Noir City, the world’s most popular Film Noir festival, returns to the legendary Egyptian theater in Seattle, Washington, from February 15 through 21, 2019 for a week-long indulgence of danger, desire, and despair. The 2019 festival presents 20 classic films covering the years 1949 to 1959, as they were experienced on their original releases, pairing a top-tier studio “A” with a shorter, low-budget second feature, or “B” film. Many of the films will be presented in glorious 35mm. Czar of Noir and host of TCM’s “Noir Alley,” Eddie Muller, will host the week-long Festival.
The week starts off big with the newly completed 35mm restoration of Trapped (1949), Richard Fleischer’s hard-edged noir classic starring Lloyd Bridges, courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive, followed by Robert Siodmak’s The File on Thelma Jordon(1950), featuring Barbara Stanwyck, in a terrific two-faced turn in one of her rarely screened films.
The “A”s include The Turning Point(1952), starring Edmond O’Brien and William Holden, in a ripped-from-the-headlines thriller about organized crime and corruption in a small town, and leaping on the voyeurism bandwagon of 1954 powerhouses Rear Window and Witness to Murder, is Pushover (1954) starring Fred MacMurray and femme fatale Kim Novak (in her film debut). The “A”s wouldn’t be complete without that quintessential 1950s staple of noir, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958), about a California border town where kidnapping, extortion, and murder are business as usual.
The “B”s include Killer’s Kiss (1955), Stanley Kubrick’s inventive and kinetic tribute to Manhattan and film noir, Murder by Contract (1958) a Martin Scorsese favorite about a hitman who has a crisis of conscience and Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), a gritty, tense, racially charged heist film starring Harry Belafonte and Robert Ryan.
NOIR CITY 2019 LINEUP
Trapped (35mm)
Lloyd Bridges stars as a convicted counterfeiter working undercover for the Feds, or rather, they think he is, in this twisted tale of double and triple crosses.(d. Richard Fleischer c: Lloyd Bridges, Barbara Payton, and John Hoyt, US, 1949, 78 min)
The File on Thelma Jordon (35mm)
An assistant DA gets caught up in an illicit affair with a duplicitous seductress who manipulates him into working both sides of the law. (d. Robert Siodmak c: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Paul Kelly, and Richard Rober, US, 1950, 100 min.)
The Well
Shock waves ripple through a small town when the disappearance of a young black girl leads the police to arrest a white transient. (d. Russell Rouse c: Gwendolyn Laster, Richard Rober, Maidie Norman, and Harry Morgan, US, 1951, 86 min.)
Detective Story
One event-filled day in a single police precinct center around a hard-nosed cop whose world is inadvertently turned upside down when he interrogates a shady abortionist. (d. William Wyler c: Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, George Macready, Lee Grant, US, 1951, 105 min)
The Turning Point
A crusading attorney returns to his hometown to root out a crime syndicate but his efforts are compromised by corrupt city officials. (d: William Dieterle c: William Holden, Edmond O’Brien, Alexis Smith, and Ed Begley, US, 1952, 85 min)
Angel Face (35mm)
An ambulance driver gets more than he bargained for when he gets entangled with a beautiful heiress with murderous intent. (d: Otto Preminger c: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona Freeman, and Herbert Marshall, US, 1953, 91 min)
Pickup on South Street
A pickpocket and a streetwalker get inadvertently caught in the crossfire of Communist spies and Federal agents. (d: Samuel Fuller c: Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Thelma Ritter, Richard Kiley, US, 1953, 80 min)
City That Never Sleeps
Chicago provides the backdrop of this story of a cop, who, tired of the rat race, intends to run off with his stripper girlfriend so they can start fresh, but the city has other plans. (d: John H. Auer c: Gig Young, Mala Powers, William Tallman, and Marie Windsor, US, 1953, 90 min)
Pushover (35mm)
After a bank heist, a cop surveilling a robbery suspect’s girlfriend, falls under her spell and is seduced into plotting to steal the loot and runaway with her. (d: Richard Quine c: Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak, Phil Carey, and Dorothy Malone, US, 1954, 88 min)
Private Hell 36 (35mm)
A good cop goes bad when he gets involved with a nightclub singer who holds the key to the missing loot from a New York robbery. (d: Don Siegel c: Ida Lupino, Steve Cochran, Howard Duff, and Dean Jagger, US, 1954, 81 min)
Kiss Me Deadly (35mm)
After private eye Mike Hammer and a hitchhiker are kidnapped by thugs and the girl is tortured to death, he searches for the secret behind the girl’s murder. (d: Robert Aldrich c: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, and Maxine Cooper, US, 1955, 105 min)
Killer’s Kiss (35mm)
In Stanley Kubrick’s second feature, a struggling New York boxer risks his life to protect a nightclub dancer from her gangster boss. (d: Stanley Kubrick c: Frank Silvera, Jamie Smith, Irene Kane, Jerry Jarret, US, 1955, 67 min)
The Scarlet Hour (35mm)
A married seductress and her lover hatch a plan to steal jewelry from some thieves so they can run away with each other. (d: Michael Curtiz c: Carol Omhart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrence, and James Gregory, US, 1956, 95 min)
A Kiss Before Dying (35mm)
A ruthless social-climber murders his wealthy girlfriend when she becomes pregnant, then pursues her sister instead. (d: Gerd Oswald c: Robert Wagner, Joanne Woodward, Virginia Leith, and Jeffrey Hunter, US, 1956, 94 min)
Nightfall (35mm)
An artist is falsely accused of murder and is forced to flee both the law and organized crime when the real killers think he has their loot. (d: Jaques Tourneur c: Aldo Ray, Anne Bancroft, Brian Keith, Jocelyn Brando, US, 1957, 78 min)
The Burglar (35mm)
A safecracker and his crew get away with robbing an emerald necklace, but that was the easy part and someone with worse intentions is on to them. (d: Paul Wendkos c: Dan Duyrea, Jayne Mansfield, Martha Vickers, Peter Capell, US, 1957, 90 min)
Touch of Evil
A Mexican cop and his American wife encounter corruption, marauding gangs, and murder in a California border town. (d: Orson Welles c: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Joseph Calleia, US, 1958, 95 min)
Murder by Contract (35mm)
A ruthless and efficient contract killer has a crisis of conscious when he learns his next target is a woman. (d: Irving Lerner c: Vince Edwards, Phillip Pine, Hershel Bernardi, Caprice Toriel, US, 1958, 81 min)
The Crimson Kimono (35mm)
Two cops investigating the murder of a stripper both fall for a key witness. (d: Samuel Fuller, James Shigeta, Glenn Corbett, Victoria Shaw, Anne Lee, US, 1959, 82 min)
Odds Against Tomorrow
A disgraced former police officer hires two very different men for a bank heist, however, suspicion and prejudice threaten to end the partnership. (d: Robert Wise, Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Ed Begley, US, 1959, 96 min)
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