I'm sure many of you saw this article on the Noir festival in
SF , in the NYTimes of today...but just in case...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/movies/29noir.html?_r=1&ref=movies&oref=sl
ogin Steve Novak
Cinefrog@comcast.net
January 29, 2007 Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, Nights Are Noir
in Fog City
Pix captions: The Castro Theater in San Francisco on opening
night of the Noir City film festival. John Ireland and Marsha
Hunt in ³Raw Deal² (1948). Noir before the term was coined:
Marsha Hunt, now 89, on the Castro stage during an
intermission.
By WENDELL JAMIESON SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 28 ‹ The orange and
blue neon lights of the Castro Theater shone blurrily on the
damp asphalt beneath the crisscrossing catenary wires of the
streetcars. The words on the marquee in the Friday night
gloom, read: ³Marsha Hunt: In Person.²
Ms. Hunt made more than 50 movies before her career was
wrecked in 1950 by the Hollywood blacklist. One of them, a
1948 crime melodrama called ³Raw Deal,² has gone on to an
unlikely second life as a favorite of the cultish devotees of
film noir. On Friday it opened the fifth annual Noir City
film festival here, and Ms. Hunt, 89, was on hand to watch
its dreamlike silvery hues make a rare appearance on a big ‹
very big ‹ screen.
Lithe and glowing, Ms. Hunt took the stage after the film and
said she was surprised not only that this dark little B movie
had found fans nearly 60 years after its release, but that so
many of them were here, nearly filling the Castro¹s more than
1,400 seats. The crowd was a mix of young and old, polished
and scruffy, with only a few fedoras in sight.
³I can¹t get over this,² Ms. Hunt said as the film festival¹s
founder and organizer, Eddie Muller, genially interviewed her
at the foot of the stage.
³It was a strange sort of film,² she added, ³about as
negative as you can get. They hadn¹t coined the term Œnoir¹
yet.²
She¹s right. It¹s hard to imagine a darker film, literally or
figuratively, than ³Raw Deal.² Consisting almost entirely of
luminescent day-for-night photography, it¹s the story of an
escaped con (played by Dennis O¹Keefe) and the two women who
love him (Ms. Hunt was one; Claire Trevor was the other), and
features, among other pitch-black set pieces, a villain
(Raymond Burr) who disfigures his girlfriend with a flaming
dessert, and a furious midnight brawl in a seaside taxidermy
shop. At the end everyone is either ruined, dead or under
arrest.
And that darkness was just fine with the moviegoers here,
which applauded vigorously as the closing titles rolled, just
as they had at the beginning when the credit for the film¹s
director of photography, John Alton, the master of all that
darkness, appeared on screen.
Mr. Muller, an author and film noir aficionado, dreamed up
the film festival five years ago as a way to increase
visibility for the Film Noir Foundation he runs, which works
to restore the movies, and to promote his own books.
(He most recently helped write Tab Hunter¹s autobiography.)
The Castro, built in 1922 and recently refurbished, had some
dead time in January, and the festival (which runs this year
through Feb. 4) was born ‹ with a bang. The first double bill
in 2003, ³The Maltese Falcon² and ³Dark Passage² ‹ two
seminal San Francisco noirs ‹ sold out.
³It was huge right out of the gate,² he said. ²It totally
threw me.² In the years since, he¹s sold an average of 880
seats a night.
Of course subject matter and city are well matched. San
Francisco has a noir pedigree rivaling that of New York or
Los Angeles, its fog, slanting streets, circa-1940¹s office
buildings and dank narrow streets creating untold scores of
blind alleys for characters unlucky enough to be trapped in
them. Several noirs, including ³Raw Deal,² have been set
here.
On Friday the weather didn¹t disappoint, with a steady rain
falling much of the day. The sun made a half-hearted attempt
to appear around noon, then gave up and went back to
bed.
The Noir City festival may not be Sundance, but it too has
its celebrities and scenes. Before ³Raw Deal² on Friday the
Castro¹s balcony was crammed for a reception, with an open
bar, a jazz band and Ms. Hunt signing copies of her book,
³The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and ¹40s and Our World
Since Then² (Fallbrook, 1993).
Among those on hand was Richard Erdman, 81, a character actor
whose face is as recognizable ‹ his credits include ³Stalag
17² and ³Tora! Tora! Tora!² ‹ as his name is unknown. He had
a supporting role in ³Cry Danger,² the first film on Saturday
night¹s double bill, and looked so familiar standing there at
the reception that it was almost impossible not to run up to
him and say,
³Haven¹t we met before?²
Like Ms. Hunt, Mr. Erdman seemed a little puzzled as to why
exactly, so many years later, these movies are finding a new
following. Asked for a theory, he thought for a moment and
said: ³I really have no idea. I¹m not putting it down, I just
don¹t understand it.²
He heaped praise on Mr. Muller and his crew of volunteers for
running a high-class operation. ³They¹re not chintzy,² he
said, sipping a glass of white wine.
Film noir is enjoying something of a second golden age at the
moment. In addition to the San Francisco festival, the Film
Forum in New York City offered a major noir series last year,
and studios like Warner Brothers and Fox have ratcheted up
their noir reissues to such an extent that many films that
never made it out on VHS are appearing on DVD. Just last week
Warner Home Video released 1952¹s ³Angel Face,² starring
Robert Mitchum, which had only been available on foreign or
pirated VHS tapes. Mr. Muller provides the commentary
track.
³With film noir, if you show it to a group of 20-year-olds,
they¹ll find something to get hooked on,² said George
Feltenstein, Warner Home Video¹s voluble senior vice
president for marketing for its classic catalog. ³There is a
sexiness to it, there is a mystery took it. These are very
seductive movies, they are not cookie-cutter.²
Warner Brothers has released three noir box sets. The first,
which came out in 2004 and featured titles like ³Out of the
Past² and ³The Asphalt Jungle,² hit No. 1 on Amazon.com¹s DVD
list. This year Warner¹s fourth noir set will include 10
rather than 5 movies. Here¹s a scoop for noir fans: Two will
star Mr. Mitchum.
Whatever the machinations of the DVD business, here at the
Noir City festival, everyone was in a pretty good mood by the
time the second title of opening night, ³Kid Glove Killer,² a
super-rarity from 1942, rolled to its conclusion. This one
had a happier ending, with Ms. Hunt getting a marriage
proposal, delivered beneath a microscope, from a skinny and
surprisingly big-haired Van Heflin.
Coats and fedoras went back on, and the crowd headed for the
exits. Ms. Hunt stood by the door, shaking hands and signing
autographs, as her new legions of fans emerged onto the shiny
street and headed off into the night.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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