Notes From Noir City 2010:
Robert Siodmak Double Bill
Robert Siodmak is the well known director of the film noir double feature shown on day 2 of the 8th annual
San Francisco Film Noir Festival.
Also known as Noir City, this festival is put on by the Film Noir Foundation, whose mission is to find and restore these old gems. The
Castro Theatre
was pretty well packed. And on this rainy Saturday, patrons had a chance to see 4 films. The matinee double feature consisted of two by Robert Siodmak, a German director who fled Nazi Germany to direct films in Hollywood. First was Fly By Night (1942), a very well crafted, zany film noir, full of wacky dialog and nutty situations. It was noir in the sense that a nice, respectable doctor gets caught up with spies, a mental sanitarium, a beautiful dame and the cops who want him for alleged murder. The audience was treated to offbeat scenes such as: the runaway couple leaping from their speeding convertible to a car on the back of a fast moving car carrier truck.
Another good one was when the doctor (Richard Carlson) and the woman he kidnaps (Nancy Kelly) pretend they are eloping and so are forced into a quicky marriage to escape their pursuers. The couple who marries them are the parents of two bumbling policemen. As the family sits around in the living room that evening, they are utterly baffled when the doctor keeps coming downstairs from his supposed honeymoon in his shirt, tie, shoes, socks and... a little towel round his waist, first requesting a needle and thread, a little later some scissors, and thirdly...a shoehorn? But best of all was the scene where the evil German psychiatrist forces the blind old scientist to show him the weapon he unwittingly developed, and it causes him to go blind as well. But that doesn't stop him from shooting his gun repeatedly at the equally blind inventor, who staggers slowly around the room, spouting grievances. My favorite line of dialog has to be when the doc finds an escaped (alleged) lunatic in his car, who says "I'm not insane! If I was, I would be frothing at the mouth right now." Then he wipes his mouth.
Deported (1950), also directed by Robert Siodmak, is a bit of a twist from a typical film noir theme where an innocent guy gets caught up in a tangle of darkness and danger, murder and deception. In this case, it's the convicted criminal who gets caught up in goodness and light, love and redemption. And doesnt know quite how to handle it. Jeff Chandler plays the sexy bad boy who falls for the beautiful and almost saintly countess (Marta Toren). No one in the village knows he was a big mob boss back in the U.S. and got deported to his hometown. Everyone thinks he's the big, rich American hero and welcome him warmly. He starts to set up a black market deal, but then must choose to betray his cohorts in crime or the woman he loves and the people who look up to him. Shot in Italy, this film has great exteriors filled with lots of extras.
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