Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Noir City DC: the 2011 Film Noir Festival started at the AFI Silver this past weekend. I haven’t been able to make any showings yet, but I just copped ‘The Big Combo’(hardy harr harr) which gets me into six films of my choosing. After checking out the list of this year’s offerings, these are my tentative picks:
Loophole brand new 35mm print of “one of the rarest films of the original noir era”
Angel Face Bob Mitchum with Preminger at the helm…‘nuff said. Also, Godard hailed it as one of the ten best films ever made in Hollywood. I’m not a particularly big fan of the man but film types worship him, so I figured it was worth noting.
Experiment in Terror stars Lee Remick and Glenn Ford—if you’re woefully ignorant as to why that’s important, this is what Ms. Remick looks like.
The Dark Mirror two Olivia de Havillands for the price of one—Robert Siodmak made this the same year that he directed The Killers. One of my personal favorites, it stars Burt Lancaster as a man simply referred to as The Swede. If that’s not noir, I don’t know what is.
Sweet Smell of Success one of the few true pieces of the noir canon that I haven’t seen.
The Maltese Falcon/Laura I’ve seen both at least a half-dozen times (double digits for Laura), but haven’t had the chance to catch either on the big screen. I’ll probably end up going with TMF because Lorre/Greenstreet are an unbeatable supporting duo and I do love me some mean Bogart.
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Noir historians Foster Hirsch and Eddie Muller are attending certain screenings and holding post-film discussions. I’m not overly familiar with Muller, but I’ve read Hirsch’s outstanding Otto Preminger biography and am really looking forward to soaking up some of dude’s knowledge.
