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1952, 20th Century Fox, 87 min.
dir. Richard Brooks
7:30 PM
NOIR CITY kicks off with one of the most exciting and elegiac movies ever made about the fourth estate. Humphrey Bogart is Ed Hutcheson, veteran editor of the New York Day, which is about to be sold to its main competitor. With only hours left before the presses stop, “Hutch” decides to go out in a blaze of glory, taking down the city’s biggest racketeer. An eerily prescient eulogy for “old school” journalism.
NOT ON DVD! BUY TICKETS
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1952, Columbia, 82 min.
dir. Phil Karlson
9:30 PM
A terrific tabloid thriller based on Samuel Fuller’s smashmouth novel The Dark Page. Broderick Crawford stars as managing editor of a scandal-mongering tabloid who murders his ex-wife, covers it up, and then—unable to resist the allure of a juicy circulation booster—assigns his young star reporter (John Derek) to track down the culprit.
NOT ON DVD! |
1947, Columbia, 73 min.
scr. Martin Goldsmith, dir. Robert Gordon
1:30 PM MATINEE
An entertaining “cheapie” about an in-his-cups writer (Chester Morris) who pitches his skeptical publisher an ingenious “locked room” mystery . . . only to have the crime come true. The law jumps right on his trail as the prime suspect! Martin (Detour) Goldsmith’s script is particularly amusing for its backhanded take on crime writing.
NOT ON DVD! BUY TICKETS |
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1949, Paramount-UCLA, 86 min.
scr. Warren Duff, dir. Lewis Allen
3:00 PM MATINEE
Alan Ladd plays a reporter obsessed with a young woman he finds dead in a cheap brothel. Connecting the dots all around Chicago, he cobbles together the sad history of a good girl (Donna Reed) gone wrong. Incredibly rare, not screened for decades, this 35mm print is the only known one in existence; it was unearthed through a joint effort of the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film and Television Archive.
NOT ON DVD!
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1956, Columbia, 94 min.
scr.-dir. Ken Hughes
7:00 PM
“What she wanted out of life . . . she got out of men!” Arlene Dahl is a sizzling sensation as Kathleen Allen, a woman who learns early that sex is how she’ll get ahead in the world. Her high heels leave puncture wounds in a trail of saps stretching from America to England. British writer-director Hughes adapts Bill Ballinger’s novel Portrait in Smoke, and the result lives up to its retitling.
NOT ON DVD! BUY TICKETS
*Arlene Dahl appears in person between films for an onstage interview with Eddie Muller! |
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1956, RKO, 99 min.
dir. Allan Dwan
9:30 PM
Arlene Dahl steals the show as sexy kleptomaniac Dorothy Lyons (opposite titian-tressed “sister” Rhonda Fleming) in this eye-popping adaptation of James M. Cain’s Love’s Lovely Counterfeit. John Payne plays the slick operator dallying with both dames, and Ted de Corsia is a great sleazy crime boss. But the real star is camera virtuoso John Alton, who translates noir into to lurid, saturated color, as if those tawdry 1950s paperback jackets had come to life. |
1953, MGM, 80 min.
scr. Jack Leonard. dir. Joseph H. Lewis
1:00 PM. 5:00 PM, 9:20 PM
We discovered this crazy “swamp noir” last year and promptly booked it for Noir City 7. Barry Sullivan is an L.A. cop hunting a Cajun fugitive (Vittorio Gassman) back to the bayou, “assisted” by a hateful partner (William Conrad). Sounds straight-forward … but nothing is “straight” in the screwy script by Jack Leonard or Lewis’s delirious direction, which veers from goofy to brutal without missing an off-kilter beat.
NOT ON DVD! BUY TICKETS |
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1951, Paramount, 111 min.
scr.-dir. Billy Wilder
2:45 PM, 7:00 PM
On its release, critics called this the most bitter, cynical, mean-spirited movie ever made. It still might hold the honor. What’s certain is the scary prescience of Wilder’s tale of media manipulation. Kirk Douglas is stupendously rotten as a disgraced reporter reclaiming the spotlight by prolonging the plight of a trapped miner. Jan Sterling is unforgettable as the miner’s less-than-compassionate wife. |
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