More than a tad bummed out over not being able to attend the 2022 Noir City festival, opening tonight at Oakland's Grand Theatre, we'll cheer ourselves up by nostalgically revisiting the memories of Noir City festivals gone by. . .
Particularly like the tres cool trailers a.k.a. overtures created by filmmaker Serena Bramble for the Noir City Film Festivals.
The Big Knockover: Noir City 15 Overture on Vimeo.
Serena Bramble's cinematic overture for the 14th Noir City Film Festival takes the cake for the sheer number of Hollywood stars - Bogey! Crawford! Garfield! Eddie G! - represented in a brief running time.
The epic Noir City film festival, lost to coronavirus lockdown in 2021, was slated to a new venue, Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre earlier this year, on January 29. Then along came, sadly, not Betty or Jones, but That Darn Omicron. Happily for fans of hard-boiled thrillers and cinema chiaroscuro, Noir City 19 has been rescheduled and will begin next Thursday.
To quote the official press release: 2022's edition, subtitled "They Tried to Warn Us!", showcases 12 movies from mid-20th century Hollywood sure to resonate with contemporary viewers. Included are shockingly prescient films focusing on megalomaniacal politicians, corrupt businessmen, neo-Nazis, racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality — even a viral epidemic!
This NOIR CITY program could not be more timely or topical.
As far as the 2020's go, that description sounds about right - and Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog would add "grifters," "grafters," "poseurs," "rat bastards", "sleazy oligarchs," "filthy rich dirtbags" and "craven cowards."
The press release adds:NOIR CITY 19: The Bay Area Film Noir Festival, will open with a double bill. First up, All the King's Men (1949), the noir-stained 1950 Best Picture Oscar winner, starring Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark, an ambitious Southern politician who doesn't let ethics interfere with his meteoric political rise. Crawford won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
It's paired with the world premiere of the FNF's latest 35mm restoration — The Argyle Secrets, a 1948 B-picture directed by Cy Endfield, returned to circulation this year through the partnership of the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive. The film's mystery centers around "The Argyle Album" containing the names of U.S. politicians and industrialists who abetted the Nazis in World War II.
Weeknight shows will be presented as double bills, with one $15 admission price for two movies. Saturday and Sunday shows will have separate admissions ($12.50) for each screening. All-Access Passports, granting admission to all 12 films, are available for $100, a $30 savings over the purchase price of individual tickets. FNF proceeds from the NOIR CITY festival benefit the foundation's efforts to rescue and restore noir films in danger of being permanently lost or damaged.
The full schedule, Passports (all-access passes), individual tickets, and program notes are available at NoirCity.com.
Sadly for the tough talkin' hard-boiled noirista-filled gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we will not be able to attend the 2022 festival. Sincerely hope we will be back watching classic noir in big screen glory in 2023. . . We shall miss all our friends who we enjoyed hanging out with at past Noir City events at San Francisco's Castro Theatre.
Today, we celebrate the natal anniversary of the great Dick Powell, born November 14, 1904.
In a career both in front of and behind the cameras, Dick Powell excelled in movies, TV and, with the Richard Diamond, Private Detective series, radio. First became aware of Powell via his starring roles in a slew of 1930's Warner Bros. musicals, starting with 42nd Street.
These vehicles for musical stars Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, the occasional WB leading man (Jimmy Cagney, Warren William) and a host of memorable character actors (Aline MacMahon, Ruth Donnelly, Ned Sparks, Guy Kibbee, Frank McHugh, Hugh Herbert) would be shown frequently on TV back in the 1970's, causing viewers' jaws to drop precipitously upon watching the mind-blowing production numbers concocted by genius/madman Busby Berkeley.
Gold Diggers Of 1933, the followup to the wildly popular 42nd Street, exemplifies the phrase pre-Code and is featured on this Trailers From Hell video.
One of this writer's favorite Busby Berkeley spectaculars from DAMES is the I Only Have Eyes For You number.
The ultimate silver screen tribute to Dick Powell is that he got caricatured in animated cartoons.
Said caricature of Dick Powell gets a "Buzzard Berkelee" musical number in the 1938 Merrie Melodie cartoon, A Star Is Hatched, directed by Friz Freleng.
A host of Hollywood star caricatures populate A Star Is Hatched, especially starting at 3:20.
Arguably, Dick Powell's crowning achievement in his stretch as Warner Brothers cornerstone would be the infamous CONVENTION CITY, still (amazingly) a lost film, which we hope turns up and turns out to be even more scandalous and risque than imagined.
Even more than his performances in classic musicals, we love Dick Powell's contributions to film noir, starting as a very unconventional Phillip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet.
He co-stars with Evelyn Keyes in Johnny O' Clock, written and directed by Robert Rossen.
Pitfall is a prime example of that film noir sub-genre, "don't mess with Lizabeth Scott."
We thank the Film Noir Foundation big time for restoring Cry Danger.
Starring Kirk Douglas as an extrenely ruthless but highly effective film producer, The Bad And The Beautiful, directed with panache by Vincente Minnelli, is a fascinating look at the making of movies and an all-time favorite classic film of the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog. Dick Powell and Gloria Grahame are outstanding in juicy supporting roles.
Thanks to YouTube, one can watch his extensive work in television through the 1950's and early 1960's, including Zane Grey Theatre, Four Star Playhouse and his own series, The Dick Powell Theatre.
Finishing this tribute, we note that the king of 1930's Warner Brothers musicals and (after Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, John Garfield and Bogey) film noir even waxed an album, The Dick Powell Song Book, in 1958. Will listen to it now, raise a toast to Mr. Powell and wish everyone a Happy Sunday!
Love many movie genres, from sci-fi to silents to musicals to psychotronica to animation here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, but none more than film noir. After reading a magnificent piece on classical music in animated cartoons (most frequently employed by one Carl W. Stalling) by Vincent Alexander, this blogger turns his attentions to the vivid and expressive music of film noir.
Odds Against Tomorrow, a real and reel masterpiece directed by the master of all genres, Robert Wise, and one of the last but very, very best examples of hard-hitting film noir, features a killer score by John Lewis of The Modern Jazz Quartet.
This is such an amazing and beautifully realized movie we wish that the ridiculously multi-talented Harry Belafonte, who stars as a young entertainer deeply in the throes of a gambling addiction, had continued further as an indie film producer (note: many years later, he produced The Angel Levine, Buck & The Preacher and Beat Street).
Louis Malle's film Elevator To The Gallows features an unbeatable combo: outstanding Miles Davis music, the brilliant acting of Jeanne Moreau and the director's original synthesis of film noir and French New Wave cinema stylings.
Among the hard-boiled American crime thrillers so beloved by the Malles, Chabrols, Truffauts and Jean-Pierre Melvilles of the world, the classic "find the bastard who murdered me" mystery D.O.A. remains a personal favorite.
The "Fisherman" nightclub in D.O.A. looks like the place to be for red hot jazz on a Saturday night. We sincerely hope the audience left generous tips.
As fate would have it, the writer of this blog shared big time enthusiasm for this excellent movie with an old and much-missed friend who passed in his sleep on Christmas 2020. . .So Mr. Blogmeister raises his goblet in a toast to my film buff compadre - and to the ace filmmaker who helmed D.O.A., producer, director and cinematographer Rudolf Maté, one of the all-time movie greats. Gotta love a guy who who worked making movies in the United States, Hungary, Austria, Germany, France and the United Kingdom!
As celebrated as Stanley Kubrick's spectacular 1960s and 1970s movies are, it's those early film noirs that may well be my personal favorites among the director's illustrious, provocative and flamboyant cinematic career. His second feature film, Killer's Kiss, shot in NYC, was an indie film made on a portion of a shoestring, but beautifully and strikingly shot and edited. Both the soundtracks and the cinematography in Killer's Kiss and The Killing are memorable.
The Killing = "all this noir - and Sterling Hayden, too."
We extend a respectful tip of the battered fedora to prolific poster Arthur Grant on Vimeo. Mr. Grant has done us the favor of singling out many film noir classics which feature incredible soundtracks. These include the delightfully corrosive Billy Wilder flick Ace in the Hole (sneering snark by Kirk Douglas, music by Hugo Friedhofer), The Big Combo (music by David Raksin, Mise-en-scène by Joseph H. "Gun Crazy" Lewis) and the unabashedly tacky and garish love triangle melodrama Desert Fury, featuring a terrific Miklos Rozsa soundtrack.
Frankly, the film the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog would choose, both for its soundtrack and truly cosmic understanding of the bottomless depths of an ever-spinning noir universe would be the delirious Mickey Spillane adaptation Kiss Me Deadly, directed with apropo fever dream delirium by Robert Aldrich. Aldrich subsequently directed Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, the more sedate of the two movies.
The composer who carried film noir music into the 1960's and extended it into the world of television was the great Henry Mancini. We love us some Mancini here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog!
Closing today's post is this blog's all-time favorite album of re-imagined, lovingly deconstructed and re-constructed movie music, Oranj Symphonette Plays Mancini.
Listening to this outstanding record reminds the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog how much we miss multi-instrumentalist, Oranj Mancinis leader, friend and avid classic movies/animation buff Ralph Carney (1956-2017). Also reminds us how much we loathe, detest and have difficulty accepting these losses. . .
After binge-watching comedies and cartoons for months, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are ready for a deep dive into film noir - and nobody made more uncompromising, gripping and vividly atmospheric noir thrillers than Robert Siodmak (1900-1973).
Robert Siodmak arrived in Hollywood in 1939 and made 23 movies there. Many of them were hard-hitting crime dramas as The Killers, notable for exemplifying the themes and mise en scène of film noir.
That said, it is simplistic to describe him as a director who only excelled at film noir, as brilliant and prolific as Siodmak was at the genre. He worked in all genres, both in America and Europe.
From Robert Siodmak's first U.S. produced opus that dipped an unsuspecting toe into the icy waters of film noir, Phantom Lady, it was clear that the Dresden-born director could adapt the UFA German expressionist visual style to mysteries and crime thrillers with exceptional panache.
Since we can't go out to the movies for big screen fun, here are some trailers from Robert Siodmak masterpieces that positively oooooooooooze the pungent essence of film noir.
The Spiral Staircase is among the most terrifying and paranoid psychological thrillers and more than a tad reminiscent of Robert Wiene's way-out 1920 chiller The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari. Can't discuss the plot without spoiling this tense and diabolical film!
Robert Siodmak began making films in Germany in 1929, but, after making Brennendes Geheimnis (The Burning Secret) in 1933, found himself on minister of propaganda Josef Goebbels' hit list and attacked for not being a Nazi shit-bag. He immediately high-tailed it to France, where Siodmak would both avoid being a victim of The Night Of The Long Knives and work successfully as an émigré director for the rest of the decade. In Paris, Siodmak was more of a Howard Hawks style "all genres" director than a specialist in thrillers. He even made Dannielle Darrieux musicals!
Over their long careers, Robert Siodmak and his brother Curt, novelist, science fiction author and screenwriter, hit bulls-eyes in many of 20th century pop culture's sweet spots. We wager that one of the main reasons the Siodmak brothers were not fawned over and lauded as great directors and screenwriters was their uncanny skill at genre pictures.
The Siodmaks consistently hit many favorite B-movie genres of the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog - Universal Pictures' signature Gothic horror, science fiction, murder mysteries, crime dramas, film noir - out of the park.
Our introduction to Robert Siodmak was the excellent Universal horror movie Son of Dracula, a late-night television Creature Features perennial back in the 1970's and 1980's.
After many viewings, it still lands squarely in our genre picture wheelhouse as does The Wolfman, just one of many classic movies with a screenplay by Curt Siodmak.
Filmmaker Joe Dante elaborates on the inventiveness and stylishness of this very Gothic opus. Have a hunch Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder watched Son of Dracula while planning Young Frankenstein. Robert Siodmak's uber-creepy contribution to the Universal horror genre emphatically illustrates that it is not a good day when a fortune teller informs you that you're destined to marry a corpse!
Some of Robert Siodmak's American films turn tried-and-true genres upside down. In Christmas Holiday, what looks like a small town Americana tale starring Hollywood musical stars Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly turns out to be a thriller, imbued with the leads' most un-prototypical performances. While Gene Kelly periodically played character roles in such films as Inherit The Wind, he portrays a psycho (actually, quite well) here who at no point dances or sings "I Got Rhythm."
The Killers, featuring a script by John Huston, is the feature film debut of Burt Lancaster, who makes the most of his part. This adaptation of a short story by Ernest Hemingway ranks among the masterpieces of film noir.
Another masterpiece of film noir is Criss Cross, a white-hot, delirious, yet also subtle, sensitive and beautifully realized nugget of cinematic genius. Along with Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy, no movie before or since expresses the sex-crossed lovers theme quite like this.
Don't have to see the doomed couple drool all over each other to get the picture - they're hornier than Maurice Chevalier in The Smiling Lieutenant. Throughout, the incendiary performances by Burt Lancaster and femme fatale Yvonne De Carlo are on the money. Want to die anytime soon? No. Want to have as good sex as Lancaster and De Carlo do (offscreen) in this movie? YES!
Founder of the Noir City film festival, author and Czar of Noir Eddie Muller elaborates on this unbeatable classic movie on TCM's Noir Alley.
While many of the great Robert Siodmak films, from Fly By Night to The Suspect to Christmas Holiday to The Strange Case of Uncle Harry to The Dark Mirror to Cry of the City to The File on Thelma Jordon, can be seen in their entirety on YouTube, they lose approximately 95.7% of their dramatic, cinematic and emotional impact on the small screen. That's as diminished as the signature diminished scale riff frequently played by jazz trumpeter Lee "The Sidewinder" Morgan!
Although going out to the movies, unfortunately, remains a non-option for the foreseeable future, don't watch these fantastic and atmospheric classic films on your Iphone any more than you would watch a 70mm print of Lawrence Of Arabia, here in his 1971 "Dirty Larry" incarnation, on a tiny screen.
After his career making memorable American films ended, Siodmak returned to Europe and continued directing films, including noir thrillers, through the end of the 1960's. Particularly notable: The Devil Came At Night (1957), a crime drama about a serial killer on the loose in Nazi Germany.
Robert Siodmak's swan songs as a filmmaker would be westerns, historical dramas and sword-and-sandal epics. In that respect, his career parallel another principal architect of film noir, the great Anthony Mann.
"Now, more than ever, it's essential to resist the dread and paranoia of contemporary times by looking beyond our differences. Let's appreciate the noir ethos for the creativity it inspires and the warning flares it long ago flashed on screens worldwide. Noir has no national boundaries. It's the same story, everywhere." Eddie Muller a.k.a. The Czar Of Noir
As Victoria Mature, ace opera singer (and daughter of Victor Mature) is seen doing in the Noir City International poster, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall be traveling to the mecca of classic movies, San Francisco's Castro Theatre, soon. . .
Why? To see the 2020 Noir City Film Festival, of course!
Dyed-in-the-wool film buffs return to that quintessential Art Deco movie palace, the Castro Theatre, for heaping helpings of desperation, thuggery, skullduggery, chicanery, double-crossing dames, sex-starved saps, bullet-riddled sedans, doomed relationships, nervous cigarette smoking, cheap hotels, furtive claustrophobia, post-WWII style ennui and inevitably, endless roads leading nowhere.
As always, the Film Noir Foundation deserves kudos, bravos and huzzahs for putting their money where their Jack Daniels-stained, Tareyton-burned, lipstick-smudged mouths are for presenting newly struck 35mm prints of numerous classic films for the Noir City Film Festival.
This time the foreboding-filled cinematic extravaganza is literally all over the map. Represented in the program: directors Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy), Román Viñoly Barreto (Argentina), Julio Bracho (Mexico), Zbynek Brynych (Czechoslovakia), Julien Duvivier (France), Roberto Gavaldón (Mexico), Kim Ki-young (South Korea), Helmut Käutner (West Germany), Toshio Masuda (Japan), Jean-Pierre Melville (France), Masahiro Shinoda (Japan), Andrzej Wajda (Poland) and Jirí Weiss (Czechoslovakia).
The official Noir City press release elaborates:
"The 10-day excursion travels through hot-blooded nightclubs of the Mexican cabareteras, neon-streaked alleys of Japanese yakuza thrillers, the stylish Parisian underworld, Italian palazzos hiding crimes of every social strata, a Kafkaesque Prague as envisioned by the Czech New Wave — even a rare serial killer film set in Nazi Germany made by Hollywood's finest director of film noir, Robert Siodmak.
The Film Noir Foundation will premiere two new restorations at NOIR CITY 18, both little-known 1950s noir gems from Argentine director Román Viñoly Barreto: La bestia debe morir (1952) and El vampiro negro (1953).
Both restorations were completed in 2019 by the FNF's preservation partner, UCLA Film & Television Archive, with support provided from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust (The HFPA Trust)."
This year's pungent, smoldering and foreboding-filled Yule Log from the Film Noir Foundation hits the silver screen at San Francisco's Castro Theatre on Wednesday evening. The show features a Merry Noir Christmas film which would later inspire the 1964 Bette Davis vehicle Dead Ringer. Buy tickets for Noir City Xmas here.
In La Otra (a.k.a. The Other One), a brooding revenge drama set at Christmastime, the always stunning Dolores del Rio stars in a dual role as estranged twin sisters - one, a chronically depressed and poverty-stricken manicurist, the other a wife of an extremely wealthy man - who meet again and soon see their lives get turned upside down, backwards and sideways.
La Otra, shot by the brilliant cinematographer Alex Phillips, was the first production from Dolores del Rio's independent company, as well as the initial collaboration between director Roberto Gavaldón and screenwriter (and also activist, prolific novelist and short story author) José Revueltas, who quickly made names for themselves as Mexico's top filmmakers. For more info on Mr. Gavaldón's career, check out Will Noah's book, Roberto Gavaldón: Mexico’s Auteur of Noir.
The 2020 Noir City Festival transpires a few weeks from now at the Castro Theatre on January 24-February 2.
