Carlos Cores), a grasping Argentine journalist, conspires with Hungarian immigrant Liudas (Vassili Lambrinos) to concoct a fraud that will make them a quick and easy fortune. Unfortunately, the scheme requires a hamster-in-the-wheel effort to stay ahead of collapse – and everything must go just right…

Lambrinos’ performance is particularly sui generis.

This was a very early film for director Fernando Ayala, who went on to establish himself as one of Argentina’s major directors. Cinematographer Ricardo Younis had studied under Greg Toland, who originated the groundbreaking techniques in Citizen Kane. Ayala and Younis combined to create the film’s storied dream sequence – one of the most surreal in cinema (see images below).

The Bitter Stems (Los tallos amargos) is a masterpiece, but almost nobody has seen it in over fifty years. Don’t miss it this time – set your DVR.

NOIR CITY comes to your home

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Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

Here’s a once-in-a-pandemic film noir experience, the opportunity to see classic film noir that you can’t see anywhere else. The Noir City International at the AFI Silver is available to stream through November 29.

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.

This January, as usual, I attended this year’s festival, sharing the program with a thousand other film fans in a vintage movie palace, San Francisco’s Castro Theatre. In normal years, Eddie Muller then takes the program on the road, but the pandemic eliminated the satellite Noir City mini-fests in other cities. Good news – this year’s festival program is streaming through the AFI Silver so everyone can watch it at home.

This year’s program is Noir City International 2 – l focusing 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, and Poland.

One of best things about Noir City is the opportunity to see films that are not available to stream. This year Noir CIty is outdoing itself by presenting SIX films that can’t found on a streaming platform, most of them impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format.

  • Black Gravel (West Germany 1961)
  • The Black Vampire (Argentina 1953)
  • …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Czechoslovakia 1965)
  • The Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany 1957)
  • Panique (France 1947)
  • Razzia (France 1955)

Pale Flower, Ashes and Diamonds and Any Number Can Win are only available to stream periodically on the Criterion Channel.

“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 and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

PALE FLOWER

My personal favorites on the program:

  • 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.
  • Black Gravel: This tragic romance is set in post-war Germany, a Petri dish for hustlers. Rarely has a movie plot swung as rapidly between They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught – No, they’re gonna get away with it – No, They’re gonna get caught.
  • Ashes and Diamonds: Auteur Andrzej Wajda‘s filmmaking gifts are on display in this Hit Man Finds Love tale, set as the Polish Resistance battles for a place in post-war Poland. As kinetic and unpredictable as James Dean, Zbigniew Cybulski makes for an irresistibly charismatic leading man.
  • The Black Vampire: In this often trippy 1953 remake of Fritz Lang’s M, Nathán Pinzón is AT LEAST AS GOOD as was Peter Lorre in the original.

The offerings also include Leave Her to Heaven with Gene Tierney as the most disturbing female villain in film noir and Detour with Ann Savage as the grungiest and most predatory. The Korean The Housemaid is so bizarre as to defy description. And the coolest middle-aged guy in cinema, Jean Gabin, stars in Razzia and Any Number Can Win.

DO NOT MISS this rare opportunity. Individual screenings are $12 and the Festival Pass is $125. Explore the program and get your pass or tickets.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

NOIR CITY’S fiesta of Mexican noir

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Anita Blanch and Pedro Armendáriz in NIGHT FALLS (LA NOCHE AVANZA)

This year’s Noir City had an international theme and was highlighted by an all day noirathon of four, count ’em, FOUR classics from a storied era in Mexican cinema. This Fiesta of Mexican Noir was hosted by the Film Noir Foundation’s Eddie Muller and Daniela Michel, an expert preservationist and historian of Mexican cinema and the founder and Director General of the Morelia International Film Festival.

Michel presented films by all three of the pillars of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema – Julio Bracho, Emilio Fernandez, and the Mexican director most identified with noir – or cine negro – Roberto Gavaldón.

Daniela Michel and Eddie Muller

Here’s the program:

  • In the deliriously entertaining Night Falls (La Noche Avanza) (1952), Pedro Armendáriz plays a ladykiller who treats his women horribly – and is begging for a noirish downfall. Night Falls was directed by Roberto Gavaldón, the Mexican director most well-known for film noir. In a uniquely Mexican touch of noir torture, waterboarding is performed with tequila. Stay to the end for for cinema’s act of greatest canine revenge.
  • Julio Bracho’s Another Dawn (Distinto Amancer) (1943) is a paranoid thriller about a heroic labor organizer (Pedro Armendáriz again) who has the evidence to expose corruption by the PRI, Mexico’s ruling party for 70 years.
  • In Bracho’s Twilight (Crepusculo) (1945), a surgeon is tormented by an obsession, and then by guilt. When former lovers – now married to others – are isolated together in a weekend house party during a thunderstorm, it’s inevitable this concentrated passion, obsession and betrayal is going to explode.
  • Salón México(1949) is an unusual contemporary noir directed by Emilio Fernandez, more often known for movies with rural and historical settings, Salon Mexico is a cabaretera, a uniquely Mexican genre about a woman with a heart of gold (Marga López here) who is forced by poverty to work as a singer in a sketchy nightspot or even as a prostitute. It’s also a time capsule of 1949 Mexico City.

Follow the links for my commentary on the films, images and where to find them.

Miguel Inclán and Marga López in SALON MEXICO

NOIR CITY: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

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Make plans to attend Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 25-February 3.  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 2019 Noir City will focus on film noir in the 1950s – from just after the genre’s peak to its transition into neo-noir.  The festival tag line is, “Think the 1950s were buttoned-down and conservative? Think again.” The Film Noir Foundation has restored Trapped (1949), and the world premiere of the restored version will open the fest.  Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see Trapped in sixty-nine years.  Closing night will feature that most brutal and emotionally bleak of neo-noirs, Blast of Silence.

Three of the best films in the program are not available to stream, and five more are impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format. This year’s program features eight movies on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.

Noir City runs from Friday, January 25 through Sunday, February 3. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.

I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 23. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover the opening weekend.

NIGHTFALL, one of NOIR CITY’S highlights

NOIR CITY: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

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Noir City 2017
I always look forward to the Noir City film fest, which gets underway in San Francisco this week. 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 movies not available on DVD. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

The theme of this year’s festival is the Heist Movie, Noir City is presenting a wonderful array of heist movies from the classic American film noir period, foreign noirs and an especially healthy selection of neo-noirs. Being noir, you might not expect many of these heists to end well. And some are from noir’s Perfect Crime sub-genre – they’re going to get away with the elaborately planned big heist EXCEPT FOR ONE THING.

Noir City runs January 20-29. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.

On Noir City’s first weekend:

  • The Asphalt Jungle: As long as things go according to plan… John Huston directed a marvelous cast (Sterling Hayden, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, Jean Hagen, John McIntire). And even Louis Calhern knows that Marilyn Monroe isn’t going to stick around as his moll.
  • Violent Saturday: a completely overlooked film from one of my favorite directors that I hadn’t seen until Eddie Muller programmed it for this festival. Filmed in the bright Arizona desert with CinemaScope and De Luxe color, the story is plenty noir.
  • Four Ways Out: Saturday night, Noir City goes goes Italian with the last script written by screenwriter Federico Fellini before he started directing. Four guys pull a heist, and it goes bad four different ways.
  • Big Deal on Madonna Street, the funniest film in the festival, with an Italian gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Watch for a 34-year-old pre-Fellini Marcello Mastroianni.
  • Rififi: This French classic is the top heist film ever and pioneering in its use of real time. After the team is assembled and the job is plotted, the actual crime unfolds in real-time – over thirty minutes of nerve wracking silence.
  • The Big Risk: It’s a highlight because it’s a French noir starring the bloodhound-visaged Lino Ventura that I have NOT seen, so I’ll be going to Noir City myself on Sunday.

And midweek, at Noir City:

  • The rarely-seen Once a Thief (Alain Delon, trying to keep Ann-Margret while being hunted by Van Heflin) and The Sicilian Clan (with the neo-noir trifecta of Delon, Ventura and Jean Gabin), both on Wednesday evening, January 25.

I’ll be writing about Noir City’s tremendous final weekend. Stay tuned.

VIOLENT SATURDAY
VIOLENT SATURDAY

TCM’s “Summer of Darkness” – a treasure for fans of film noir

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tcm summer darkness
Turner Classic Movies has announced a CAN’T MISS summer film noir series.  The “Summer of Darkness” will be hosted by Film Noir Foundation president Eddie Muller – the Czar of Noir. Here’s the complete schedule.

TCM will be presenting 24 hours of film noir on each Friday in June and July.  Every week, Eddie Muller himself will present four movies in prime time in TCM’s “Friday Night Spotlight.” Muller has penned this introductory article.

The Film Noir Foundation performs an invaluable mission:  preserving and restoring classic film noir that would otherwise be lost to us and to posterity.  And Muller and the Foundation host one of my absolute film festivals every winter in San Francisco – Noir City.  Noir City has been expanding into other cities.  Muller is a respected film historian, and his DVD commentaries are excellent.  Here’s your chance to experience the Czar of Noir on television.

I’ll be calling out specific recommendations from the Summertime of Darkness in my regular Movies to See Right Now posts on Fridays, as well as writing some special posts on my favorite Overlooked Noir, including Woman on the Run and Elevator to the Gallows.  Stay tuned.

Noir City: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

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Rififi
I always look forward to the Noir City film fest, which is underway in San Francisco this week.  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 movies not available on DVD.  Here’s one of my experiences from a recent Noir City

Film noir, the genre of cynical stories that are starkly photographed to emphasize the darkness of the plots, originated in the US in the 1940s but was named by the French.  So it’s fitting that this year’s Noir City goes international, sampling film noir from France, Argentina, Mexico, Great Britain, Japan, Spain, Norway and Germany, along with some American noir set in the far East and South of the Border.  I’ll be checking out the Argentinian classics Never Open that Door and Hardly a Criminal, which are not available on DVD.

To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here.