A week-long dive into the dark side of mid- TICKETS AND PASSES century America with live music, trivia and AVAILABLE AT SIFF.NET prizes, a burlesque performance, and 20 FESTIVAL PASS: $150 • $100 SIFF MEMBERS classic films covering the years 1949 - 1959. SINGLE FILM ADMISSION: $15 • $10 SIFF MEMBERS Vouchers are not valid for Noir screenings FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15 SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16 1949-50 1951-53 7:00 PM 1:00 PM 6:45 PM TRAPPED THE WELL THE TURNING POINT Tris Stewart (Lloyd Bridges), a convicted The disappearance of a young black girl Inspired by congressional hearings taking counterfeiter, gets sprung from the triggers unrest in a small, racially mixed place at the time, Paramount produced joint and goes undercover for the Feds, American town. After police arrest a this thriller about crusading attorney John secretly intending to make a score white transient with no alibi, tensions Conroy (Edmond O’Brien), who returns to and run off to Mexico with his red-hot flare threatening to erupt in a violent his hometown to root out corruption. Will squeeze, Meg (Barbara Payton). No one’s race riot. Shot on a miniscule budget, this childhood pal Jerry McKibbon (William sure who’s a cop and who’s a crook in provocative film is a marvel of suspenseful Holden), now a cynical reporter, be an Richard Fleischer’s hard-edged thriller. filmmaking. Oscar® nominated for Best ally or an adversary? Why does Conroy’s New 35mm restored print courtesy of Screenplay and Best Editing, this film is a father (Ed Begley), a veteran cop, not want the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & rarity that is still terrifying and timely. to spearhead a criminal investigation? A Television Archive. (D: RUSSELL ROUSE, US, 1951, 86 MIN) rarity that is timely once again. (D: RICHARD FLEISCHER, US, 1949, 78 MIN) (D: WILLIAM DIETERLE, US, 1952, 85 MIN) Special Performance by Casey Special Performance by The Dmitri Macgill Trio prior to screening! Matheny Group prior to screening! 9:15 PM 3:15 PM 9:00 PM THE FILE ON THELMA JORDON DETECTIVE STORY ANGEL FACE Boozy Assistant DA Cleve Marshall The 21st Precinct becomes the setting Ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert (Wendell Corey) reels from a stifling for a passion play centered around Mitchum) responds to an emergency marriage into an affair with the cop Jim McLeod (Kirk Douglas), whose at a hilltop mansion where he meets an mysterious Thelma Jordon (Barbara vehement views of right and wrong are heiress (Jean Simmons) with an Electra- Stanwyck). So smitten, he ignores tested during a long, relentless shift. fying secret. The couple’s affair takes a shadowy and sinister Tony Laredo (Richard Dark secrets are revealed that bring dark turn once her parents unexpectedly Rober) and the sickly aunt loaded with McLeod’s world crashing down around drop out of the picture. The simple, dough. When murder jars him from him. Oscar® nods went to Eleanor Parker, doom-laden plot is directed with panache Thelma’s spell, he finds himself working Lee Grant (in her sensational movie by Otto Preminger, who gets wonderful both sides of the law. Stanwyck offers a debut as a collared kleptomaniac), Phil performances from Simmons and terrific, two-faced turn in one of her rarely Yordan’s adapted screenplay, and William Mitchum, both of whom hated his guts. screened films. Wyler’s impeccable direction. (D: OTTO PREMINGER, US, 1953, 91 MIN) (D: ROBERT SIODMAK, US, 1950, 100 MIN) (D: WILLIAM WYLER, US, 1951, 105 MIN) SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17 MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18 1953-54 1955-56 1:00 PM 6:30 PM 1:00 PM PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET PUSHOVER KISS ME DEADLY Mercenary pickpocket Skip McCoy (Richard Following a bank heist, cop Paul Sheridan Screenwriter A.I. Bezzerides pulled Widmark) and a brassy streetwalker named (Fred MacMurray) is assigned to keep the rug out from under Spillane’s Mike Candy (Jean Peters) find themselves covert tabs on the main suspect’s Hammer, slyly subverting the private eye’s frantically playing both ends against the girlfriend. But once he makes contact with “heroics” and replacing Spillane’s routine middle when purloined microfilm puts sexy Lona McLane (Kim Novak in her first crime plot with a jaw-dropping doomsday them in the crossfire between Communist starring role), he’s on a slippery slope; she scenario. Ralph Meeker is uncomfortably spies and Federal agents. Sam Fuller’s persuades Sheridan that they can escape attractive as Hammer: sexy, sadistic, punchy and apolitical thriller sides with together with the loot and leave the crooks and terminally stupid. Aldrich directs society’s marginalized miscreants at a and the cops high and dry. A dynamite the twisted plot with a bust-out verve time when the nation was being torn apart script by the redoubtable Roy Huggins. that heralded both the end of traditional by McCarthy-era ideology. A signature work (D: RICHARD QUINE, US, 1954, 88 MIN) film noir and the start of a new, more by Fuller: smart, savvy, and stylish. aggressive style of cinema. (D: SAMUEL FULLER, US, 1953, 80 MIN) (D: ROBERT ALDRICH, US, 1955, 105 MIN) 3:15 PM 8:45 PM 3:30 PM CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS PRIVATE HELL 36 KILLER’S KISS Cop Johnny Kelly (Gig Young) has had Two L.A. cops, Cal Bruner (Steve The simple story—a boxer’s affair with a enough of Chicago. He’d run off with Cochran) and Jack Farnham (Howard mobster’s woman puts them both in peril—is his stripper girlfriend Angel Face (Mala Duff) stumble onto the money trail from a springboard for the young, 27-year old Powers) if he could get his hands on a New York robbery. Nightclub singer Lilli Stanley Kubrick to show off remarkable skills enough scratch to stake them to a new Marlowe (Ida Lupino), who handled some as director, cameraman, and editor. Using a start. Thus begins one long, fantastical of the hot cash, agrees to help hunt the largely amateur cast, shooting without sync night in the Windy City where Johnny’s culprit. When Cal and Lilli fall for each sound, and limited to 100-foot rolls of film in dreams and nightmares all come true. This other, the law suddenly takes a backseat his portable Eyemo camera, Kubrick made the noir oddity, narrated by The City itself, is a to larceny. The 1950s “dirty cop” trend first amateur feature to receive international low-rent masterpiece of B moviemaking. reached its apotheosis with this wicked, distribution. The rest is history. (D: JOHN H. AUER, US, 1953, 90 MIN) booze-fueled thriller. (D: STANLEY KUBRICK, US, 1955, 67 MIN) (D: DON SIEGEL, US, 1954, 81 MIN) MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18 TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20 1955-56 1956 1958 6:30 PM 6:30 PM 6:30 PM THE SCARLET HOUR NIGHTFALL TOUCH OF EVIL Nearing the end of his legendary directing Artist Jim Vanning (Aldo Ray) has his Mexican cop Mike (Charlton Heston) and career, Michael Curtiz produced and life go off the rails when fate pitches his American wife Susan (Janet Leigh) directed this intricately plotted thriller a pair of on-the-lam crooks into his encounter more than they bargained in which seductress Paulie Nevins (Carol winter hunting trip. From then on, he for when they drive into the California Ohmart) and her lover (Tom Tryon), lives life on the run enduring dozens border town of Los Robles—extortion, overhearing plans for a jewel robbery, of double-crosses, psychotic killers on kidnapping, and murder are par for the hatch a scheme to deliver themselves his tail, lots of flashbacks, and—on the course in the dusty fiefdom of veteran from Paulie’s possessive husband (James bright side—beguiling Anne Bancroft. sheriff Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles). Gregory). Broadway star Elaine Stritch’s This often-overlooked gem features Welles’ crime drama is so extraordinarily first film. Bonus: Nat King Cole singing terrific direction from Jacques Tourneur stylish it looms symbolically as the end “Never Let Me Go” in the Beverly Hills and great work by cinematographer of the classic noir era. Hotel’s Crystal Room. Burnett Guffey. (D: ORSON WELLS, US, 1958, 95 MIN) (D: MICHAEL CURTIZ, US, 1956, 95 MIN) (D: JACQUES TOURNEUR, US, 1956, 78 MIN) 8:45 PM 8:30 PM 8:45 PM A KISS BEFORE DYING THE BURGLAR MURDER BY CONTRACT Bud Corliss is charming and handsome— Veteran safecracker Nat (Dan Duryea) Cold, ruthless Claude (Vince Edwards) the ideal catch for any young woman has enough on hands trying to get away has no prospects in his young life—so in 1950s America. But when Bud’s clean with the spoils from a daring he decides to stake his place in the girlfriend unexpectedly becomes B&E—without having to shield his “ward,” world as a hired killer—but when pregnant, throwing a wrench in his nubile, voluptuous Gladden (Jayne he’s sent to sunny California to kill avaricious social-climbing, Bud becomes Mansfield), from his rough and randy a gangland witness, his sudden a literal ladykiller. This rare example of crew. The psychosexual dynamics grow discovery of “ethics” could prove fatal. widescreen Technicolor noir is a Douglas steadily darker as Nat tries to outrun his A personal favorite of director Martin Sirk melodrama turned homicidal. Robert destiny. The guilt-laden caper is given Scorsese, who’s admitted this film’s Wagner threw a wicked curve into his a stylized visual workout by whiz-kid stylistic influence on Taxi Driver— career by playing one of the most amoral director Paul Wendkos. particularly the Travis-in-training heels in Hollywood history.