Written By Daniel J. Kelley As the 2010 prosperity summer has given way to the current summer of deficits, darkness and despair, what better possible antidote could be administered than hot buttered popcorn?
The Music Box Theater is playing host to the third annual Noir City film festival from August 12th to 18th. The week long series features four recently restored films and a portion of all ticket sales will be used to fund future film restoration projects conducted under the auspices of the not for profit Film Noir Foundation. Guest introductions and commentaries will be delivered by author Alan Rode, who has published the recent biography of actor Charles McGraw and is busy at work on a new project chronicling the career of acclaimed director Michael Curtiz, and Foster Hirsch, a professor of film studies at Brooklyn College and the author of sixteen books on cinema. The programming theme of this year’s festival is “Who’s crazy now!?” [editor's note: Noir City Kicked Off In Los Angeles...]
Hold on to your hats! On Saturday and Sunday, August 13th and 14th, the festival continues with triple features!
Two of Saturday’s three films have definite Chicago connections. When an investigative committee led by U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings on the subject of organized crime in Chicago in 1950, the damning testimony of Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, a crooked cop slated by the Democrats for Cook County Sheriff, created a sensational scandal. In the aftermath, the voters rebelled and several Republican candidates were elected as a result including U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen, who defeated the former Senate Majority Leader, Scott Lucas, Cook County Board President William N. Erickson and Sheriff John Babb. Many of the Kefauver hearings were televised and Hollywood took notice by producing several mob expose films such as the two Broderick Crawford features, “The Mob” and “New York Confidential.” Saturday’s program concludes with the rarely seen “Loophole.” This insurance investigation gone awry story stars Charles McGraw and Barry Sullivan and the 35mm print was restored through the efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, Warner Brothers and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
On Sunday, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake star in “The Blue Dahlia” based upon an original Raymond Chandler screenplay. Chandler allegedly completed the script while on a studio sanctioned alcoholic bender. William Bendix plays a returning veteran who flies into maniacal rages when subjected to loud “monkey music.” Watch for Beaver Cleaver’s dad, Hugh
The programming theme of this year’s festival is “Who’s crazy now!?” Appropriately, the series opens on August 12th with two psychological thrillers. In the newly restored 35mm film print of “The High Wall,” Robert Taylor plays a brain damaged war veteran who has confessed to his adulterous wife’s murder. His psychiatrist (Audrey Totter) begins to doubt the veracity of his story once he is sent to a sanitarium. This 1947 movie directed by Curtis Bernhardt was restored by the Film Noir Foundation in cooperation with Warner Brothers and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The second feature “The Dark Mirror” stars Olivia de Havilland as a pair of twin sisters, one good and one evil. Lew Ayres, the former star of the long running “Dr. Kildare” series, is the psychologist who must evaluate both of the women. This 1948 screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award and Robert Siodmak, a highly regarded film noir craftsman, directed.
Hold on to your hats! On Saturday and Sunday, August 13th and 14th, the festival continues with triple features!
Two of Saturday’s three films have definite Chicago connections. When an investigative committee led by U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings on the subject of organized crime in Chicago in 1950, the damning testimony of Dan “Tubbo” Gilbert, a crooked cop slated by the Democrats for Cook County Sheriff, created a sensational scandal. In the aftermath, the voters rebelled and several Republican candidates were elected as a result including U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen, who defeated the former Senate Majority Leader, Scott Lucas, Cook County Board President William N. Erickson and Sheriff John Babb. Many of the Kefauver hearings were televised and Hollywood took notice by producing several mob expose films such as the two Broderick Crawford features, “The Mob” and “New York Confidential.” Saturday’s program concludes with the rarely seen “Loophole.” This insurance investigation gone awry story stars Charles McGraw and Barry Sullivan and the 35mm print was restored through the efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, Warner Brothers and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
On Sunday, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake star in “The Blue Dahlia” based upon an original Raymond Chandler screenplay. Chandler allegedly completed the script while on a studio sanctioned alcoholic bender. William Bendix plays a returning veteran who flies into maniacal rages when subjected to loud “monkey music.” Watch for Beaver Cleaver’s dad, Hugh Beaumont, in a supporting role. In the film “Larceny,” John Payne and Dan Duryea are a pair of confidence men scheming to bilk a wealthy widow out of millions to build a war memorial in honor of her late husband. A svelte and jealous Shelley Winters co-stars. “The Hunted” is a Poverty Row obscurity from Monogram Pictures which was also rescued by the Film Noir Foundation.
On August 15th, the fourth estate is placed under a microscope in two newspaper themed noirs. The iconic Humphrey Bogart plays the editor of a soon to fold New York newspaper who is determined to go out in a blaze of journalistic glory by exposing a gangster in the paper’s final edition in “Deadline U.S.A.” Alan Ladd plays a reporter in “Chicago Deadline” who investigates the death of a good girl turned prostitute played by Donna Reed. This rarely seen 1949 film contains numerous scenes shot on location in Chicago.
On Tuesday, August 16th, a pair of prison pictures take center stage. Crane Wilbur, whose lengthy career as an actor, director and screenwriter dated back to the Silent Era, specialized in prison dramas and “The Story of Molly X” is unique to the subgenre in that the criminal mastermind is a woman (June Havoc). “Crashout” is an exceptionally violent prison break film about a gang of convicts seeking to recover the stashed proceeds of a payroll heist.
Two proto-noir films directed by Stuart Heisler are featured on Wednesday, August 17th. If you enjoyed the Coen Brothers’ production “Miller’s Crossing,” you owe it to yourself to see “The Glass Key” which partially served as its inspirational source material. Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake and William Bendix star in this film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett’s hardboiled novel. Wednesday’s program concludes with Albert Dekker as a pair of disturbed twins bent upon committing acts of insanity and murder in the Gothic tale “Among the Living.” This 1941 film is a true rarity.
Burt Lancaster made a total of seven movies that are classified as film noir. There is not a clinker in the entire load of coal either. So, it is fitting that the final night of the festival (August 18th) will feature two of his very best. “Sorry, Wrong Number” is based upon the immensely popular radio play by Lucille Fletcher. After its initial broadcast proved to be such an immediate sensation, the original “Suspense” radio program production with Agnes Moorehead was rebroadcast a record seven times due to repeated listener requests.
Fletcher subsequently adapted her play for a novel and the story was enlarged for a stylish, full length motion picture. Barbara Stanwyck plays the bedridden hypochondriac wife of Lancaster in the film which includes sequences set in suburban Lake Forest and the industrial town of Cicero. Hal Wallis produced the film and Anatole Litvak directed. “Brute Force” is the concluding film of the 2011 festival. This 1947 prison drama directed by Jules Dassin features Lancaster as the leader of a gang of prison convicts determined to escape a cruel and sadistic guard played by Hume Cronyn.
Why does film noir continue to resonate with modern audiences? Possibly, because as Alonzo D. Emmerich, the shady lawyer in W. R. Burnett’s “The Asphalt Jungle” was moved to observe that “crime is only a left handed form of human endeavor” and so many complications are merely the result of good old fashioned “dirty politics.”
Dirty politics is something that most Chicagoans and Illinoisans can relate to.
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Hello! Readers...
ReplyDeleteDaniel J.Kelley is once again my on-spot reporter and will be sending back feed and the news Of the evening happenings all week long over there at "The Music Box" in Chicago.
Thanks, Dan...
deedee ;-D