Noir City Chicago (2011)

[Anne H]

Hi, Chi, NOIR CITY is on its way.



NOIR CITY invades the Music Box Theatre from August 12 through August 18. The Third Annual NOIR CITY: CHICAGO features sixteen hard hitting noirs, all presented in 35 mm. The series includes both fan favorites like Sorry Wrong Number (1948) and The Glass Key (1942), as well as, lesser-known films like High Wall (1947), Loophole (1954), and The Hunted (1948), recently saved from extinction by the FNF.

Get the full program line up here.

[Adam Lounsbery]

I'll be there. Hopefully for most of it.

[Anne H]

Glad to hear it! I hope you have a great time, Adam!

[Adam Lounsbery]

Thanks, Anne! And thanks, also, for posting the link above. Until I clicked on it I didn't realize there was a festival pass available. I probably would have just paid for every screening like a dope and wasted a bunch of cabbage.

[Steve-O]

Adam:

Could you be our stringer for NOIR CITY CHI? Let us know how each night was? A bit of a recap by day?

I got the festival pass in Noir City SF last year. It totally saves time....

[Adam Lounsbery]

Adam:

Could you be our stringer for NOIR CITY CHI? Let us know how each night was? A bit of a recap by day?

I got the festival pass in Noir City SF last year. It totally saves time....

Definitely. I might not be able to make it to every day of the festival, but I'll share as many recaps as I can. I'm hoping to post a few reviews, too. There are a lot of movies on the program I haven't seen yet.

[Anne H]

NOIR CITY CHICAGO starts 7:30 PM tonight at the Music Box Theatre with HIGH WALL and THE DARK MIRROR! Two tales of the psychologically tormented.

http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/colle...city-chicago-3



THE HIGH WALL tonight at 7:30 at the Music Box Theatre.
Quintessential postwar noir, resurrected in a new 35mm print by the Film Noir Foundation! Brain-damaged vet Robert Taylor confesses to murdering his unfaithful wife and is sentenced to a sanitarium. His doctor (sexy Audrey Totter) gradually realizes he might not be guilty. Special thanks to Warner Bros. and UCLA Film & Television Archive. (1947, 99m, Curtis Bernhardt)



THE DARK MIRROR tonight at 9:30 at the Music Box Theatre.
Not on DVD!
Witnesses place Ruth Collins (Olivia de Havilland) at the scene of a grisly murder. When it’s discovered she has a twin, Dr. Elliot (Lew Ayres) is brought in to psychologically evaluate them both. Noir master Robert Siodmak deftly directs this Oscar-nominated original story, guiding de Havilland through two sensational performances. Preservation funded by the Film Noir Foundation. (1948, 85m, Robert Siodmak)

[Adam Lounsbery]

Last night was a lot of fun. The theme was NOIR PSYCHOSIS (think Spellbound, Somehwere in the Night, and maybe even The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.) I'm a sucker for psychobabble in noirs, so I really enjoyed both High Wall and The Dark Mirror.

The Music Box Theatre is a great venue, too. This was only the second time I'd been there, and it's a beautiful old theater that's ornately appointed, dark, atmospheric, and it supposedly even has a ghost, "Whitey," but I didn't feel his presence. (You can read more about Whitey here, toward the bottom of the page: http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/about/

Organist-in-residence Dennis Scott provided lovely background music before the first film. The theater was about half full, but it felt like a big crowd. Unfortunately, film noir expert Alan Rode couldn't be there to introduce the first film. General manager Dave Jennings and projection manager Doug Mclaren introduced the film, and said that Rode's flight had been canceled, but that he should be there for the second film.

Based on rounds of applause prompted by Jennings, it sounded as if about half the people in the audience had never seen High Wall, and about half were new to Noir City.

Anyway, High Wall was a solid MGM noir from 1947. All the exteriors were obviously shot on sets, but it's slick, fast-moving, well-directed film, so that didn't bother me. The climax of the film takes place during a rainstorm, and it's hard to imagine the same shots being captured under natural conditions. Robert Taylor is a good, sympathetic lead, and Audrey Totter was pretty and appealing as his no-nonsense psychiatrist. (She prefers the Red Sox to the opera!) The only other film I think I've seen Totter in is Lady in the Lake, and I found her performance in High Wall more natural, probably because she wasn't constantly staring into the camera and acting more or less solo. Herbert Marshall is great as the dapper, upstanding gentleman who ends up being the villain of the piece. He's not as memorably priggish or effete as Clifton Webb, but he has such a great voice. I listen to The Man Called X on Thursdays, and Marshall has one of the best and most distinct "upper crust" voices I can think of. For my money, though, it's all the supporting players who steal the show in High Wall, especially Frank Jenks as Pinky the Drunk.

Dennis Scott got back on the organ during intermission, and then Alan Rode finally took the stage. Yay! He joked that he had been "impressed into a remake of 'Detour' on my way here." He said he didn't have a lot to say about The Dark Mirror because he doesn't like to give spoilers, but he gave a little background on the picture and especially on Robert Siodmak's career in Hollywood, asked how many people had seen it before (again, by a show of applause, it seemed about half and half), then let the picture roll.

Like High Wall, I'd never seen The Dark Mirror before, but I really liked it. I don't have as much to say about it, mostly because it's been a long week at work, it was almost 10 pm by the time it started, and I have a bad habit of conflating some events from the first picture with the second picture when I'm watching a double bill and I'm not at my absolute sharpest, mentally.

(An aside ... did I imagine this, or were there combination music box/cigarette cases in both High Wall and The Dark Mirror? I know there was one in The Dark Mirror, but I'm pretty sure there was also one in High Wall, when Robert Taylor is re-creating the mess of a murder scene and he's tipping things over in a living room, I'm pretty sure one of those things is a music box/cigarette case that triggers his false memory of a carousel. Anyone? Anyone?)

I liked The Dark Mirror a lot, and would like to see it again some day. In terms of Siodmak's films, it was almost more of a horror film than a noir ... more like The Spiral Staircase than The Killers, for instance. Olivia de Havilland plays twins, and she has some really creepy scenes playing opposite herself. I liked that Siodmak always made it clear which twin we were seeing with little tricks like a monogrammed initial on de Havilland's jackets (T for Terry and R for Ruth), but I thought the necklaces with their names written out were a little much. They looked like the 1946 equivalent of a four-finger ring. The audience seemed more lively for The Dark Mirror. There was a lot more laughter (not mocking, just good-natured, it seemed to me).

Rode got back up on stage and answered questions. He's a big, affable guy who's got a library of information readily accessible in his brain. He discussed High Wall a bit, too, and told a story about Frank Jenks, who played Pinky the Drunk (and who apparently was a bit of a tippler in real life, too) driving so drunk that he had to pull over on the side of the highway. When a highway patrolman knocked on his window, there was Jenks's cat and a bunch of garden hose in his car. Jenks claimed that he was asleep and his cat had been driving.

I'm looking forward to today's triple bill (Tough Guys Run Amuck) and I'm hoping to get a chance to say hello to Rode ... last night he was having conversations with a couple of other people, and it was late, and I really wanted to get home and hit the hay.

It's just such a fantastic thing to see all these pictures on the big screen. DVDs and Blu Rays are great, but there's no substitute for seeing 35mm prints in a theater. The textures of black & white films on the big screen are so rich, and I always feel like I can reach out and slap the actors. Not that I want to, at least most of the time...

[Anne H]

Awesome post, Adam. I wish I could be there!

[Anne H]

NOIR CITY CHICAGO continues! The Mob & New York Confidential at 1:30 & 5:30 at the Music Box Theatre. Don't miss this great Broderick Crawford double feature!

http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/colle...ity-chicago-3/

The Mob
August 13, 1:30pm; August 13, 5:30pm



Not on DVD!
The tale of an undercover cop (Broderick Crawford) infiltrating a waterfront labor racket was a huge hit and a forerunner to 1950s’ crime exposés, subsequently overshadowed by the higher pedigreed On the Waterfront (1954). 1954, Allied Artists [Warner Bros.] 80 min. Scr. Warren Douglas. Dir. Harold D. Schuster. Featuring early work from actors Charles Bronson, Neville Brand, and Ernest Borgnine. (1951, 89m, Robert Parrish)


New York Confidential
August 13, 3:30pm; August 13, 9:30pm

Ripped from Kevaufer Crime Committee headlines of the 1950s is the saga of a mob kingpin (Broderick Crawford) whose hold on the syndicate is complicated by a newly imported hit man (Richard Conte), a restless mistress (Marilyn Maxwell), and Brod’s beautiful but fragile daughter (Anne Bancroft). Once thought lost, this rarity returns to NOIR CITY in 35mm courtesy of Kit Parker Films. (1955, 87m, Russell Rouse)

[Harry Fabian]

I had never seen Dark Mirror before and I forgave the good twin/evil twin premise because I don't know of any earlier film that did it. When the twins work together it is amusing and/or creepy. Lew Ayres gives a great performance as psychoanalyst type who patiently plies the two sisters with questions to try to get to the bottom of the mystery. The plot twists in the end were really good and unexpected.

Good crowd. Some hipsters there, but no ironic, inappropriate laughing that I noticed.

Crud-my comments on High Wall got deleted. Will repost later if I have time.

[Harry Fabian]

Also showing was a little Barry Sullivan-Charles McGraw picture called "Loophole" - which has been restored by FNF and UCLA. Barry Sullivan plays a banker whose drawer comes up $49,900 short. Charles McGraw is the menacing and persistent investigator for the bond insurer who is determined to get that money back. McGraw hounds Sullivan's every step for 6 months-even forcing him out of several jobs. We know that Sullivan didn't do it and who did. Several chance close encounters with the perp ensue before Sullivan finally makes eye contact and the connection. Mary Beth Hughes (as the perps girlfriend) finally gets some good lines at that point and steals every scene she is in showing how psychotic she is in emasculating her weak and ineffectual boyfriend. McGraw was very good as the indomitable villain and every time he got a comeuppance the audience laughed, clapped, or cheered. Climax takes place at a location very familiar to most noir afficionados-just what is it with short-haired platinum blondes with annoying voices and beachfront houses anyway? Definitely worth seeing.

I had seen "The Mob" on TCM earlier this year, but it was more fun with an audience. Broderick Crawford is terriffic as the hard-boiled cop going undercover as a longshoreman to identify and nab an organized crime boss. There were really no slow moments at all in this film. Lots of snappy, clever, tough guy dialogue from Crawford in this film which I don't recall noticing as much before. However, I was as tuned in as the audience was and had some great laughs as Crawford put these wanna-be thugs in their places. Some amusing mix ups in the movie too-but mostly this is serious stuff. We are surprised when we finally learn the identity of the boss. The climax doesn't go as planned and is compelling. I don't buy the one slip-up Crawford made at the end considering how streetwise he was-but it could be explained away. Very enjoyable film and will definitely watch it again in the future.

I didn't watch New York Confidential, because I own the dvd and have even watched the commentary track-but I am sure it was great.

I have been very happy with the audience so far, and I hope they continue to be engaged and appreciative. I do wish the Music Box would light up their big neon sign and the full marquee. Not sure what's up with that.

Looking forward to Sunday.

[Adam Lounsbery]

Harry, what do you mean by "hipsters"?

[Anne H]

NOIR CITY CHICAGO: Dangerously delightful blondes today at at the Music Box Theatre.

http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/collections/noir-city-chicago-3

The Blue Dahlia
August 14, 1:30pm & 5:40pm



At the pinnacle of Ladd–Lake mania, crime fiction legend Raymond Chandler fashioned this original, booze-fueled screenplay for the co-stars, and ended up with an Oscar nomination for his trouble. Ladd plays a veteran who finds a more sophisticated form of murder and mayhem on the home front, while Veronica Lake vamps through the proceedings at her most glamorously iconic. (1946, 96m, George Marshall)


Larceny
August 14, 3:30pm & 9:45pm



Not on DVD!
John Payne and Dan Duryea play dandy grifters bent on bilking a wealthy war widow (Joan Caulfield). Both are tangled up with saucy Shelley Winters, who’s more dangerous than a loaded .38. A riotously entertaining, little-known gem, presented in a brand new 35mm print courtesy of Universal Pictures. (1948, 89m, George Sherman)


The Hunted
August 14, 7:45pm



Not on DVD!
Laura Mead (Belita) has served her time for robbery and still claims her innocence. She returns to the city where her former cop lover (Preston Foster) sent her up. Is she back for a fresh start—or revenge? A strange, hypnotic noir from Poverty Row director Jack (Decoy) Bernhard, resurrected in a new 35mm print by the Film Noir Foundation! Thanks to Warner Bros. and UCLA Film & Television Archive. (1948, 88m, Jack Bernhard)

[Adam Lounsbery]

OK, unfortunately I just wrote a long wrap-up of yesterday's program, and just lost it because my session had expired. I even had copied it so I wouldn't lose it, but forgot that at the last minute I'd copied something else I needed to insert in the write-up.

I'll re-write it, but it might not be that long, because I have to run soon.

[Adam Lounsbery]

TOUGH GUYS RUN AMUCK was a lot of fun, and it was great to get a double dose of Broderick Crawford. I'd never seen any of the three films, and I liked them all a lot.

New York Confidential was a slick, tough, well-made mob movie. Crawford was great as the harried syndicate boss Frankie Lupo, and I especially liked Anne Bancroft as his 23-year-old daughter. Her scenes with both Crawford and Richard Conte really soared. Conte is always a treat, and he was great as the quiet and ruthlessly efficient hitman ... another character describes him as being like a cobra--always ready to strike.

The Mob was also great, and it was fun to see another side of Crawford. He played a cop who's forced to go undercover on the docks and his character was a lot tougher and funnier than his character in New York Confidential. The Mob was a really fast-paced little thriller, and I thought it was great.

Alan Rode introduced Loophole, and he said the analogy he always uses is that he was like Captain Ahab and Loophole was his white whale. He cautioned the audience not to expect the second coming of Citizen Kane, but that it was a fun movie, and it featured Charles McGraw at his most ball-breaking. The crowd was great--a few instances of spontaneous applause when there was some comeuppance to be had.

I thought all three films were great. I'd have trouble picking a favorite.

Unfortunately, something's come up, and I won't be able to make it to any of the films today, but hopefully I'll be back in the saddle on Monday.

[Adam Lounsbery]

That's funny, Harry. I didn't read this before I wrote up my thoughts on Loophole, but I mentioned the same thing ... that the audience clapped when McGraw got some comeuppance.

[Anne H]

NOIR CITY CHICAGO continues tonight at the Music Box Theatre, 5:30 & 7:30 PM, with a double feature of Chicago Deadline & Deadline USA.

http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/colle...city-chicago-3

Deadline USA

August 15, 5:30pm & 9:30pm
Not on DVD!
Humphrey Bogart stars as 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, it’s one of the greatest of all newspaper movies. (1952, 87m, Richard Brooks)

Chicago Deadline

August 15, 7:30pm
Not on DVD!
Alan Ladd is 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 before being resurrected by the Film Noir Foundation, this rarity makes excellent use of various Chicago locales to tell an ink-stained version of Laura. (1949, 86m, Lewis Allen)

[Adam Lounsbery]

Tonight's double bill was another good one. I honestly haven't seen a movie at Noir City so far that wasn't top-notch. (And, on a personal note, tonight was the first night I didn't have to fly solo, since my wife showed up for Chicago Deadline.)

I really enjoyed Foster Hirsch's remarks before Chicago Deadline. He observed that the house was nearly packed. "And I think I know why," he said. "You're all chauvinists!" (I laughed at that one, especially since my wife had earlier made the same observation. If loving your own city too much were a crime, Chicagoans would all be headed for the electric chair.) He talked about the obvious parallels with Laura, and praised Alan Ladd's performance. I've never been the biggest fan of Alan Ladd, but maybe I just haven't seen the right films. I really liked him in Chicago Deadline, and for all the reasons Hirsch cited. His performance is wounded and haunted in all the right ways.

I actually saw Deadline U.S.A. first. Objectively, it might be a better film than Chicago Deadline, but I found them hard to compare. Chicago Deadline is more of a pure noir, while Deadline U.S.A. is more of a realistic film about the newspaper business. Before Deadline U.S.A., Hirsch mentioned parallels we might see with the present day. Even in 1952, the old way of doing things was dying (isn't it always?), and the reputable paper "The Day" is about to be bought out and killed by the publisher of a scandal rag. Hirsch never said the words "Murdoch" or "Rupert," but I'm pretty sure everyone in the audience was able to read between the lines when he was talking about a certain powerful newspaper magnate.

Like any good professor, Hirsch began the film by mentioning a few things to think about while we were watching it, for instance, what type of political message we thought the film might be trying to convey.

He also called journalist Bob Greene out of the audience. Greene was self-effacing, saying he'd just bought a ticket to the movie, and didn't really have anything to say about it. But he ended up having plenty of interesting stuff to say. He also mentioned that it was his favorite movie, and that he owns a framed poster of it.

[Anne H]

Two rarities at NOIR CITY CHICAGO tonight: The Story of Molly X and Crashout at the Music Box Theatre.

http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/colle...city-chicago-3

THE STORY OF MOLLY X

August 16, 5:30pm & 9:30pm
Not on DVD!
Writer-director Wilbur had an obsession with producing prison movies, but this ultra-rarity has a twist: the protagonist is a brass-knuckled dame (June Havoc) who takes over her boyfriend’s Frisco gang after he’s killed. After murdering the culprit in cold blood, she winds up in women’s prison—and you know what happens in those places… (1949, 85m, Crane Wilbur)

CRASHOUT

August 16, 7:30pm
Not on DVD!
Six prisoners crash out of the pen to unearth a stashed robbery payroll. Director Lewis Foster’s frantic film is full of wild flourishes and stunningly brutal action. Featuring leggy Beverly Michaels, wholesome Gloria Talbott, you’ll only find this buried treasure at NOIR CITY! (1955, 89m, Lewis R. Foster)