Noir City 20 Celebrates Its Emerald Anniversary

Noir City, the most popular film noir festival in the world, celebrates its 20th anniversary in the Bay Area with a ten-day extravaganza featuring 24 films from the heart of Hollywood's noir movement, 1948. Every film on the schedule is celebrating its 75th anniversary, with several of the movies having never before been screened at Noir City. Join Film Noir Foundation founder and Turner Classic Movies host Eddie Muller and a slew of special guests for a swanky, sexy, and sinister excursion back in time.

Schedule:
Friday, January 20, 2023
7:00pm: KEY LARGO
The final pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall is a spine-tingling tale of a WWII veteran (Bogart) running up against a gangster (Edward G. Robinson) who's holding the staff and guests of a coastal hotel hostage as a hurricane bears down on them. Bacall plays the daughter of proprietor Lionel Barrymore, and noir's grandest dame, Claire Trevor, is Gaye Dawn, a broken-down chanteuse who's Eddie G.'s booze-sodden moll. Trevor won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar® for her memorable performance. We kick off our 20th anniversary with the film's first-ever screening at NOIR CITY!

9:15pm: THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI
Welles' dazzling and dizzying pulp poetry takes the classic femme fatale tale to globe-spanning lengths and hallucinatory heights. Hard-luck sailor Michael O'Hara (Welles) tumbles into the snare of gorgeous and mysterious Elsa Bannister (Hayworth) only to find himself caught in the murderous conspiracy of her viperous cohorts. Welles improvised a brilliant, chaotic 155?minute noir epic, which studio editor Viola Lawrence pruned to 86 feverish minutes. What remained is one of the most startlingly inventive crime films ever released by a Hollywood studio. Featuring Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders, and Ted de Corsia.

Saturday, January 21, 2023
1:00pm: LARCENY
John Payne and Dan Duryea play dandy grifters bent on bilking a wealthy war widow (Joan Caulfield) into funding a non-existent war memorial. Both these sharpies get tangled up with saucy Shelley Winters, who's more dangerous than a loaded .38! The cast has a field day firing Bowers' one-liners faster than speeding bullets. We once had to screen this riotously entertaining, little-known gem in 16mm (at NOIR CITY 4), but we're thrilled to now show it in a glorious 35mm print courtesy of Universal Pictures. Also featuring Dorothy Hart, Dan O'Herlihy, and Percy Helton.

3:00pm: THE SPIRITUALIST
John Alton's stunning cinematography elevates to exhilarating heights this clever story of a psychic (Turhan Bey) insinuating himself into the moody cliffside mansion of a wealthy widow (Lynn Bari) by convincing her, and her less impressionable daughter (Cathy O'Donnell), that he can communicate with the dead. Filled with clever visual gags and tricky sleight of hand, and featuring a smooth-as-silk turn by Bey as the sophisticated charlatan. One of the most satisfying "B" films of the era.

7:00pm: THE BIG CLOCK
George Stroud (Ray Milland), editor of Crimeways, America's most popular true-crime magazine, finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of his publisher's mistress with whom he's just shared a day-drinking dalliance. Earl Janoth, the tyrannical Murdoch-like publisher, is played with sinister relish by Charles Laughton, whose real-life wife, Elsa Lanchester, provides comic support as a kooky Greenwich Village artist. George Macready, Rita Johnson, and Harry Morgan are also featured in one of the most suspenseful noir films of all time.

9:00pm: ROAD HOUSE
A star-powered face-off between two film noir icons: sassy Ida Lupino and psychotic Richard Widmark. Sparks fly when itinerant songbird Lily Stevens (Lupino) takes a job crooning in Widmark's rural roadhouse. When she rejects the owner (Widmark) and takes up with his boyhood chum (Cornel Wilde), the joint really starts jumping. The studio-made roadhouse is a marvel of production design, the perfect spot for Ida to sing inimitable renditions of the classic ballads "One for My Baby" and "Again." Co-starring Celeste Holm.

Sunday, January 22, 2023
1:00pm, 7:00pm: NAKED CITY
This landmark crime movie, producer Mark Hellinger's hardboiled tribute to his beloved Big Apple, peels away all the stylistic melodramatics of noir to present Hollywood's first true policier. Scrupulously researched writing by Malvin Wald and vivid location photography by William Daniels (an Oscar® winner) combined to make this one of the most influential Hollywood films of all time, the template for thousands of cop shows to come. With Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Don Taylor, Dorothy Hart, and a very scary Ted  de Corsia.

3:00pm, 9:00pm: CRY OF THE CITY
Perhaps the most perfectly realized, thematically and stylistically, of all Siodmak's noir films. Victor Mature is the lawman and Richard Conte the fugitive crook he pursues across Manhattan with tragic results. Shot entirely on location, Siodmak skips the semi-documentary vogue of the day, creating instead an Expressionistic urban landscape ideally suited to this mythic mid-20th-century tale of good and evil. Co-starring Shelley Winters, Debra Paget, Fred Clark, and a scary Hope Emerson in her startling screen debut.

Monday, January 23, 2023
7:00pm: SO EVIL MY LOVE
Devout missionary's widow Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd) falls under the spell of charming artist-rogue Mark Bellis (Ray Milland) on a steamship returning them to 1890s London from the West Indies. Sensing easy prey for his rakish charm, Bellis moves into Olivia's boardinghouse and soon has her in his thrall. Romantic obsession causes her to aid him in a nefarious and deadly scheme, leading to a shocking and bloody climax. Inspired by an actual never-solved murder, this is one of the great unheralded gothic-noir dramas of the 1940s. With Geraldine Fitzgerald.

9:00pm: SLEEP, MY LOVE 
Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) awakens on a speeding train with no memory of how she got there. Reunited with her husband Richard (Don Ameche), he proposes hypnosis to uncover the root of his wife's mental instability. Overlooked in the noir canon because it was deemed a "woman's picture," Sleep, My Love is one of Sirk's strongest 1940s pictures, deftly combining witty humor, creepy atmospherics, and genuine thrills all anchored by the sprightly chemistry of co-stars Colbert and Robert Cummings.

Tuesday, January 24, 2023
7:00pm: HOLLOW TRIUMPH 
Fugitive crook Johnny Muller (Paul Henreid) finds the perfect hiding place—in the guise of a psychiatrist who is his identical twin ... almost. One of the sublime examples of noir fatalism with a clever script that will keep you guessing right up until the end. It's also an amazingly evocative look at 1940s Los Angeles, photographed by the great John Alton. This was the first film produced by romantic leading man Henreid, who like many actors in the late 1940s turned to crime dramas to revitalize their careers. Co-starring Joan Bennett at her flinty best.

9:00pm: THE HUNTED 
Paroled after serving a prison term for her part in a jewel heist, Laura Mead (Belita) returns to the city looking to reclaim her life. Waiting in the shadows is her former boyfriend, detective Johnny Saxon (Preston Foster), who may have railroaded her into the pen out of jealousy. Is Laura ready to forgive … or make good on her jailhouse threat to kill the men who sent her up? A strange, hypnotic twist on the femme fatale tale, resurrected from obscurity in a 35mm preservation print funded by the Film Noir Foundation.

Wednesday, January 25, 2023
7:00pm: I LOVE TROUBLE
Franchot Tone plays wisecracking private eye Stuart Bailey, sleuthing his way through a bevy of treacherous dames in this playful homage to Raymond Chandler. Chandler didn't find it so playful—he threatened to bring a lawsuit against future TV legend Roy Huggins (77 Sunset Strip, Maverick, The Fugitive), A whirlwind of plot swirling through dozens of West Coast locations, with Janet Blair, Janis Carter, Adele Jergens, Glenda Farrell, John Ireland, Tom Powers, and Raymond Burr. The 35mm print was originally struck expressly for NOIR CITY 5.

9:00pm: CALL NORTHSIDE 777
Jimmy Stewart gives a terrific performance as P.J. McNeal, a Chicago newspaper reporter determined to free a convicted killer (Richard Conte) he believes has been unfairly imprisoned for eleven years. The first Hollywood feature to be shot entirely on location in Chicago, Call Northside 777 boasts fantastic cinematography by Joseph MacDonald, and stellar supporting performances by Conte, Lee J. Cobb, and Helen Walker. Winner of the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture of 1948. First time at NOIR CITY!

Thursday, January 26, 2023
7:00pm: THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
One of Hollywood's great directorial debuts is a deeply-felt, richly detailed adaptation of Anderson's classic depression-era novel—a crime story that's really about love struggling to survive in a cruel, unforgiving world. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell are memorable as film noir's version of Romeo and Juliet, surrounded by menacing supporting players Howard Da Silva, Jay C. Flippen, and Helen Craig. First released overseas, the film didn't get a wide release in the U.S. until late 1948. It's now considered one the finest noir films ever made.

9:00pm: MOONRISE
Relentlessly romantic optimist Frank Borzage is the last director you'd expect to turn out an effective film noir, but this brilliantly directed drama was his sound-era masterpiece. Dane Clark gives a bruised and brooding performance as a young man convinced that his father's "bad blood" has sealed his miserable fate. Can he be saved by the love of angelic Gail Russell? Featuring strong supporting performances by Ethel Barrymore, Rex Ingram, Lloyd Bridges, and Harry Morgan.

Friday, January 27, 2023
7:30pm: RAW DEAL
Social worker Marsha Hunt and gangster's moll Claire Trevor duke it out for the soul of homme fatal Dennis O'Keefe in this rambunctious display of quintessential noir pulp. O'Keefe busts out of the slammer determined to get even with shyster gang-boss Raymond Burr, who wants O'Keefe dead before he reaches his San Francisco hideout. Stunning images by legendary cinematographer John Alton make this arguably the most visually stylish noir of them all. As Eddie likes to say, it's "Pure Pulp for Noir People."

9:15pm: HE WALKED BY NIGHT
In this landmark noir, a psychotic loner (Richard Basehart) uses his genius for electronics to commit robberies while evading the police. When he graduates to murder, L.A.'s finest, including Scott Brady and methodical Jack Webb (who was immediately inspired to create Dragnet), pull out a few modern manhunting techniques of their own. The desperate hunt tracks the killer through—and beneath—cityscapes stunningly photographed by the great John Alton. Don't miss this classic in all its 35mm glory!

Saturday, January 28, 2023
1:00pm: NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES 
In this rarity, Edward G. Robinson stars as John Triton, a phony vaudeville mentalist who is one day cursed with the actual ability to predict the future. Gail Russell is the heiress who seems doomed by Triton's vision of her death. Or is it a scheme to steal her impending inheritance? John Farrow, a director at his most stylish in noir terrain, adapts from the novel by master of suspense Cornell Woolrich. Co-starring John Lund and William Demarest. Universal Pictures struck this print exclusively for NOIR CITY back in 2008.

3:00pm: ALL MY SONS 
Edward G. Robinson gives one of his most affecting performances as successful businessman Joe Keller, grappling with guilt over having framed his business partner for a crime he committed. When his son (Burt Lancaster) becomes engaged to the convicted man's daughter, the sins of the past come hurtling back. Reis and writer-producer Chester Erskine—aided by the noir-stained cinematography of Russell Metty—create a powerful (and inexplicably rare) version of Arthur Miller's Tony Award-winning play. First time at NOIR CITY!

7:00pm: SORRY, WRONG NUMBER
Bedridden heiress Leona Stevenson (Barbara Stanwyck) hears through crossed telephone wires a murder being planned. She tries to alert the police, to no avail, and grows frantic as she gradually realizes she is the intended victim. Stanwyck gives an Oscar®-nominated performance in this engrossing and densely layered extension of the legendary 22-minute radio drama. Featuring Burt Lancaster in one of his earliest roles, mesmerizing direction by Anatole Litvak, and atmospheric camerawork by the great Sol Polito. Famous … yet still underrated.

9:00pm: KISS THE BLOOD OFF MY HANDS
War profiteering, 1940s-style, is the backdrop of this London-set noir, in which a traumatized American GI (Burt Lancaster) goes on the run after killing a man in a pub. Joan Fontaine is his only hope for salvation, Robert Newton his nemesis. The first film produced by Lancaster's Norma Productions, which recreated twenty square blocks of London on the Universal backlot, brilliantly photographed by Russell Metty. Miklós Rózsa contributed the highly effective score.

Sunday, January 29, 2023
1:00pm, 6:00pm: UNFAITHFULLY YOURS
As film noir swept over late '40s Hollywood, Preston Sturges created the first full-length parody of the genre with this mordantly hilarious tale of a jealous orchestra conductor (Rex Harrison) envisioning three distinct plots to murder his supposedly unfaithful wife (Linda Darnell). Turning The Postman Always Rings Twice into uproarious comedy takes only a few tweaks and twists for this genuinely brilliant auteur. Side-splitting farce is made even funnier by Harrison's demonically deadpan portrayal of the megalomaniacal would-be murderer.

3:15pm, 8:00pm: THE VELVET TOUCH
Following the success of 1947's A Double Life, in which Ronald Colman played a murderous Broadway actor, Rosalind Russell took her only trip into Dark City as Valerie Stanton, a revered Broadway actress who accidentally kills her producer (and former lover) during an argument. Valerie's thespian talents help cover up the crime, but when her archrival (played by Claire Trevor) becomes the prime suspect, will Valerie's guilty conscience prevail? A wonderful, if rarely screened, backstage thriller.

Date: January 20 - 29, 2023

Location: Grand Lake Theater - 3200 Grand Avenue Oakland, CA 94610

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