Bogart, Rarities Kick Off Latest
Edition of Venerable LA Noir Fest
Coming to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood April 3-19, 2015
The American Cinematheque, in
collaboration with the Film Noir Foundation, will once again April present the
hugely popular NOIR CITY film festival, a three-week celebration of Hollywood's
darkest, most daring — and most durable — cinematic movement. This year marks
the 17th anniversary of the collaboration between the Cinematheque and
writer-impresario Eddie Muller, who since the festival’s inception has become a
prominent figure in film preservation. In addition to paying tribute to the
genre’s established artists and films, Muller’s Film Noir Foundation (FNF) has
rescued numerous titles from obscurity and funded their restoration. Its two
most recent reclamations, Woman on the
Run and The Guilty, will be
featured in this year's festival, which runs April 3 – 19 at the Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard (6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028).
The festival kicks off with an
Opening Night reception sponsored by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,
which funded the Woman on the Run restoration
through its Charitable Trust. It was feared the only existing print of the film
had been lost in a 2008 fire. The FNF united the efforts of the UCLA Film and
Television Archive, British Film Institute, and HFPA to ensure its
resurrection. The 1950 film, starring Ann Sheridan, screens April 3 on a double
bill with another Sheridan starrer, The
Unfaithful (1947).
NOIR CITY continues over the
following weeks with programs dedicated to mainstays of the genre such as
director Jacques Tourneur, writers Cornell Woolrich and Dorothy B. Hughes, the
great Barbara Stanwyck, British films by exiled blacklist directors Edward
Dmytryk and Joseph Losey, and the Los Angeles premiere of three virtually
unknown Argentinean films noir from the early 1950s—subtitled in English for
the first time and presented in new prints funded by the Film Noir Foundation.
These include El Vampiro Negro (The
Black Vampire), a 1953 feminist reworking of Fritz Lang's classic M, and No Abras Nunca esa Puerta (Never Open That Door), an anthology of
short stories by American suspense master Cornell Woolrich. The evening
screenings, hosted by Muller or his FNF colleague Alan K. Rode, often feature
surprise special guests.
In what's become a tradition, the
festival's closing weekend will feature a full-scale film noir nightclub
(Saturday, April 18) with live big band music, casino, dancing— as well as a centerpiece
screening of another Woolrich adaptation, The
Guilty, an obscure 1947 Monogram B-film restored in all its shadowy luster
by the FNF and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
"The Film Noir Foundation has accomplished
tremendous things in recent years,” said Muller. “Not only restoring movies,
but simply continuing to screen 35mm black and white classics for a new generation,
helping to foster and maintain a passion for cinema. And it’s always a treat to
come back to the Egyptian each year—which, for me, is where this all
began.”
The festival boasts 26 films noir over 12 nights. For a complete schedule see the Egyptian Theatre's website. Tickets are sold on Fandango. Tickets to the Noir City Party on April 18, 2015 are available here.
The American Cinematheque also runs a dedicated Film Noir Facebook page where the discussion is film noir all the time.