The 16th annual S.F. Film Noir Festival comes to the Castro.
There was a time when going to the movies was a full evening’s entertainment. There would be the main attraction — the “A” feature, the one with big budgets and big stars — and the “B” movie, the second bill made on the cheap with no-name stars.
“It was like a night out, and you dressed for the occasion,” Eddie Muller, founder of the San Francisco Film Noir Festival, said soon after ducking into John’s Grill, his trench coat and fedora showing the evidence of a dark, rainy San Francisco afternoon.
“It was a social thing, where you meet other people.”
In its decade and a half, Noir City, as the festival is known, has expanded to seven cities, and Muller, an author and historian nicknamed the Czar of Noir, has become the noir impresario on Turner Classic Movies each Sunday morning, with plans to expand to Saturday night.
But the San Francisco Festival, which still packs the 1,400-seat Castro Theatre, remains the flagship festival. For the 16th edition, Muller is pairing an “A” noir and a “B” noir from the same year for 12 double features in 10 days (two each Saturday) from Friday, Jan. 26, through Sunday, Feb. 4.
It begins in 1941 with “I Wake Up Screaming,” starring Victor Mature and Betty Grable in a sleazy murder mystery, followed by “Address Unknown,” with Albert Dekker as an industrialist who finds out his long-thought-dead twin brother is actually alive.
Things continually spiral out of control through that final Sunday, when we land in 1953 and Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin light up the screen in Fritz Lang’s hard-boiled cop thriller “The Big Heat,” followed by Beverly Michaels as a “Wicked Woman” who swindles not one but two men.
The subtitle of this year’s festival is “Film Noir A to B — 1951-53.” Muller said he wanted to help people understand how special “B” movies could be. They might have been second bills at the time, but often were racier and crazier than the established “A” films.
“A lot of the rarities are the “B” movies,” Muller said, sipping a cocktail between bites of his Jack LaLanne salad. These are 65minute, 68-minute movies. Don’t worry — you’ll make your BART train!”
Among the finds is “Quiet Please, Murder” (3 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 27), starring George Sanders — a supporting actor in “A” pictures but often a leading man in “B” movies — as an art forger “who, believe it or not, is into sadomasochism,” says Muller, who first saw the film last year. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God! This is fantastic!’ It’s so much fun.”
Muller is especially proud of the Sunday, Jan. 28, pairing of
French master Julien Duvivier’s “Flesh and Fantasy” and “Destiny” — which were planned as one film. “Flesh and Fantasy” is a three-part omnibus of supernatural tales starring Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Boyer. “Destiny” was filmed as the fourth part of that omnibus, but Universal Studios decided it could cash in by lopping off “Destiny’ and expanding it into its own 65minute “B” picture, filling it out with material shot by one Reginald Le Borg.
“We’re putting the film back together,” Muller said. “With the ‘Fantasy’/‘Destiny’ double bill, people will see what Duvivier wanted to create.”
Other highlights include the return of Noir City favorite “Night Editor,” a delirious over-the-top web of nastiness starring William Gargan, Janis Carter and an ice pick — a film that will make the preceding “A” picture, the Alan Ladd-Veronica Lake classic “The Blue Dahlia” (7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 30) seem tame by comparison; restorations of an early Burt Lancaster-Kirk Douglas organized crime thriller, “I Walk Alone” (7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, followed by Lawrence Tierney as the “Bodyguard,” a “B” film that was renowned director Robert Altman’s first credit, as a writer); Loretta Young repelling a sexual assault with a tire iron in “The Accused” (7:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 2, followed by tough guy Charles McGraw as “The Threat”); and the San Francisco-shot cop thriller starring Lee J. Cobb as “The Man Who Cheated Himself” (7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 3, followed by McGraw again in “Roadblock”).
“The Man Who Cheated Himself” is a restoration produced by Muller’s Film Noir Foundation, which is partly funded by the proceeds of the nonprofit Noir City festivals.
“I feel very strongly that we’re keeping the work of these filmmakers alive,” Muller said. “Moviegoing has become a very isolating experience. It’s not something people share with each other. They watch the movie alone, then talk about it on social media.
“One of the joys of producing this festival is to see people treat it like a communal experience. It’s what going to the movies used to be.”