Celebrate film noir this month with a Friday night film series called Noirvember Nights at Cinema Under the Stars. The films will have exclusive video introductions from Alan K. Rode of the Film Noir Foundation.
The term "Noirvember" was coined in 2010 by film writer Marya E. Gates in order to cleverly designate the month as a time for spotlighting film noir.
Rode, who also runs the Arthur Lyons' Film Noir Film Festival in Palm Springs, noted, "film noir to my mind is not a genre, it's a style, it's a look. It's kind of like beauty. It's in the eye of the beholder. And I think a lot of the conversation and the writing about it now spurs this dialog because it's not a definable genre, it's a style that was a commingling of hard-boiled writers, émigré directors, post-World War II neorealism. Everyone has their own take on what is film noir and what it isn't. And I always liked what the late Arthur Lyons said, 'You can tell it's film noir when the main protagonist gets screwed over in the first five minutes and it goes downhill from there.'"
Noirvember Nights
Fridays at 8:00 p.. at Cinema Under the Stars, 4040 Goldfinch Street
Nov. 15 "Woman on the Run" (1950)
Nov. 22 "El Vampiro Negro" (1953, Argentina)
Nov. 29 "Repeat Performance" (1947)
Tickets can be reserved the Monday before the screening for members and the Tuesday before for non-members.
What is fascinating and compelling about noir is how contemporary it still feels. The clothes may be different, the telephones may look different, and doctors may smoke in the hospital but human nature never changes.
"The thing about noir, it deals with human beings caught in situations and how they react to different situations and the things that drive people," Rode explained. "One indicator of film noir has always been where you have two essentially legitimate people or a protagonist that know that they're doing the wrong thing, but for whatever reasons, they do it anyway. And what are the reasons that these things happen? Greed, lust, larceny, trying to maintain someone's reputation, all of those things. So the basic premise of so many of these stories where the line between good and bad, evil, a code of conduct that may not necessarily be out of the California penal code, for instance, but that people can identify with. And I think that's what makes film noir kind of timeless, because it's about human beings in bad situations, either through their own creation or by happenstance, and how they have to deal with that. And I think that really hasn't changed that much, and I think that's what people identify with."
Rode will be doing virtual introductions for the three remaining films in Noirvember Nights, which I programed. All three films were restored through efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, in conjunction with the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and released through Flicker Alley (which is generously providing the restored versions of the films that will be screening).
This Friday you can find a sassy Ann Sheridan in "Woman on the Run." She's trying to track down her estranged husband who appears to be involved in a murder. She holds her own with cops and reporters in this female — but not femme fatale — driven noir.
Next up is a film that highlights international noir: "El Vampiro Negro," a remake of Fritz Lang's "M." Unlike "M," which focuses on the murder of a child, "El Vampiro Negro" focuses on the mother of a missing child. And the harassment she suffers at the hands of the police because she is a cabaret singer. This film really resonated for me after doing my "Stripper Energy" podcast about the dancers at Les Girls Theater that claim they were harassed and abused by San Diego vice officers in the 1970s and '80s.
And the series closes the day after Thanksgiving with a holiday noir, "Repeat Performance," in which Joan Leslie keeps reliving New Year's eve night.
Rode said, "'Repeat Performance' has been compared to a extended episode either of 'Twilight Zone' or 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents.'" All three films feature strong female characters who drive the plots, which is another reason they can resonate for contemporary audiences. These are women operating in a world of men and refusing to fit into any conventional roles of femininity.
I program series like this and bring people like Rode in because I love film noir and am always thrilled to share it with people, some of whom are seeing the films for the first time. The work the Film Noir Foundation does is vital in rescuing some of these films from oblivion and making sure generations to come can enjoy them.
