THE 21st ANNUAL FILM NOIR FESTIVAL Produced and hosted by Eddie Muller 

In a move taken in opposition to the nation's current wave of anti-immigrant sentiment, the venerable NOIR CITY film festival, celebrating its 21st year in the Bay Area, has declared "Darkness Has No Borders." The 10-day festival will feature a dozen thematically linked double bills, pairing foreign language films with movies made in the United States and United Kingdom. The festival runs January 19–28 at Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre.

Flim Schedule

Friday January 19, 2024 

NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR - 7:30 PM

WORLD PREMIERE FNF RESTORATION!  NOIR CITY is proud to present a new FNF restoration of this duo of suspense stories from the pen of Cornell Woolrich. Originally a three-part anthology of his tales, Never Open That Door was released separately from If I Should Die Before I Wake, also adapted by C. H. Christensen. Highlighted by the incredible cinematography of Pablo Tabernero, it features masterful sequences of spine-tingling suspense. Critic Horacio Bernades declared, "Rarely has an Argentine film been more purely cinematic than this." In Spanish with English subtitles

ARGENTINA (1952) Dir. Carlos Hugo Christensen. 85 min.

STREET OF CHANCE - 9:30 PM

The first case of amnesia in the classic noir era comes with a Woolrichian twist. Frank Thompson (Burgess Meredith) survives an accident only to have the shock restore his memory! He learns he's been living the past several years as someone else! With his incredulous girlfriend Ruth (Claire Trevor), Frank embarks on a nocturnal quest to determine his true identity. A "B" offering that benefits from some A-list contributors, principally director of photography Theodor Sparkuhl, a less-heralded master of noir imagery.

UNITED STATES (1942) Dir. Jack Hively. 74 min.

TICKETS FOR FRIDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

Saturday Matinée  January 20

UNION STATION -1:30 PM

Cops William Holden and Barry Fitzgerald race to foil a kidnapping plot in Chicago's Union Station. The film packs a double-feature's worth of thrills into its brief running time, including some brutality decades ahead of its time. Ace crime scenarist Sydney Boehm keeps the plot humming like a runaway train and director (and renowned cinematographer) Rudolph Maté makes the ride more vivid through use of actual locations. Costarring Nancy (Sunset Blvd.) Olson and a terrifying Lyle Bettger.

UNITED STATES (1950) Dir. Rudolph Maté. 80 min.

CAIRO STATION - 3:30 PM

A newspaper hawker (played by the director himself) at the eponymous train depot develops a frightening obsession with a sexy lemonade vendor. That's the premise for a suspenseful drama which cunningly uses the bustling station to depict clashing strata of Egyptian society. Chahine's combination of gritty authenticity and psychosexual Expressionism created a landmark of Egyptian cinema—despite public boycotts over its unflinching perversity and politics. Costar Hind Rustum was nicknamed "The Arab Marilyn Monroe." In Arabic with English subtitles

EGYPT (1958) Dir. Youssef Chahine. 77 min.

TICKETS FOR SATURDAY MATINÉE DOUBLE FEATURE

Saturday Evening  January 20

ODD MAN OUT - 7:00 PM

This intense manhunt thriller won the inaugural "Best Film" prize from the British Academy of Film Awards, and it remains one of the most highly regarded movies ever made in the United Kingdom. James Mason plays fugitive Irish Nationalist Johnny McQueen, roped into a heist that goes fatally wrong. Can Johnny navigate his way safely through a nocturnal nightmare of danger and deceit? Robert Krasker's cinematography is as good as his legendary work with Reed on The Third Man. An all-time classic!

UNITED KINGDON (1947) Dir. Carol Reed. 116 min.

VICTIMS OF SIN - 9:30 PM

NEW 4K RESTORATION  A film that virtually leaps off the screen. The music, the characters, the confrontations, the emotions—all boil over the top in this uniquely Mexican version of noir dubbed rumberas. Sexy Ninón Sevilla dances up a storm in a club featuring some of Latin America's top performers—Pérez Prado, Rita Montaner and Pedro Vargas—all while dodging a vicious pimp, defying her boss, and rescuing an abandoned baby from the trash. As André Breton is reputed to have said, "In Europe we talk about surrealism, in Mexico they live it every day." In Spanish with English subtitles

MEXICO (1951) Dir. Emilio Fernández. 90 min.

TICKETS FOR SATURDAY EVENING DOUBLE FEATURE

Sunday  January 21, 2024

THE HUMAN BEAST - 1:30, 5:30, 9:30 PM

In the 1930s, Jean Gabin brought a gallery of doomed anti-heroes to life with a blend of poetic fatalism and blunt proletarian defiance, becoming the first global icon of the noir spirit. He chose Jean Renoir to direct this adaptation of Émile Zola's novel about a working-class man whose "hereditary flaw" causes psychotic episodes. When he falls for the wife of a railway official, herself damaged by abuse and exploitation, they are on track for inevitable tragedy. Renoir gives the film a gritty flavor, telling a bleak story with unsentimental empathy. In French with English subtitles

FRANCE (1938) Dir. Jean Renoir. 100 min.

HUMAN DESIRE - 3:30, 7:30 PM

Following the popular success of 1953's The Big Heat, Columbia Pictures reteamed Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame with director Fritz Lang for this Americanized adaptation of Le bête humaine, smuggling the sordid tale of adultery and murder past the censors. Gloria Grahame gives a bruised and beleaguered performance as the abused woman who wonders if murdering her loutish husband (Broderick Crawford) is the only way out of her domestic hell. DP Burnett Guffey adds noir panache to Lang's cruel and suffocating depiction of the eternal noir triangle.

UNITED STATES (1954) Dir. by Fritz Lang. 91 min.

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY MATINÉE DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 1:30 PM

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY MATINÉE DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 3:30 PM

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY EVENING DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 5:30 PM

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY EVENING DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 7:30 PM

Monday  January 22, 2024

BLACK TUESDAY - 7:00 PM

AWOL for almost twenty years, this brutal and breakneck hostage yarn is powered by one of Edward G. Robinson's most vicious performances. Gangster Vince Canelli (Eddie G.) makes a daring prison break on the day of his execution, holing up with a group of horrified hostages. Who will survive? Fregonese's vigorous direction and stark imagery courtesy of the great Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons) abet Robinson as he chews apart the scenery and his fellow cast members. A rarity is revived for NOIR CITY!

UNITED STATES (1954) Dir. Hugo Fregonese. 80 min.

THE HOLE - 8:30 PM

Adapted from a novel by ex-con José Giovanni, who based it on a real prison break he'd taken part in, and costarring another of the actual participants, Jacques Becker's masterpiece commits itself to raw verisimilitude. A stripped-down focus on process and stunning use of sound bring hypnotic intensity to scenes of the prisoners digging their way from their cell to the tunnels below. Noir master Jean-Pierre Melville declared Le Trou, "the greatest French film of all time," adding, "And I weigh my words carefully." In French with English subtitles

FRANCE (1960) Dir. Jacques Becker. 131 min.

TICKETS FOR MONDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

Tuesday  January 23, 2024

THEY MADE ME A FUGITIVE - 7:30 PM

A harrowing thriller made in England contemporaneously with America's rising noir tide, but more uncompromising thanks to the absence of Hollywood's Production Code. Trevor Howard plays Clem Morgan, a down-at-heel WWII veteran who falls in with a ring of black marketeers. After being framed for murder, Clem is sentenced to Dartmoor Prison—only to escape in search of vengeance. A big success in England in 1947, it helped spur the nation's postwar noir movement. Retitled I Became a Criminal for U.S. release.

UNITED KINGDOM (1947) Dir. Alberto Cavalcanti. 78 min.

AIMLESS BULLET - 9:00 PM

Often heralded as the most significant Korean film of all-time, Aimless Bullet is both a crime drama and a critique of Korean life in the years following the 1953 armistice between North and South Korea. A Seoul salaryman struggles to provide for his family while stoically enduring an excruciating toothache. Things turns steadily darker when his younger brother, an angry war vet, turns to crime and his sister becomes a prostitute. Hollywood noir seems like a victory parade in comparison to the despair displayed here, which got the film banned by the South Korean government. In Korean with English subtitles

SOUTH KOREA (1960) Dir. Yu Hyun-mok. 110 min.

TICKETS FOR TUESDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

Wednesday  January 24, 2024

PLUNDER ROAD - 7:30 PM

Director Cornfield came to Hollywood in the 1950s with New York pal Stanley Kubrick, and, with his third feature, Cornfield was consciously competing with his colleague's breakthrough heist film, The Killing. From its thrilling opening, in which a crew of hooded robbers steal a huge load of gold bullion from a train during a driving rainstorm, the film never stops moving—smashing its way down the widescreen interstate as gang-leader Gene Raymond and his truck-driving cohorts (including Elisha Cook Jr.) desperately try to abscond with the score of a lifetime.

UNITED STATES (1957) Dir. Hubert Cornfield. 72 min.

HARDLY A CRIMINAL - 9:00 PM

The best Argentine noir of the 1940s is an audacious blending of Naked City and Brute Force, telling the tale of a clever banking clerk (charismatic Jorge Salcedo) who embezzles money from his employer and tries to get caught, since a loophole in the Argentine justice system will free him after six years behind bars—when he intends to reclaim the hidden loot. Part caper, part prison picture, this acclaimed drama earned Argentine director Fregonese a career in Hollywood. 35mm preservation print courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation. In Spanish with English subtitles

ARGENTINA (1949) Dir. Hugo Fregonese. 88 min.

TICKETS FOR WEDNESAY DOUBLE FEATURE

Thursday  January 25, 2024

WITHOUT PITY - 7:15 PM

A combination of neorealism and noir that never could have been made in the U.S. African-American GI John Kitzmiller stars as a U.S. soldier in Italy awaiting demobilization whose kindness towards local working girl (Carla Del Poggio) leads to an unexpected romance. Lauded at international festivals, its interracial romance prevented wide distribution in the United States. Script by Federico Fellini, featuring the screen debut of his muse, Giulietta Masina. A rare chance to see this neglected landmark in a 35mm print imported from Italy. In Italian with English subtitles

ITALY (1948) Dir. Alberto Lattuada. 90 min.

BITTER RICE - 9:00 PM

Bitter Rice transposes a noir tale of a sleazy homme fatal and the two women he enlists in his criminal schemes onto a neorealist portrait of the mondine, female migrant workers who harvest and plant rice in the Po Valley. A quartet of fabulously attractive leads, including Silvana Mangano and Doris Dowling, flesh out a sensuous blend of social critique and pulpy thrills. Above all, Bitter Rice is a tribute to women's labor, community, and solidarity. With Vittorio Gassman and Raf Vallone. In Italian with English subtitles

ITALY (1949) Giuseppe De Santis. 108 min.

TICKETS FOR THURSDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

Friday  January 26, 2024

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE - 7:15 PM

A landmark in the history of crime movies and the progenitor of all heist films that followed. John Huston had provided the script for Raoul Walsh's 1940 film version of author W.R. Burnett's outlaw saga High Sierra and, ten years later, he snapped up Burnett's latest crime novel to direct himself. The film had an immediate and lasting impact on crime movies and literature. It subverted the Production Code by making its criminals working professionals with whom audiences empathized. Vivid and note-perfect.

UNITED STATES (1950) Dir. John Huston. 112 min.

FOUR AGAINST THE WORLD - 9:20 PM

"Every single peso is stained with blood. As long as it's not yours!" That's the motto of a quartet of crooks who heist a Modelo brewery payroll in broad daylight, then hole up in a cramped, crummy tenement apartment with one robber's disgruntled and dangerously sexy wife. What could go wrong? This is a raw and ruthless gem from director Alejandro Galindo, and here's a rare chance to see this Mexican noir classic never before available in the United States! In Spanish with English subtitles

MEXICO (1950) Dir. Alejandro Galindo. 100 min.

TICKETS FOR FRIDAY DOUBLE FEATURE

Saturday Matinée  January 27, 2024

ACROSS THE BRIDGE - 1:30 PM

This adaptation of a Graham Greene tale improves upon the original thanks to some added plot twists. Rod Steiger gives a compelling performance as an arrogant industry captain caught embezzling. Fleeing to Mexico he impulsively switches identities with another rider and throws the body off the train. Unfortunately, his choice of victim lands him in a worse predicament. The film won rave reviews and great box-office receipts in England but remains virtually unknown in the U.S. Leave it to NOIR CITY to fix that!

UNITED KINGDOM (1957) Dir. Ken Annakin. 103 min.

ZERO FOCUS - 3:30 PM

This many-layered mystery is only one of several crime-laced dramas by the great (if still largely unheralded) director Yoshitarô Nomura. Newlywed bride Teiko Uhara sees her husband Kenichi off on one last business trip to his old office in Kanazawa; she eagerly anticipates his return so they can start their new life. But Kenichi mysteriously vanishes and when the police move too slowly, resourceful and tenacious Teiko begins her own investigation. This cross between slow-burning character study and thriller is a tense and spellbinding experience. In Japanese with English subtitles

JAPAN (1961) Dir. Yoshitarô Nomura. 95 min.

TICKETS FOR SATURDAY MATINÉE DOUBLE FEATURE

Saturday Evening  January 27, 2024

ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS - 7:30 PM

Louis Malle bridges classic noir and the French New Wave with peerless style. An adulterous couple's slick plot to murder the woman's husband collides with a pair of bungling teens acting out their nihilistic crime-movie fantasies. Jeanne Moreau is immortalized as she takes the greatest nocturnal stroll in cinema history as Miles Davis' improvised score caresses her like a night breeze. Meanwhile, Maurice Ronet's attempts to escape a stalled elevator become a mesmerizing visual poem of entrapment. French noir doesn't come any cooler than this. In French with English subtitles.

FRANCE (1958) Dir. Louis Malle. 91 min.

STRONGROOM - 9:30 PM

A programmer with no well-known actors, this obscurity exploits a unique premise: A trio of crooks knocks over a suburban London bank at Saturday closing, leaving the manager and his secretary locked in the vault. Dissention roils the gang, however, when they realize Monday is Easter holiday and the captives will suffocate before being discovered. Not wanting to add murder their résumés, the crooks must break back into the bank while still evading capture. A film that had been all-but-forgotten—until this NOIR CITY revival!

UNITED KINGDOM (1962) Dir. Vernon Sewell. 80 min.

TICKETS FOR SATURDAY EVENING DOUBLE FEATURE

Sunday  January 28, 2024

MURDER BY CONTRACT - 1:30, 5:30, 9:00 PM

Cold, ruthless New Yorker Claude (Vince Edwards) has no prospects—so he decides to stake his place in the world as a contract killer—but when he's sent to sunny Los Angeles to off a gangland witness, a sudden case of "ethics" could prove fatal. A low-budget gem (shot by veteran DP Lucien Ballard in only seven days) featuring a strangely hypnotic pace and haunting musical theme by guitarist Perry Botkin. A personal favorite of Martin Scorsese who's admitted this film's stylistic influence on Taxi Driver.

UNITED STATES (1958) Dir. Irving Lerner. 81 min.

SMOG - 3:15, 7:00 PM

BRAND-NEW 35mm RESTORATION  A strange, spellbinding, and singular cinematic experience. Vittorio, a conservative and bourgeois Italian attorney (Enrico Maria Salerno), has a day to waste in Los Angeles while in transit to Mexico City. After making his first mistake—walking—Vittorio is absorbed into the orbit of a group of sexy and slightly sinister Italian ex-pats hustling to survive in modern America. Presaging later works such as Scorsese's After Hours and Lynch's Mulholland Drive, this is an astounding rediscovery, gorgeously restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive. In Italian and English, with English subtitles

ITALY (1962) Franco Rossi. 104 min.

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY MATINÉE DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 1:30 PM

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY MATINÉE DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 3:15 PM

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY EVENING DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 5:30 PM

TICKETS FOR SUNDAY EVENING DOUBLE FEATURE STARTING AT 7:00 PM

PURCHASE PASSPORT

Date: January 19-28, 2024

Location: Grand Lake Theatre

3200 Grand Avenue Oakland, CA 94610

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