Haggai
01-26-2010, 01:33 PM
Noir City 8 kicked off on a damp, cold night in San Francisco. The festival trailer started things off to set the mood, followed by Serena Bramble's "Endless Night" montage (http://www.backalleynoir.com//showthread.php?85-Endless-Night-A-Valentine-to-Film-Noir), which was a big hit with the audience.
The festival theme of "Lust and Larceny" began with a double bill of screenplays from ace writer Bill Bowers. Andre de Toth's classic of postwar middle class alienation, PITFALL, stars Dick Powell as an insurance company man looking to break out of his dreary routine. The chance arrives via hulking investigator Raymond Burr, who has his eye on a jailed embezzler's suddenly available dame, Lizabeth Scott. Powell tries to navigate the tightrope between his romantic double life and his competition with some shady characters for Scott's affection, but there's no easy way out of the downward spiral that Burr sets in motion...
Seeing this film in a good archival print with an appreciative audience brings out the entertainment value of Bowers' snappy dialogue, which is spread around to almost every character, including Powell's wife and young son. The crowd laughed with the banter and cheered as the protagonists tried to solve their problems the old-fashioned way, with fists and firepower, but no one escapes unscathed in this noir tale. Frustration with the suffocating rat race of suburban life became a more common theme in '50s Hollywood, but this late '40s entry stands out as a pretty forward-looking example, and surely one of the most mature films of the classic noir period.
The production code was probably to blame for there never being a noir simply titled "Lust," but there was indeed one called LARCENY, which wrapped things up for opening night. John Payne works as the chief ladies man for top con artist Dan Duryea, who has a scheme to take a rich young war widow, Joan Caulfield, for all she's worth. Payne is doing double duty on the side with the boss's no-good floozy, Shelley Winters, who doesn't much care for the idea of her preferred hunk going for a high-class dame.
The fairly ridiculous plot goes down smooth with all the great zingers in Bowers' script, with Winters in particular getting tons of prime material. The audience laughed along with lines like "Don't twist my arm, people will think we're married!" from start to finish. The con man conceit and the good girl/bad girl triangle makes this one feel like a cross between Born to Kill and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but it never fails to entertain, and it made for a great nightcap to the meatier first feature.
The festival theme of "Lust and Larceny" began with a double bill of screenplays from ace writer Bill Bowers. Andre de Toth's classic of postwar middle class alienation, PITFALL, stars Dick Powell as an insurance company man looking to break out of his dreary routine. The chance arrives via hulking investigator Raymond Burr, who has his eye on a jailed embezzler's suddenly available dame, Lizabeth Scott. Powell tries to navigate the tightrope between his romantic double life and his competition with some shady characters for Scott's affection, but there's no easy way out of the downward spiral that Burr sets in motion...
Seeing this film in a good archival print with an appreciative audience brings out the entertainment value of Bowers' snappy dialogue, which is spread around to almost every character, including Powell's wife and young son. The crowd laughed with the banter and cheered as the protagonists tried to solve their problems the old-fashioned way, with fists and firepower, but no one escapes unscathed in this noir tale. Frustration with the suffocating rat race of suburban life became a more common theme in '50s Hollywood, but this late '40s entry stands out as a pretty forward-looking example, and surely one of the most mature films of the classic noir period.
The production code was probably to blame for there never being a noir simply titled "Lust," but there was indeed one called LARCENY, which wrapped things up for opening night. John Payne works as the chief ladies man for top con artist Dan Duryea, who has a scheme to take a rich young war widow, Joan Caulfield, for all she's worth. Payne is doing double duty on the side with the boss's no-good floozy, Shelley Winters, who doesn't much care for the idea of her preferred hunk going for a high-class dame.
The fairly ridiculous plot goes down smooth with all the great zingers in Bowers' script, with Winters in particular getting tons of prime material. The audience laughed along with lines like "Don't twist my arm, people will think we're married!" from start to finish. The con man conceit and the good girl/bad girl triangle makes this one feel like a cross between Born to Kill and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, but it never fails to entertain, and it made for a great nightcap to the meatier first feature.