Noir City

NOIR CITY is here – don’t miss these three femmes fatale

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

Tomorrow, the Noir City film fest opens at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland and runs through February 2. This year’s program showcases the women of film noir – which femme is the most fatale?

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. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person, this year with his TCM colleague Alicia Malone.

Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET
Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET

It’s a great program of 24 movies over ten days, jam packed with unforgettable female performances that span from the iconic (Jane Greer in Out of the Past) to the seductive (Claire Trevor in Murder, My Sweet) to the, well, savage (Ann Savage in Detour). Here are three of my personal favorites that you should not miss:

  • The Narrow Margin, Noir City’s opening night film with Marie Windsor. In this taut 71 minutes of tension, growly cop Charles McGraw plays hide-and-seek with a team of hit men on a claustrophobic train. Windsor is unforgettable as the assassins’ target. McGraw might be film noir’s toughest Tough Guy, but Windsor gives him all the tough he can handle, and matches him snarl for snarl. “Relax, Percy, I wouldn’t want any of that nobility to rub off on me”.
  • 99 River Street with Evelyn Keyes and Peggy Castle. Film noir tends to be about guys with bad luck, but nobody would trade their luck with Ernie Driscoll (John Payne). Ernie has lost his boxing career to a fluke cut and his abusive and slutty wife (a suitably insufferable Castle) to a mobster, and, now, he’s been framed for a murder. His only hope is to track down the Real Killer while driving around with the murdered corpse in his cab. Evelyn Keyes plays a Good Girl would-be actress who goes along for the ride; problem is, Ernie can’t tell when she’s acting. Nobody can keep ’em guessing like Evelyn Keyes.
  • Cry Danger with Rhonda Fleming. Rocky (Dick Powell) has been released from prison; he knows he didn’t commit the crime, but he knows that his alibi is phony, too. Trying to figure out who framed and unframed him, he seeks out an old flame, his partner’s wife Nancy (Rhonda Fleming).  The exquisitely beautiful Nancy is as wholesome as anyone can be with a hubbie in the hoosegow.  We know that. if she turns out to be a femme fatale, it’s going to be a major punch in the gut for Rocky. Bonus: Rocky’s wing man is the perjuring alibi witness (an indelible Richard Erdman): “Occasionally I always drink too much.” It’s hard to top a frame, a drunk, a dame, hidden loot and an LA trailer park. This is not available to stream, so see it at Noir City.
Dick Powell and Rhonda Fleming in CRY DANGER

Read my festival preview, NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale, which lists the twelve films from this year’s Noir City program that are NOT available to stream. Noir City is your best chance to see them.

I’ve written about The Narrow Margin, 99 River Street, Raw Deal, Caged, Cry Danger, The Prowler and Murder, My Sweet in my Overlooked Noir feature. Check them out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

Don’t miss Noir City. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City. Of the nine film festivals that I cover each year, I always insist on attending Noir City in person. To steal from Eddie Muller, see you in the shadows.

NOIR CITY returns – with the spotlight on femmes fatale

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Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET
Photo caption: Evelyn Keyes and John Payne in 99 RIVER STREET

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns January 24 and runs through February 2 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland. This year’s program showcases the women of film noir – which femme is the most fatale?

Come to think about it, noir is the only movie genre that practically REQUIRES a pivotal female character. You can make a western, a comedy, a sci fi, a war movie or even, these days, a romance without any women on the screen. But not a noir.

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. You know Eddie Muller from TCM’s Noir Alley, and he hosts Noir City in person, this year with his TCM colleague Alicia Malone.

Recent Noir City fests have introduced us to film noir from other countries and have sampled neo-noir. This year’s Noir City program goes back to the basics of American movies from the classic film noir period of the 1940s and 1950s. The program spans the genre, highlighting essential female performances, both famous and overlooked:

  • Out of the Past with Jane Greer manipulating Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in her most celebrated Good Girl/Bad Girl role.
  • The Narrow Margin: Charles McGraw might be film noir’s toughest Tough Guy, but Marie Windsor gives him all the tough he can handle, and matches him snarl for snarl.
  • Murder, My Sweet, featuring the Queen of Noir, Claire Trevor.
  • Raw Deal, where Trevor and the underused Marcia Hunt form a ménage a noir with poor Dennis O’Keefe. Two for the price of one.
  • 99 River Street: Nobody could keep the guys guessing more than the alluring Evelyn Keyes.
  • Tension with Audrey Totter as the most dismissive, humiliating, cuckolding wife in film noir.
  • Cry Danger and the ultra rare Inferno, with Rhonda Fleming, arguably the most beautiful American movie star of all time. When Rhonda goes bad, it’s a real gut punch for the sap.
  • Caged, the prototype for Orange Is the New Black. Eleanor Parker was the one nominated for an Oscar, but Hope Emerson, in an obviously LGBTQ role, steals the movie.
  • Detour: Ann Savage as perhaps the most rapaciously predatory and unhinged of femme fatales. One of the few Hollywood films where the leading lady was intentionally de-glamorized with oily, stringy hair.

Thirteen films on the program will be projected in 35mm.

Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Dennis O'Keefe in RAW DEAL
Marsha Hunt, Claire Trevor and Dennis O’Keefe in RAW DEAL

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

  • Hell’s Half Acre
  • The Sleeping City
  • Tension
  • Alias Nick Beale
  • The Long Wait
  • Raw Deal
  • Mary Ryan, Detective
  • My True Story
  • The Reckless Moment
  • Tomorrow Is Another Day
  • Cry Danger
  • Inferno

Next week, just as Noir City opens, I’ll be back to feature three Must See movies in the program. I’ve previously written about The Narrow Margin, 99 River Street, Raw Deal, Caged, Cry Danger, The Prowler and Murder, My Sweet in my Overlooked Noir feature. Check them out, along with my Overlooked Neo-noir.

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

BLACK GRAVEL: too jaded for love?

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Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

On December 14, Turner Classic Movies airs the super hard-to-find German neo-noir romance Black Gravel. It’s not streaming, so this is your best chance.

In the German film noir Black Gravel (Schwarzer Kies), Inge, the beautiful German wife of an American military base commander, runs into the shady hustler Robert, her former lover. He is one cynical dude and an asshole, but he doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Their reunion is bad for her, bad for him and bad for everyone.

The most common situation in film noir is a guy who falls for a dame (or a dame who falls for a guy) to his ruin. The sap is infatuated and thinks he’s in love. Here we have two characters and the question is whether they are really in love. Robert insists that he doesn’t love ANYONE, even as he is trying to rekindle the romance with Inge. Inge insists that it’s over. But is it over – for either of them? That’s what – in the end – Black Gravel is really all about – noir romance

In the last twenty minutes, the circumstances swivel. 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.

Ingmar Zeisberg and Helmut Wildt in BLACK GRAVEL

Robert is played by Helmut Wildt, a German actor I hadn’t seen before. He is charismatic and confident, with a breezy swagger that reminds me of Ben Gazzara. The deeply conflicted Inge is played ably by Ingmar Zeisberg.

Anita Höfer, Helmut Wildt and Ingmar Zeisberg in BLACK GRAVEL

Black Gravel is set in a tiny German town corrupted by the presence of an US Air Force base, It’s the Phenix City of Germany, a sordid, trashy place. The character of Elli (Anita Höfer) is LITERALLY a slut.

Black Gravel is filled with tart observations of I Like Ike America, with its bland, conventional uniformity. The Germans are an amoral lot, reduced to leeching off the Americans. The Americans are clueless marks.

Helmut Wildt and Anita Höfer in BLACK GRAVEL

Note: A dog dies in the first minute of the film. I recommend that you don’t let this put you off this superb film; but, there it is, you’ve been warned.

The current version restores some bits that were cut from the film in 1961, supposedly as offensive to Jews. Those were probably the anti-semitic slurs uttered by unsympathetic characters; these slurs were not intended to debase Jews, but to illustrate the post-war continuation of antisemitism among Germans. (There’s some German racism in here, too). These are actually ANTI-antisemitic moments in the movie that were misunderstood at the time.

Unfortunately, it’s not streamable, but screenings can be booked from Kino Lorber, and it’s available for purchase in Blu-ray and DVD. I saw it at the 2020 Noir City.

Black Gravel was written and directed by Helmut Käutner. We don’t recognize this until late in the movie, but it turns out there’s no better noir romance than Black Gravel.

Helmut Wildt and Ingmar Zeisberg in BLACK GRAVEL

Wrapping up NOIR CITY 2024

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Jean Rochefort in SYMPHONY FOR A MASSACRE

I’ve always enjoyed Noir City, the Film Noir Foundation’s flagship film festival, but I found the 2024 version to be especially rewarding. My attendance is usually driven by the opportunity to see films that are new to me, and those which aren’t available on VOD or even DVD. I particularly value being introduced to international noir, as I pointed out in my Noir City preview

It’s also great to hear the films introduced by film scholars Eddie Muller, Imogen Sarah Smith and Alan K. Rode. The 600-seat Grand Lake Theater, a period movie palace, was packed for each of the double features that I attended.

I experienced six films at this fest – two from France, two from the UK, one from Japan and one from the US – and four were new to me. They were:

  • The Asphalt Jungle (US, 1950): Muller and Smith pointed out that the Production Code had banned filmmakers from depicting the means of committing crimes. So John Huston and the team behind The Asphalt Jungle blasted right through that stop sign in showing the intricate planning and execution of the heist. Those aspects and the assembly of the heist team are familiar elements of every heist film since, but they were completely original in The Asphalt Jungle. This film is especially well-cast (Sam Jaffe, Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, John McIntyre and a 23-year-old Marilyn Monroe), but this time, I especially noticed the sparkling performances of supporting players Brad Dexter and Marc Lawrence.
  • Symphony for a Massacre (France 1963): Five crooks plan a big drug score that requires a large amount of capitalization, which will tap most of them out. They collect the fortune, send off the bag man and, then, one of the five steals it all. Each of the crooks becomes a detective trying to recover his money; of course, one of them is only pretending to look for the loot. It looks like the perfect crime, but there’s a slip, a surprise, another slip and…. Symphony for a Massacre is an early career showcase for Jean Rochefort, who plays a particularly amoral character with a reptilian smugness. Co-writer Jose Giovanni, who plays one of the crooks, knew crooked ways from his own eleven years in prison (and was concealing an even darker past). This is a top notch noir, and, because it is available for streaming, I’l be featuring it soon on this blog.
  • Elevator to the Gallows (France, 1958): I’ve written about Elevator to the Gallows and its groundbreaking aspects, but it was such a pleasure to watch it on the big screen with a sellout crowd.
  • Across the Bridge (UK, 1957): The ever-intense Rod Steiger is All In as a German-born British merger-and-acquisition buccaneer who is in NYC to gobble up a couple more companies when he learns that Scotland Yard is examining his books. He knows that, within a week, his three billion pound fraud will be discovered (and that’s in 1957 money!). He goes on the lam, figuring that he can travel incognito on the two-day train trip to Mexico and slip across the border before anyone is looking for him. He has money stashed in Mexico City that will buy him time to find a more permanent, extradition-free new home. But the news breaks while he is on the train, so he switches identities with a fellow passenger. His new phony identity brings a very unwelcome surprise. Steiger’s character is a brusque bully, used to getting his way. Usually in film noir, we’re rooting for the anti-hero to get away with it, and that’s not exactly the case here, but Steiger makes his financier’s predicaments and his attempts to evade them absolutely VIVID. The film’s director, Ken Annakin, observed that Steger was “trying to out-Brando Brando”. The story becomes a faceoff between Steiger’s fugitive and the corrupt Mexican police chief (an excellent Noel Willman). Oh – and there’s Dolores, one of the greatest three dogs (with Monty and Asta) in film noir. This is a first class movie, but a bit of a Lost Film, not available on VOD.
  • Zero Focus (Japan, 1961): This is a dark mystery story with a woman’s focus; in fact, the three most pivotal characters turn out to be women. A man disappears, and his new bride, with some unreliable assistance from his employer and the cops, tries to find out what happened to him. Secrets are revealed, Rashomon-like, at the end , when the mystery is “solved” in differing ways by the police and, then, by two of the women characters; (the screenwriter also wrote Rashomon). The setting is a bleak, wintry coast. I found Zero Focus a little too long and talky at the end, but otherwise an excellent noir,
  • The Strongroom (UK, 1962): The premise in this 74-minute British programmer is that the crooks easily rob a bank, but then realize that they’ll swing for capital murder if the bank employees now locked in the airtight vault succumb. In a race against time, the robbers try to break back into the bank – and it’s much harder the second time. There’s a shockingly abrupt, but satisfying, ending. Most of the audience recognized an actor playing one of the hoods, Darren Nesbitt, who went on to be a character actor in such memorable 1960s fare such as The Blue Max, The Prisoner and Where Eagles Dare.

Bottom line: Noir City revealed two hitherto unknown classics: Symphony for a Massacre and Across the Bridge. I’ll be writing more about each of them.

Rod Steiger in ACROSS THE BRIDGE

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.

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

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

THE SNIPER: lethal mommy issues

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Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper is an unfortunately prescient film noir that tracks the loner Edward Miller (Arthur Franz), whose misogyny drives him to murder a series of San Francisco women in what seem like random shootings.

From the beginning, it’s very clear that 1) every encounter with a woman pushes Miller’s buttons, and 2) he is trying to control a compulsion to shoot them.

When ER doctor treating him for a burn asks, “Can I ask you a question? Were you ever in a mental institution?”, Miller replies, “Only when I was in prison – in the psycho ward.” Uh oh.

Understandable public hysteria triggers a manhunt, led by a seasoned detective lieutenant (Adolphe Menjou) and his snarky assistant (Gerald Mohr), a guy who is never witty but thinks he is. The embattled police chief is played by Frank Faylen (cabbie Ernie in It’s a Wonderful Life). The cops don’t understand who they are looking for or how to track him down.

If The Sniper is any indication, the SFPD’s police methods of communications, investigation and crowd control  were very primitive in 1952.

A police psychologist (Richard Kiley) educates the cops about the killer’s profile, and they finally close in. The weakest part of The Sniper is a talky “message picture” segment where the psychologist tries to convince some civic dinosaurs that the mentally ill need treatment to keep them from killing the rest of us. It’s as lame as the Simon Oakland epilogue lecture in Psycho. 

It’s notable that The Sniper was released in 1952, before “active shooter” was a thing. This was 14 years before the Texas Tower shootings and 16 years before Peter Bogdanovich’s similarly-themed fictional narrative Targets. The Zodiac Killer, a real life anonymous serial killer who communicated directly with the police, first struck 16 years after The Sniper (and also terrorized the Bay Area).

The Sniper is also an early exploration of misogynistic attitudes and violence. Even the casual remarks from the folks on the street illustrate unconsciously sexist attitudes on gender.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper depends on the performance by Arthur Franz, and he is excellent. Of course, he gets to play full psycho, but he is best when he is observing women and silently registering disgust and repulsion. With his countenance otherwise placid, the look in Franz’s eyes changes at the instant that he is triggered into antipathy; you can see him thinking Bitch! Slut! This performance is Franz’s career topper.

I had a vague recollection of Franz, but couldn’t place his other screen work, which was primarily in amiable supporting roles. Franz was the young corporal who narrates The Sands of Iwo Jima, a young ship’s officer in The Caine Mutiny and had a supporting turn in the fine Fritz Lang/Dana Andrews noir Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. But most of his 152 screen credits came in 1950s and 1960s television, including five guest appearances in Perry Mason.

Marie Windsor and Arthur Franz n THE SNIPER

The most dazzling performance in The Sniper is Marie Windsor’s as one of Miller’s laundry delivery customers, the singer in a bar. Windsor is at her most charismatic; her sexy charm, however, is exactly what rubs Miller the wrong way.

Menjou is solid, but these are not Mohr’s or Faylen’s best performances. Jay Novello sparkles in a very small role as the tavern owner who employs Marie Windsor’s songstress.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

The Sniper is directed by the accomplished Edward Dmytryk (Murder My Sweet, Crossfire, The Hidden Room, The Caine Mutiny). Dmytryk elevates the tension with dramatic shots from the sniper’s and victim’s points of view. Dmytryk even gets a lttle showy when Miller shoots someone and the fatal bullet breaks the glass on her publicity poster.

The San Francisco locations are superbly detailed in the blog ReelSF, an essential for Bay Area cinephiles. (However, the boardwalk carnival was shot in Southern California, not at San Francisco’s Playland-at-the-Beach.)

The Sniper is very hard to find. It is not available to stream, and I needed to buy the French DVD. The Sniper is scheduled to screen at the 2022 Noir City film festival.

Adolphe Menjou and Gerald Mohr in THE SNIPER

THE ARGYLE SECRETS: racing for a politically explosive Macguffin

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Marjorie Lord and William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

The Argyle Secrets is a fast-paced 63-minute espresso noir, a race to find a politically explosive Macguffin. That Macguffin is the Argyle Album, a list of those Americans playing footsy with the Nazis, just in case Hitler might win the war. This list has obvious value, both as a news media exposé and as blackmail leverage. value.

The Argyle Secrets starts out with voice-over exposition, flashes of the characters to come, and some rapid voice-over exposition from our protagonist, the investigative reporter Harry Mitchell (William Gargan).

Mitchell has the opportunity to meet a visiting national columnist (George Anderson), who tells him about the existence of, but not the content of the Argyle Album. When the columnist suddenly dies amid suspicious circumstances, Mitchell comes under suspicion and goes on the run to solve the case and prove his innocence. Of course, he also wants the Big Scoop for his own newspaper.

George Anderson and William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

But Harry Mitchell is not alone in his pursuit of the Argyle Album. Just like in that Macguffin classic The Maltese Falcon, he is racing devious characters with multiple aliases. In pursuit of the Argyle Album themselves, they’re now in pursuit of Harry. There’s even a fat man in a white suit (Jack Reitzen).

The fat man is a solo operator, but there’s also a gang with an accented leader (John Banner, 20 years before his Sgt. Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes) and sunglasses-wearing muscle (Mickey Simpson) – and they’re willing to use a blowtorch on Harry. Plus a shifty fence (Peter Brocco).

There’s also the alluring Marla (Marjorie Lord), a sexy femme fatale who may or may not be loyal to the gang. Fondling Harry’s lapels, she puts on her best Brigid O’Shaughnessy and coos, “You think I’m really rotten, don’t you? I am. I really am.”

The plot transpires over 24 hours. Who will find the Argyle Album? Is Marla playing Harry? Will Harry survive?

William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

William Gargan carries the story as Harry. Gargan made a career of playing fictional detectives – Barrie Craig for four years in the popular radio series Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, then Ellery Queen in three movies and Martin Kane in 51 television episodes.

Marjorie Lord in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

Marjorie Lord, who considered herself primarily a stage actress, did massive amounts of television, especially 227 episodes playing Danny Thomas’s wife in The Danny Thomas Show (plus another 24 episodes as the same character in in Make Room for Granddaddy).

However, Lord is right at home playing a movie femme fatale in The Argyle Secrets, exuding sexuality and unashamed self-interest.

The Argyle Secrets was written and directed by Cy Endfield, then a 34-year-old Orson Welles protege, in what he called his first film as an auteur. Blacklisted in the US, Endfield went on to direct the fine 1957 British noir Hell Drivers and the 1964 hit Zulu.

The Argyle Secrets has been newly restored by the the Film Noir Foundation. The world premiere 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets will be at the 2022 Noir City film festival.

The Argyle Secrets is very hard to find and is not available to stream; I expect that a Film Noir Foundation DVD will become available.

Marjorie Lord and William Gargan in THE ARGYLE SECRETS

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.