noir

LOVE LIES BLEEDING: obsessions and impulses collide

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Photo caption: Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart in LOVE LIES BLEEDING. Courtesy of A24.

Love Lies Bleeding is a title that legendary film noir director Sam Fuller would have loved, and this highly original neo-noir is a knockout. Kristen Stewart plays Lou, the reluctant manager of a downscale fitness gym in a hardscrabble New Mexico town that is flat, arid and devoid of culture. Love Lies Bleeding may be set in and shot in New Mexico, but this town is not anybody’s Land of Enchantment.

Lou is wallowing through the drudgery of her job, when she eyes Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an aspiring bodybuilder who has just drifted into town. This moment evokes the one in which John Garfield first sees Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice. The two plunge into a passionate affair, and Jackie, who has snagged a job on her first day in town but is still homeless, moves in with Lou.

But soon, the two find out that Jackie has already become entangled with two folks who are important in Lou’s life – and not in a good way. There’s an impetuous homicide and a “perfect crime” cover-up. Unfortunately, an inconvenient witness, a steroid binge, and more impulsiveness threaten to unravel their lives. Love Lies Bleeding hurtles down an alley filled with robust sex, sudden violence and witty observation.

I will not spoil the ending except to say that, just as I was thinking, “this could go one of three ways”, it went in a totally unexpected direction. And, as I was thinking that writer-director Rose Glass was pivoting completely away from noir conventions, she ends the film with one of the most noirish lightings of a cigarette ever. This is only Glass’s second feature, co-written with Weronika Tofiska. Glass’ 2019 debut feature, St. Maud, earned some buzz.

Like many noirs, this is a tale of obsessions, and it’s a character-driven one, contrasting Lou and Jackie. Lous is measured and intentional, and we learn that her prioritization of loyalty has kept her in this place. Loyalty, and pretty much everything else, is situational for Jackie, whose unfocused wanderlust is another symptom of her captivity to her impulses. Lou is obsessed with Jackie. Jackie is obsessed with reinventing her life, through bodybuilding, through sex, through the next shiny thing.

Kristen Stewart is just so watchable, as she was when I first saw the 17-year-old Stewart in as Tracy in 2007’s Into the Wild. Stewart then bit her lower lip through the Twilight franchise, and, now about to turn 34, is at the top of her game. Stewart is fearless in her choice of scripts and likes to bet on interesting directors. She’s just perfect as Lou in Love Lies Bleeding.

This is the first time I’ve seen Katy O’Brian, and there’s just no getting around that she doesn’t look like most other movie actresses. She’s a martial arts instructor who doesn’t rely on her physicality alone, but uses it to great advantage. O’Brian captures Jackie’s supreme confidence (except when her family rejection bubbles to the surface, and how she is capable of one of the epic steroidal rages. She’s already amassed 27 IMDb credits, including a recurring role on The Mandalorian.

If you’re casting a villain with steely and contained determination, who better than four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris? Harris comes through as expected, and Glass wittily puts him in a bald-on-top stringy wig that evokes Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. She also gives the character a disgusting interest in bugs.

The rest of the cast is very good, too, including Dave Franco, Jena Malone and Anna Barishnikov, who must be pretty intelligent to play such a profoundly dumb character with such intricacy.

Their obsessions drive Lou and Jackie together in Love Lies Bleeding, and it’s a volatile mix with a wowzer ending.

NOIR CITY returns, bringing darkness from abroad

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Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
Photo caption: Jeanne Moreau in ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 19-28 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. The program for each night (or matinee) will present a double bill – one classic film noir from the US or UK, matched with one from Argentina, Mexico, France, Italy, Egypt, Japan or South Korea. This year’s tagline is Darkness Has No Borders.

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.

One of Noir City’s greatest gifts to noiristas, and to cinephiles in general, has been introducing us to previously unfamiliar foreign noir classics. It is ONLY because of Noir City that I’ve seen some of my favorite movies: Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems), Black Gravel, El vampiro negro (The Black Vampire), Ashes and Diamonds, La noche avanza (Night Falls), …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear and Girl with Hyacinths.

These titles from this year’s Noir City program are NOT available to stream, so Noir City is your best chance to see them: 

  • Street of Chance (US)
  • Cairo Station (Egypt)
  • Victims of Sin (Victimas del pecado) (Mexico)
  • Black Tuesday (US)
  • Aimless Bullet (South Korea)
  • Plunder Road (US)
  • Without Pity (Italy)
  • Four Against the World (Mexico)
  • Across the Bridge (UK)
  • Strongroom (UK)
  • Murder by Contract (US)
  • Smog (Italy)

Not all the program is obscure. Here are three Must See classics:

  • Elevator to the Gallows: This is such a groundbreaking film, you can argue that it’s the first neo-noir.  It’s the debut of director Louis Malle, shot when he was only 24 years old.  In 1958, no one had seen a film with a Miles Davis soundtrack or one where the two romantic leads were never on-screen together. Totally original.
  • La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) and Human Desire: In this Murder-The-Jealous-Husband double bill, Jean Renoir’s classic La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) with the charismatic Jean Gabin and Simone Simon is paired with Fritz Lang’s remake, starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford and Broderick Crawford. Grahame projected an uncanny mixture of sexiness, vulnerability and unpredictability, perfect for this hard luck femme fatale; (the fact that Gloria was a Bad Girl in real life doesn’t hurt.) I have the Australian version of the Human Desire poster in my living room; the tag line is “She was born to be bad…to be kissed..to make trouble“, and the Aussie authorities have labeled it “NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN“.
  • Le trou: This is the all-time best prison break movie, combining a riveting real-time escape procedural with a fear of betrayal that crescendos. Le trou is a true crime story, with three of actual participants consulting on the film and one of them playing the mastermind. It was the last film by Jacques Becker, who had directed Casque d’Or and one of the very best film noirs in any language, Touchez pas au grisbi.

Elevator to the Gallows and Human Desire are on my list of Overlooked Noir; check it out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. I’ll be there.

Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford in HUMAN DESIRE.

THE NARROW MARGIN: murderous hide and go seek on a train

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Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN
Photo caption: Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor in THE NARROW MARGIN

The overlooked film noir masterpiece The Narrow Margin (1952) is a taut 71 minutes of tension. Growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Marie Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. It’s on my list of Overlooked Noir, and it’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on Friday, November 27 – set your DVR.

McGraw plays a cop assigned to protect a gangster’s widow on her way to testify against the mob. He immediately loses his partner to an ambush and will have to protect his cargo all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles by himself. His only edge is that the hit men don’t know what his target looks like.

The Narrow Margin has two very special elements. The first is the hardboiled dialogue between McGraw and Windsor and their performances. The second is director Richard Fleisher’s imaginative staging of the woman-hunt up and down the tight corridors and compartments of the train.

The screenplay is easily the best of veteran Earl Felton’s career, and he was nominated for an Oscar for this B picture. When McGraw, still in shock, reflects on the sudden death of his longtime partner, Windsor hisses, “Some protection they send me – an old man who walks right into it and a weeper”. McGraw resents having anything to do with her: “Sister, I’ve known some pretty hard cases in my time, but you make ’em all look like putty”. Later he snarls, “He’s dead and you’re alive. Some exchange.” But they’re both trapped together, and they’re not the kind to make the best of it – the great lines just keep coming: “Relax, Percy, I wouldn’t want any of that nobility to rub off on me”.

The Narrow Margin opens with trench coats and fedora, cigarettes and shadowed faces; when there’s gunfire, we know for sure that we’re in a noir. But then Fleischer moves it all onto the train, and we hear the sound from railroad airbrakes. Fleischer makes an early use of handheld cameras to maneuver around the tight spaces. There’s an especially innovative moment when a fight breaks out in a cramped train restroom – the bottom of a shoe flies up to camera level, then we’re under the sink as head is banged into wall.

The cast is uniformly good. I especially like David Clarke as a (gay?) hit man and Paul Maxey as a very fat traveler who keeps blocking the narrow corridors.

Of course, this is all fifty years before cell phones, and there’s a retro lo-tech moment where a slow-moving train leaves a message via hook to be wired.

Fleischer was a very versatile (and underrated director). When he shot The Narrow Margin, he was a 35-year-old rising director. The Narrow Margin was his sixth noir in five years. After The Narrow Margin, he moved to epics (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Vikings, Barabbas). He later made one of the very best WW II movies, Tora! Tora! Tora!, and the ahead-of-its-time dystopian sci-fi cult favorite Soylent Green. He even made the second Schwarzenegger Conan movie. His noir body of work (Bodyguard, Follow Me Quietly, Trapped, Armored Car Robbery, His Kind of Woman) is impressive, and, in my opinion, The Narrow Margin is his masterpiece.

The Narrow Margin plays frequently on Turner Classic Movies. It’s available to stream from Amazon, AppleTV, Vudu and YouTube.  (Don’t confuse it with the inferior 1990 remake, Narrow Margin.)

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Director Richard Fleischer’s use of reflection

DECOY: the MOST FATALE femme fatale

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Photo caption: Ed Norris, Jean Gillie and Herbert Rudley in DECOY.

The obscure, low-budget Decoy is the first film that I’ve been unable to write about without spoilers, but you’ll still be able to appreciate it, even when you know some of what’s coming. It’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies on Friday night, November 17. Decoy, one of my Overlooked Noir , is not available to stream, so set your DVR.

Decoy, from 1946, stands out from the rest of film noir (and from much of cinema) for two elements. The first is the most hysterically evil femme fatale ever. The second is that the plot pivots on a preposterous premise.

The ill-tempered Frankie Olins (Robert Armstrong) is on California’s death row because he killed a cop in a robbery. The robbery netted a huge fortune, which Frankie has hidden. Frankie refuses to disclose the location of his loot, because he wants to maximize the incentive for others to work for his release. Frankie’s girlfriend, Margot Shelby (Jean Gillie), is two-timing him with another vicious hood, Jim VIncent (Ed Norris), who is bankrolling Frankie’s legal appeals, They hope to get Frankie out of prison to recover the loot, and then steal it from him. Alas, the appeals go for naught, and Frankie is about to be executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber, taking his secret with him to the grave.

At this point, things get ridiculous. Margot and Jim revise their plan, pivoting to stealing Frankie’s body AFTER the execution and reviving him with a dose of methylene blue, an antidote for the cyanide used in the gas chamber. Now, the kernel of truth here is that methylene blue CAN be used as an antidote to cyanide poisoning in someone who is ALIVE. But, of course, methylene blue CANNOT reverse death by cyanide poisoning. But, indeed, the rest of Decoy’s plot is based on the resurrection of Frankie.

Margot and Jim manage to smuggle out Frankie’s corpse, and they force the earnest, do gooder Dr. Lloyd Craig (Herbert Rudley) to bring him back to life with methylene blue. Frankie unwisely draws a treasure map and is promptly removed from our story. Margot and Jim, with Dr. Craig driving his own car at gunpoint, head off to find and dig up the money.

At this point, Margot takes over the film. In Decoy’s final eight minutes, Margot is not only remorselessly murderous, but she’s sadistic as well. And she can even take pleasure in humiliating a man from her deathbed.

Jean Gillie in DECOY

As outlandish as Margot’s behavior becomes, Jean Gillie’s performance is fully committed. Her Margot actually rejoices in her own perversity. I’m serious when I rate Gillie’s Margot as the most evil femme fatale in cinema. Even compared to the Anne Savage role in Detour, and to the parts played by Cleo Moore in the Hugo Haas movies, she is the most depraved.

Gillie was an English actress who was married to Decoy’s otherwise undistinguished director, Jack Bernhard. That marriage broke up, and she didn’t like Hollywood. After her one major Hollywood movie, The Macomber Affair, supporting Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett and Robert Preston, she returned to England. Gillie promptly died of pneumonia at age 33.

Robert Armstrong is appropriately nasty as Frankie, and has a fun scene when he discovers that he has been resurrected. Thirteen years earlier, Armstrong played the human protagonist, along with Faye Wray, of King Kong.

The character of Jim Vincent is a one-dimensional thug, and Norris doesn’t add any other touches (as Dan Duryea would have).

Potentially, the best role in Decoy would have been Dr. Craig, who is a moral and decent man forced into misdeeds (and that resurrection) by evil people. He is psychologically ruined before he meets his end. There’s even a corny scene where the doc looks across his office, and the camera highlights the section of his medical oath that he is forced to transgress. By the midpoint of the movie, Herbert Rudley staggers around like a zombie as a Dr. Craig who is unable to fathom how his life could have been ruined in just one day. A better actor than Rudley could have brought more heartbreaking depth to this role.

Sheldon Leonard in DECOY.

One of the greatest delights in Decoy is Sheldon Leonard as the cop nicknamed Jojo, Police Sgt. Joe Portugal. Having put away Frankie, Jojo is watching Margot and Jim, waiting for the chance to nab them, too. He keeps showing up to pressure them, and he’s there at the end to pick up the pieces. Nobody could do out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth sarcasm like Leonard.

Leonard earned 109 film credits as an actor, the most memorable being the bartender Nick in It’s a Wonderful Life, Lt. Coyo in To Have and Have Not and Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls. Although he was a perfect fit for film noir, he was rarely as prominent as he was in Decoy and, a year later, The Gangster. Leonard’s biggest mark on American culture came as a television producer – he produced some of the most popular and iconic TV shows ever: The Danny Thomas Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, USMC and I Spy.

Decoy concludes with a startingly vicious act by Margot and then a very ironic ending (think Treasure of the Sierra Madre) when Frankie gets the last laugh.

Decoy is not a very good film, but it moves so quickly, and its two major elements are so astoundingly outrageous, that it’s fun to watch. Decoy is not currently available to stream. I watched Decoy on Turner Classic Movies.

Herbert Rudley, Jean Gillie and Ed Norris (around Robert Armstrong on the table) in DECOY.

TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.: obsession without an iota of redemption

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Photo caption: William L. Petersen in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

It’s William Friedkin Week at The Movie Gourmet, and we’re looking at three of the director’s more overlooked films. First up is his 1985 neo-noir To Live and Die in L.A., now a cult fave of noir fans. It’s a study of amoral obsession without any iota of redemption. Along with directing, Friedkin co-wrote the screenplay.

The secret service agent Chance (William L. Petersen) is consumed with tracking down the counterfeiter Masters (Willem Dafoe). Both are very dangerous men, and it’s pretty clear that no more than one of them is going to survive. Chance’s new partner Vuckovich (John Pankow) has to go along for the ride – and it’s a doozy.

Friedkin begins To Live and Die in L.A. with a thrilling set piece, involving terrorism in a highrise, that introduces Chance as a nervy stud. Then we meet Masters, and learn that he is anything but an ordinary criminal. Just when we have caught our breath, Friedkin toys with us in a scene that establishes that Chance is a reckless adrenaline freak.

The stage is now set for a manhunt, and Chance unleashes all his ruthlessness. Poor Vuckovich stands in for the audience as he and we are repeatedly shocked by Chance’s amorality, even corruption.

The car chase in Friedkin’s The French Connection remains the gold standard, but the one in To Live and Die in L.A. is also extraordinary. This one careens through LA’s freeways (including wrong way on the freeway), industrial areas and the cement channel of the Los Angeles River. The LA River has since been the site of countless movie chases, but it first was prominently featured in Point Blank and To Live and Die in L.A. may have been the river’s first car chase in a mainstream movie. All of the action is photographed by master cinematographer Robby Mueller.

Of course, along with the thrills of the chase and Chance’s astonishing behavior, we also get a counterfeiter procedural as Masters combines art, craft and greed as he prints his own faux money.

Willem Dafoe in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

This was Willem Dafoe’s first major film role, just before Platoon and The Last Temptation of Christ. Dafoe, in an understated performance, oozes menace as the smooth, but very lethal, Masters.

William Petersen inhabits Chance with none of the gruff lovability he would show on CSI. It’s a balls-to-the-wall performance. Interestingly, Petersen didn’t get high profile jobs for the next fifteen years until CSI.

Dean Stockwell is perfect as a shady lawyer. Debra Feuer, John Tuturro and the renegade filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr., also appear in supporting roles.

William L. Petersen and John Pankow in TO LIVE AND TO DIE IN L.A. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The ending is so dark that the studio insisted that Friedkin shoot an alternative ending, in which a main character improbably survives. Fortunately, that alternative ending was not affixed to the final cut of the film. You can view the alternative ending on YouTube, with the comments of Friedkin, Petersen and Pankow.

To Live and to Die in L.A. is available on Blu-Ray from Shout! Factory and in 4K from Kino Lorber. I’ll let you know when you can stream it or if it shows up again on TV.

THE LAST LULLABY: backing out of a contract hit

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Photo caption: Tom Sizemore and Sasha Alexander in THE LAST LULLABY. Courtesy of Chaillot Films.

The Last Lullaby is a surprisingly brilliant contemporary noir film from 2008 (that I KNOW that you haven’t seen).  Tom Sizemore plays a retired hit man, a professional loner now living what would be a comfortable loner life (except for his chronic insomnia).  He is offered a very large sum to take out a librarian (Sasha Alexander), but he is attracted to her and wonders why someone wants her dead?  And we ask, as in any noir film, is she the innocent that she seems? 

Sizemore, who just died this March,  is most remembered for his Oscar-nominated performance as Tom Hank’s sergeant in Saving Private Ryan. Sizemore was intense and charismatic and hugely talented, but his longtime cocaine addiction kept him off the screen and in the tabloids, rehab and jail. The Last Lullaby was a rare leading role for Sizemore, and showcased his magnetism.

Tom Sizemore in THE LAST LULLABY. Courtesy of Chaillot Films.

The Last Lullaby is the only feature directed by Jeffrey Goodman, and he adds the appropriate level of neo-noir dread to the suspense. Sizemore’s performance and a smart screenplay by Peter Biegen and Max Alan Collins carry this film, and Alexander is good, too.

Ray McKinnon, who played the heartbreakingly unhinged Reverend H.W. Smith in Deadwood and created the TV series Rectify, is credited here as Ominous figure.

The Last Lullaby is available to stream from Amazon (included with Prime), Vudu and redbox. 

NOIR CITY returns – and returns us to 1948

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Claire Trevor in RAW DEAL
Claire Trevor in RAW DEAL

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).
Richard Basehart in HE WALKED BY NIGHT

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

on TV: ASHES AND DIAMONDS: a killer wants to stop

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Photo caption: Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Coming up November 15 on Turner Classic Movies, a masterful director and his charismatic star ignite the war-end thriller Ashes and Diamonds, set amidst war-end treachery. It’s one of my Overlooked Noir.

It’s the end of WW II and the Red Army has almost completely liberated Poland from the Nazis. The future governance of Poland is now up in the air, and the Polish resistance can now stop killing Germans and start wrestling for control. Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young but experienced soldier in the Resistance. His commanders assign him to assassinate a communist leader.

Maciek is very good at targeted killing, but he’s weary of it. As he wants out, he finds love. But his commander is insisting on this one last hit.

This is Zbigniew Cybulski’s movie. Often compared to James Dean, Cybulski emanates electricity and unpredictability, Unusual for a leading man, he often wore glasses in his screen roles. He had only been screen acting for four years when he made Ashes and Diamonds. Cybulski died nine years later when hit by a train at age forty,

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Andrzej Wajda fills the movie with striking visuals, such as viewing Maciek’s love interest, the waitress Krystyna (Ewa Krzyzewska), alone amidst the detritus of last night’s party, through billows of cigarette smoke. Wajda’s triumphant signature is, literally, fireworks at the climax; the juxtaposition of the celebratory fireworks with Maciek’s emotional crisis is unforgettable.

Ewa Krzyzewska in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

Wajda adapted a famous 1948 Polish novel into this 1958 movie. In the adaptation, the filmmaker changed the emphasis from one character to another.

Ashes and Diamonds was the third feature for Andrzej Wajda, who became a seminal Polish filmmaker and received an honorary Oscar. US audiences may remember his 1983 art house hit Danton with Gerard Depardieu.

Ashes and Diamonds can be streamed from Amazon and AppleTV. It was featured at the 2020 Noir City film festival.

Zbigniew Cybulski in ASHES AND DIAMONDS

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

NIGHTMARE ALLEY: enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies

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Photo caption: Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s absorbing remake of the 1947 film noir classic, a cautionary fable of overreaching. Del Toro has deepened the minor characters, creating a showcase for many of our finest film actors.

It’s just before WW II and a drifter named Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is desperate enough to take a menial job in a transient carnival. In the first scene, we learn that Stan is lethally dangerous; he also has movie star good looks, a gift of charm and enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies.

Stan befriends (and beds) the world-weary Zeena (Toni Collette), who stars in a mind-reading act. Zeena is married to Pete (David Straithairn), a master of clairvoyance acts, whose alcoholism has dropped him from vaudeville stardom to this gutter-level carnival. Stan ingratiates himself with Pete and steals Pete’s notebook of secret codes. Armed with Pete’s secret system, Stan seduces the good-hearted and pretty, young Molly (Rooney Mara), and the two head off to launch a new nightclub act in the Big Time.

Stan and Molly achieve great success and encounter Lilith, who has her own phony psychologist racket. Stan sees an opportunity for even greater riches by fleecing the rich – pretending to communicate with their dead loved ones. Pete had warned Stan against “the spook business”, and Molly has moral objections. But Stan sees Lilith as an equally ruthless and amoral partner, and he proceeds with his scheme. Will he succeed? (Hint – this is a film noir.)

Bradley is very good as Stan, a guy who will do anything to win, and who is intolerable when he gets to the top. Blanchett is superb as the sleek and cynical Lilith. Willem Dafoe is perfect as Clem, the carnival boss; Clem’s pay-by-play description of geek recruitment is one of the best scenes this year.

Del Toro wrote the screenplay with his wife Kim Morgan who is also (YAY!) a longstanding movie blogger (Sunset Gun). The source material for both movies was the William Lindsay Gresham novel. Gresham had a buddy in the – Spanish Civil War who was a carnie abd fascinated Gresham with his tales of the carnie life.

The 1947 original runs one hour and fifty minutes. With my strong bias against overlong films, I was initially skeptical of the 2021 version’s two hours, thirty minutes running time. But del Toro and Morgan invest the extra forty minutes into enriching the minor roles played by Straithairn and Dafoe, and other fine character actors: Ron Perlman, Mary Steenbergen, Richard Jenkins, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver and Holt McCallany (Mindhunters).

Willem Dafoe in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

I recently rewatched the original 1947 Nightmare Alley, and it still stands up. I’m not usually a fan of Tyrone Power, but I’ll admit that he’s perfect as Stan, and his work at the end, when Stan is on the skids, is heartbreaking. Joan Blondell is excellent as Zeena, and Colleen Gray is compellingly adorable as Molly. Helen Walker’s turn as Lilith is brilliant, and it’s a shame that an auto accident scandal derailed her career. Ian Keith, a stage actor with very few memorable screen appearances, delivered a touching performance as Pete (in far less screen time than Straithairn gets).

Tamara Deverell should win the 2022 Academy Award for production design; she deserves it for Lilith’s art deco office suite alone, never mind for creating the extraordinary world of the carnivals.

Nightmare Alley is the first film i”ve seen with geek credits: Paul Anderson as Geek #1 and Jesse Buck as Geek #2. I also stayed to the end to see no animals were harmed – bad things happen to chickens, so the CGI effects in Nightmare Alley are pretty cluckin’ effective.

The final line is one of the all-time best. Nightmare Alley is one of the Best Movies of 2021, and is currently in theaters.