Laura's Miscellaneous Musings: The Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival: Looking Forward and Back

Thursday, March 24, 2022

The Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival: Looking Forward and Back

As I mentioned in last weekend's Around the Blogosphere roundup, the dates were recently announced for the 2022 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival.

The 22nd festival will take place in Palm Springs from May 12th to 15th, 2022. As usual, the festival will be at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, formerly known as the Camelot Theatres, located at 2300 E. Baristo Road in Palm Springs.

Passes and individual tickets will go on sale in April, which is also when the schedule will be announced. I'm excited to learn what will be playing at this year's fest! Festival producer and host Alan K. Rode always does a stellar job selecting the films and lining up guests.

The festival usually takes place in May, but the 2021 festival took place last October; like so many things, the date was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

I covered that edition of the festival in a number of photo-filled posts which are linked at the bottom of this post, but with the announcement of this year's festival I thought I'd share additional memories and photos from last fall.

As I've written about previously, opening night was a screening of WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS (1950) with special guest Susan Andrews, daughter of Dana Andrews, seen here. Additional special guests in 2021 included Mark Fleischer (son of director Richard Fleischer), Victoria Mature (daughter of Victor Mature), and Steven C. Smith, whose most recent book is a biography of Max Steiner.

Here's Alan Rode introducing Saturday's first film of the day, THE CRUEL TOWER (1956), a "B" film I thoroughly enjoyed. My review is at the end of this post, along with reviews of two additional films.

Friday and Saturday were both four-film days at the festival! The Argentinian film noir EL VAMPIRO NEGRO (THE BLACK VAMPIRE) (1953) and the French noir QUAI DES ORVERES (JENNY LAMOUR) (1947), both first-time watches for me on Friday, were festival highlights.

Here's a great group on Friday, Pete Shaner, Victoria Mature, Jemma and Alan Rode, and Beth Accomando:

It was especially wonderful to be reunited with friends for the first time in a very long time.

Bob traveled from Wisconsin, and Theresa from New York!

Saturday featured a book signing with Alan Rode and Steven Smith...

...as well as Eddie Muller, who also introduced some films during the festival.

Here they are seen outside the theater:

The farmer's market which takes place outside the theater on Saturday is always fun, adding some "local color" to the weekend experience.

TCM's Scott McGee was there too! Here he is on the last day of the festival, a three-film day which included Victoria Mature introducing her father's film THE LONG HAUL (1957), seen here in a great poster.

Joan Bennett and James Mason in THE RECKLESS MOMENT (1949) in 35mm was another Sunday highlight for me.

Here's Eddie Muller introducing the highly entertaining PLAYGIRL (1954) on Sunday morning:

The Palm Springs Cultural Center, aka the Camelot, is a beautiful theater!

For anyone considering attending this year's festival, we've had good experiences staying at the Best Western Plus Las Brisas Hotel, the Courtyard by Marriott, and especially the Old Ranch Inn. There are many additional options in Palm Springs.

The Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is a simply splendid festival which I've had the pleasure of attending several times, and I'd love to see more of my fellow film fans turn out for it this spring!

Look for additional coverage here in the coming weeks, including the schedule announcement.