They went and pulled another equinox on us, which can mean only one thing: Seattle Art Museum film curator Greg Olson is primed to celebrate the autumnal rite of the SAM film noir series. He has two additional things to celebrate. The series' 2007 edition sold out about five minutes after Olson announced his 10 feature selections, to be shown at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays from Oct. 4 through Dec. 13 (skipping Thanksgiving). And this year's slate of Hollywood's blackest art is the 30th such program Olson has assembled for the museum, and for a devoted corps of Northwest noiristes.
"Endless Night" is the umbrella title for this installment, and besides being an evocative borrowing from William Blake, the phrase nicely indexes both the longevity of Olson's enterprise and the nature of the noir universe. For those just coming aboard, film noir is the term applied to a school of American cinema nobody set out to create or even identified as a genre. Its heyday was the mid-1940s through the early '50s. Critic Richard Schickel recently pronounced the 1944 "Double Indemnity" the first film noir, and he's entitled to his opinion; Paul Schrader, author of the definitive 1972 essay "Notes on Film Noir," sees the 1955 "Kiss Me Deadly" as the ultimate in the form and the 1958 "Touch of Evil" as "noir's epitaph."
Whatever its beginning and end points, the noir cycle charted an inveterately fallen world slashed with harsh light and shadow, populated with corruptible souls trying not to get tripped up by Fate, femmes fatales or their own nature, in films that rarely found their way to any ending that could be termed happy. Often made on low budgets and generally scorned by the reviewers of their day, noirs have had the last laugh by emerging as Hollywood's smartest, most perversely vibrant and enduring legacy.
Incidentally, even though the series tickets are gone, you can always turn up at SAM's Plestcheeff Auditorium at 7 p.m. and hope to score individual tickets in case of no-shows.
Although great films noirs abound, there's consensus if not outright unanimity about the best-loved film noir, and Olson's 30th season opens with it. "Laura" (Oct. 4) is something of a miracle: a master- piece whose original director (Rou-ben Mamoulian) was removed from the project, and whose stars, though hardly numbered among Holly-wood's most accomplished actors, all deliver career-defining performances that individually shine and uncannily enhance one another.
Based on a novel by Vera Caspary and directed by Otto Preminger, the 1944 film follows a New York City police detective (Dana Andrews) investigating the murder of a beautiful careerwoman (Gene Tierney) who was on her way to becoming the toast of the town. In flashback and from the testimony of those who knew and, in their various ways, loved her, we get to know Laura - and perhaps appreciate how the detective's professional dedication begins to shift into somewhat creepy personal obsession.
"Laura" is remarkably successful as an engrossing mystery set in a singular world with a gallery of sharply imagined characters; as a love story shot through with glamour and perversity; and as a multilayered ghost story whose greatest mysteries remain impenetrably private. Clifton Webb, an effetely elegant dancing star of the '20s and '30s, won himself a whole new career as a character actor (and the first of three Oscar nominations) with his waspish portrayal of society gossip columnist Waldo Lydecker. The cast also includes Vincent Price and Judith Anderson, and the fluid, Oscar-winning cinematography by Joseph LaShelle beautifully serves Preminger's celebratedly detached direction - which turns out to have been exactly right for this haunted tale. There is also, of course, that music (by David Raksin) and theme song (lyric by Johnny Mercer).
"Ride the Pink Horse" (Oct. 11) is an endearingly odd 1947 movie, suspended in a cuckoo zone where tough-guy cynicism and a kind of stoned fairy-tale mood manage to coexist for about an hour and a half, with surprisingly satisfying results. Who pulled it off? Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, two very sharp screenwriters, are credited with the script, which was derived from a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes (who also wrote the book that served as the basis for Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place"). The producer was sometime Hitchcock associate Joan Harrison. But it doesn't take an auteurist film critic to assign principal credit to the director, especially when he's also sneering out at us from center screen.
Robert Montgomery was a suave gent (later adviser to Dwight D. Eisenhower on his public appearances) who from time to time took great glee in playing louts (cf. his Philip Marlowe in the 1946 version of Raymond Chandler's "Lady in the Lake"). Here he's a war veteran named Gagin come to a dusty New Mexican bordertown at fiesta time with the express purpose of blackmailing a shady big shot (Fred Clark). An F.B.I. man (Art Smith) tries to persuade him to go legit and reveal whatever he's got on the guy. Gagin's also annoyed and distracted by an Indian girl (Wanda Hendrix, a memorable late-'40s May fly) who hangs out around an old carousel on the edge of town, which isn't all that far from the center of town. There's the requisite amount of violence and menace, but what will stay with you is its atmosphere and goofball singularity.
We'll keep it short and sweet on 1950's "The Sleeping City"(Oct. 18), for the excellent reason that I've never seen or heard of it. Keeping my eyes averted from any published plot summary, I can just tease you with the notion that it involves a murder in a hospital, that it was filmed on location at New York City's Bellevue, and that Gotham's mayor at the time insisted on a prologue disclaimer that "it didn't happen here." Richard Conte and Coleen Gray star, and the direction is by George Sherman, whose stock-in-trade was making Westerns.
A more significant rara avis is "Try and Get Me" (Oct. 25), a 1950 movie originally released as "The Sound of Fury." The scenario, based by Jo Pagano on her novel "The Condemned," centers on a WWII vet (Frank Lovejoy) having a hard time keeping his family up with the Joneses. Impulsively he goes in on a string of robberies with a guy he's just met (Lloyd Bridges), and soon finds himself in a world of hurt. Pagano and director Cy Endfield lean heavily on the social and environmental causes of crime, but the film is more enduringly effective for its noir visualization of a man in an ever-closing trap. Speaking of closing traps, the blacklist would soon write a finis to Endfield's Hollywood career; he moved to England and found work there, initially under pseudonyms. We know him best for the classic battle film "Zulu."
Although given brief video release in the mid-'90s along with Endfield's previous film "The Underworld Story," "Try and Get Me" has been hard to see over the years. Olson will be borrowing a print from the Martin Scorsese archives.
"Sudden Fear" (Nov. 1), a glossy black vehicle for Joan Crawford, achieved a higher profile than most noirs and garnered Oscar nominations for its leading lady and costar Jack Palance (in the supporting-actor category). Crawford is cast as a hit playwright who denies actor Palance a role in her new production but is soon swept off her feet by him. They marry in haste, and the rest of the nearly two-hour film provides plenty of occasion for repenting, as Palance and girlfriend Gloria Grahame plot to do away with our lady of the big shoulders. Director David Miller wrings all the tension and atmosphere from the material that he can, and finally a little more than he should. But this movie marks Palance's emergence as a dynamic, even esoteric, screen presence, and retains its sense of occasion. Inky cinematography, some of it on location in San Francisco, by Charles Lang.
The 1953 "Jeopardy" (Nov. 8) clocks in at a trim 69 minutes; no further time is needed, and none is wasted. Barbara Stanwyck and Barry Sullivan star as a vacationing couple who, during a break from driving, fetch up on a lonely beach where Sullivan gets his leg jammed under a log. Stanwyck has an hour to find help and rescue him before the tide comes in. What you don't want to do at such a moment is run into a possibly homicidal criminal on the lam (Ralph Meeker). The script is by Mel Dinelli, who had written the instant classic "The Window" in 1949. John Sturges directed.
"The Glass Wall" (Nov. 15) is another new one on me. Vittorio Gassman - a heartthrob to the arthouse set for his role in the neorealist melodrama "Bitter Rice" - stars as a post-WWII refugee who jumps ship in New York harbor with a view toward melting into the, well, New York melting pot. Gloria Grahame is already there. Hmm, two Gloria Grahame movies in one film noir series. Is this a great country or what? Directed by Maxwell Shane ("Nightmare") and filmed on location by Joseph Biroc. 1953.
Biroc also shot "The Garment Jungle" (Nov. 29), as he shot 15 other films directed by Robert Aldric -only Aldrich was replaced on this film five days before the scheduled end of shooting; under new director Vincent Sherman, the five days stretched to 16. Only Sherman (who died last year at age 99) received screen credit. The setting is, of course, that part of New York City devoted to the rag trade, and the plot involves labor strife, mob interference and a death that may have been murder. Lee J. Cobb and Kerwin Mat-thews head a cast that also includes Richard Boone, Robert Loggia and Joseph Wiseman. (Conversational aid: Biroc is pronounced by-rock, though for years I thought it was baroque.)
All the previous selections for this series emanated from major Hollywood studios, albeit in some cases from the B division. "Shack Out on 101" (Dec. 6) honors Olson's obligation to include at least one specimen of low-rent delirium in the program. This Allied Artists production (Allied being the tenuously upscale '50s version of the 1940s' Monogram Pictures) is set in what we might charitably term a greasy-spoon joint near a non-scenic stretch of the Pacific. Its denizens include owner Keenan Wynn, waitress Terry Moore, Lee Marvin as a short-order cook named Slob (sic) and Frank Lovejoy, known non-specifically to one and all as "Professor Sam." There's much sleaze and also a dark, wildly improbably secret that could have passed muster only in the paranoid '50s. 1955, to be precise.
For some years now Olson has made a habit of ending his series with a latterday title falling outside the classic noir era and, more often than not, provoking delicious arguments as to whether it truly is a film noir or just a mystery, suspense picture, cop movie, whatever. This year's kicker is "Mirage" (Dec. 13), in which a New York scryscraper suffers a blackout and a corporate type played by Gregory Peck either goes into an amnesiac blackout of his own or is just coming out of one.
Screenwriter Peter Stone wrote it, probably aiming for another successful stylish thriller in the vein of his "Charade" several years earlier. Reviewers at the time tended to grumble that Gregory Peck was no Cary Grant and director Edward Dmytryk was no Stanley Donen (I don't recall whether they also complained that Diane Baker was no Audrey Hepburn). As it happens, Dmytryk did have a couple of classic noir titles to his credit, the 1945 "Murder, My Sweet" and the 1947 "Crossfire," and a certain kinship is occasionally discernible here.
Best of all, "Mirage" features Walter Matthau, still in that pristine moment when he was a magical supporting player and not yet a sometimes-overweening star. He plays a private detective sought out by Peck to solve his mystery. I yearn to disclose his character's previous occupation, but that would stomp on one of the most sublime throwaway lines of the '60s.
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