Notes From Noir City
San Francisco 2009

These are just a few highlights about some of the films that showed at Noir City San Francisco 2009:

A special treat this year was the onstage interview with Arlene Dahl (while son Lorenzo Lamas sat in the audience). She (still) has a wonderfully appealing laugh and lots of good stories to tell. Two of her films were shown: Wicked As They Come (1956) where she climbs from the gutter to high society using all her feminine wiles.

Slightly Scarlet (1956) had Dahl costarring with fellow redhead Rhonda Fleming. The remarkable thing about this film was that it was a noir in technicolor, shot by master cinematographer John Alton in wide screen. Every shot was a gorgeous masterpiece of lighting and color.

Other highlights: Broderick Crawford in Scandal Sheet as a cunning, murderous, ruthless newspaper head editor who sweats bullets as his star protege reporter gets closer to the deadly truth...

Blind Spot was a fun yarn starring Chester Morris as an under appreciated yet talented writer who gets caught in the web of his own imaginative ideas which were spun out one drunken night and then come true as his publisher shows up dead in a room locked from within.

And the first Sunday night of the fest culminated with probably my all time favorite noir: Billy Wilder's very dark, very intense Ace In The Hole starring Kirk Douglas in his absolutely best role. Though I'd seen it a few times before, I can't get enough of Wilder's superb direction and screenplay. Seen on a big screen in the nearly full Castro Theatre was sheer pleasure.

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