G
Guest
Guest
Oh la la, I'm going to have fun. What are your fave Noirs? - Perdita
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Film Noir Festival puts the focus on females (Joe Jarrell, SF Chron, 1.11.2004)
At age 14, he skipped school almost daily. By 16, he was hanging out in boxing gyms, observing the seedier elements firsthand. You could say Eddie Muller was doomed from the start.
Doomed to be a film noir expert.
"I'd play hooky to watch 'Dialing for Dollars' on Oakland's old KTVU," recalls Muller. "I'd cut class if there was any film listed in TV Guide with the words 'Dark,' 'Big,' 'City,' 'Street' or 'Night' in the title. Later I learned that 'Naked' was a good one, too."
Such '70s-era filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski and Francis Ford Coppola all evidence a strong admiration for film noir in their work, as do David Lynch, Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, who made their marks during the next two decades. Why, after more than half a century, does film noir retain such powerful appeal?
"Noir exerted its influence over subsequent generations of filmmakers because of its content and its style," says Muller. "The themes -- temptation, desperation, fate's cruelty -- are timeless. But you can't absorb this beautiful, romantic, fatalistic vibe anywhere else but in the originals."
While his peers fantasized about Raquel Welch, Ali McGraw and other leading ladies of the early 1970s, Muller's telltale heart was beating for the femmes fatale of the past. "I was into Gloria Grahame, Ava Gardner and Gene Tierney," says Muller. "I had a teenage crush on all these older dames, and not the stars of the day. Guess I've always been 'old school.' "
To honor these great "dames," Muller has cherry-picked a sweet slate of cinematic treats for "Noir City: The San Francisco Film Noir Festival." The special film fortnight returns Friday for its second year at the Castro Theatre. As the festival's programmer and host, Muller eschews naming favorites, but he considers "Tomorrow Is Another Day" the festival's sleeper hit, and shows equal enthusiasm for other rarities, such as "The Man I Love," "Possessed," "Christmas Holiday," "The Accused" and "The Velvet Touch."
"All of these have women protagonists," Muller says, "proving that noir wasn't merely the domain of tough guys."
Muller calls 1947's "Desert Fury," starring Lizabeth Scott and Burt Lancaster, "the gayest movie ever made in Hollywood. Mostly subtext, of course, but it's amazing how much is actually right on the surface."
The festival will also pair films that showcase noir luminaries Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck tete-a-tete, in a sort of imaginary catfight. "These women had such powerful screen personas that they could almost be called auteurs in their own right, especially when it came to noir," Muller says. "I'm aware of the camp quotient that comes with Crawford playing the Castro, but we'll see if Joan transcends it this time around."
Beyond fueling his teenage testosterone, film noir gave Muller another significant gift: a deeper paternal bond. Muller's father was a sportswriter for the old San Francisco Examiner, then the flagship publication of the Hearst newspaper empire, and young Eddie was enthralled by the frenzy of the newspaper offices and the "brutal excitement" of the boxing rings. "My dad wrote only about boxing, and it doesn't get any more noir than that," says Muller. "These old films were a way for me to get inside my father's era, to feel what that world was all about."
After the release of Muller's 1998 book "Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir," he was invited to organize the first noir festival in Los Angeles. His novel "The Distance," with a protagonist based on Muller's father, who prowls the crime-tinged boxing world of 1940s San Francisco, was selected as best first novel of 2002 by the Private Eye Writers of America. And "The Art of Noir," Muller's comprehensive coffee-table compendium of original film noir posters -- most in full color, and many from his personal collection -- was nominated in 2003 for both Macavity and Edgar Allan Poe awards, two significant honors in the mystery writing field. For his next project, Muller is collaborating with the decidedly non-noir movie star Tab Hunter on his autobiography.
In his customary fedora and trench coat, Muller plays up the image of a noir detective. But in his capacity working for the film festival he becomes an authentic sleuth, tenaciously following leads to resurrect long-lost film artifacts from their dusty tombs, and using whatever means available to bring these treasures to the public.
One example is "Detour," a 1945 B-movie which has since gained legendary status as a definitive expression of noir fatalism. As the greedy, fast- talking hellion in "Detour," young Ann Savage played one the most vicious film vixens ever, anticipating by decades the dark, pathological performances of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct," Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" and Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction." Still captivating at 82, Savage will join Muller on the festival's opening night for a question-and-answer session after the 8 p.m. screening.
To deliver the best-known print of "Detour" in existence, Muller enlisted the nonprofit San Francisco Film Society to help negotiate its loan from the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. "It's in English with French subtitles," says Muller, "so the audience will feel what it was like to see a Hollywood crime drama in postwar France, where the term 'film noir' was coined.
"Pay attention and you might learn to wisecrack in French."
Great Dames
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Film Noir Festival puts the focus on females (Joe Jarrell, SF Chron, 1.11.2004)
At age 14, he skipped school almost daily. By 16, he was hanging out in boxing gyms, observing the seedier elements firsthand. You could say Eddie Muller was doomed from the start.
Doomed to be a film noir expert.
"I'd play hooky to watch 'Dialing for Dollars' on Oakland's old KTVU," recalls Muller. "I'd cut class if there was any film listed in TV Guide with the words 'Dark,' 'Big,' 'City,' 'Street' or 'Night' in the title. Later I learned that 'Naked' was a good one, too."
Such '70s-era filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski and Francis Ford Coppola all evidence a strong admiration for film noir in their work, as do David Lynch, Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino and John Woo, who made their marks during the next two decades. Why, after more than half a century, does film noir retain such powerful appeal?
"Noir exerted its influence over subsequent generations of filmmakers because of its content and its style," says Muller. "The themes -- temptation, desperation, fate's cruelty -- are timeless. But you can't absorb this beautiful, romantic, fatalistic vibe anywhere else but in the originals."
While his peers fantasized about Raquel Welch, Ali McGraw and other leading ladies of the early 1970s, Muller's telltale heart was beating for the femmes fatale of the past. "I was into Gloria Grahame, Ava Gardner and Gene Tierney," says Muller. "I had a teenage crush on all these older dames, and not the stars of the day. Guess I've always been 'old school.' "
To honor these great "dames," Muller has cherry-picked a sweet slate of cinematic treats for "Noir City: The San Francisco Film Noir Festival." The special film fortnight returns Friday for its second year at the Castro Theatre. As the festival's programmer and host, Muller eschews naming favorites, but he considers "Tomorrow Is Another Day" the festival's sleeper hit, and shows equal enthusiasm for other rarities, such as "The Man I Love," "Possessed," "Christmas Holiday," "The Accused" and "The Velvet Touch."
"All of these have women protagonists," Muller says, "proving that noir wasn't merely the domain of tough guys."
Muller calls 1947's "Desert Fury," starring Lizabeth Scott and Burt Lancaster, "the gayest movie ever made in Hollywood. Mostly subtext, of course, but it's amazing how much is actually right on the surface."
The festival will also pair films that showcase noir luminaries Joan Crawford and Barbara Stanwyck tete-a-tete, in a sort of imaginary catfight. "These women had such powerful screen personas that they could almost be called auteurs in their own right, especially when it came to noir," Muller says. "I'm aware of the camp quotient that comes with Crawford playing the Castro, but we'll see if Joan transcends it this time around."
Beyond fueling his teenage testosterone, film noir gave Muller another significant gift: a deeper paternal bond. Muller's father was a sportswriter for the old San Francisco Examiner, then the flagship publication of the Hearst newspaper empire, and young Eddie was enthralled by the frenzy of the newspaper offices and the "brutal excitement" of the boxing rings. "My dad wrote only about boxing, and it doesn't get any more noir than that," says Muller. "These old films were a way for me to get inside my father's era, to feel what that world was all about."
After the release of Muller's 1998 book "Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir," he was invited to organize the first noir festival in Los Angeles. His novel "The Distance," with a protagonist based on Muller's father, who prowls the crime-tinged boxing world of 1940s San Francisco, was selected as best first novel of 2002 by the Private Eye Writers of America. And "The Art of Noir," Muller's comprehensive coffee-table compendium of original film noir posters -- most in full color, and many from his personal collection -- was nominated in 2003 for both Macavity and Edgar Allan Poe awards, two significant honors in the mystery writing field. For his next project, Muller is collaborating with the decidedly non-noir movie star Tab Hunter on his autobiography.
In his customary fedora and trench coat, Muller plays up the image of a noir detective. But in his capacity working for the film festival he becomes an authentic sleuth, tenaciously following leads to resurrect long-lost film artifacts from their dusty tombs, and using whatever means available to bring these treasures to the public.
One example is "Detour," a 1945 B-movie which has since gained legendary status as a definitive expression of noir fatalism. As the greedy, fast- talking hellion in "Detour," young Ann Savage played one the most vicious film vixens ever, anticipating by decades the dark, pathological performances of Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct," Glenn Close in "Fatal Attraction" and Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction." Still captivating at 82, Savage will join Muller on the festival's opening night for a question-and-answer session after the 8 p.m. screening.
To deliver the best-known print of "Detour" in existence, Muller enlisted the nonprofit San Francisco Film Society to help negotiate its loan from the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. "It's in English with French subtitles," says Muller, "so the audience will feel what it was like to see a Hollywood crime drama in postwar France, where the term 'film noir' was coined.
"Pay attention and you might learn to wisecrack in French."
Great Dames
Love that new AV!
