A Look Back at the Noir City Hollywood Festival

It's hard to believe it's already been a couple of weeks since opening night of the 2024 Noir City Hollywood Festival!

This year the festival returned to the Egyptian Theatre for the first time since 2020. It was wonderful to be back on "home ground" after festivals at the Hollywood Legion and Aero in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

One of my favorite film historians, Imogen Sara Smith, was this year's "Miss Noir City," featured on festival posters. She is now the editor of the Noir City magazine.

There were a number of interesting people present on opening night, including actresses Diane Baker (MARNIE), seen above with Eddie Muller...

...and Dana Delany, seen in these photos with Muller and Alan K. Rode. Delany (TOMBSTONE) is a serious classic film fan who regularly introduces movies at the TCM Classic Film Festival. This year she's introducing THE BIG HEAT (1953) at the TCM Fest.

Film historians Jeremy Arnold and Leonard Maltin in front of the Egyptian Theatre.

Alan and Jemma Rode with Alice Maltin. I included this partly because I love Alice's shirt!

Alan Rode with Max Steiner biographer Steven C. Smith. Smith also produces wonderful Blu-ray featurettes, including for the upcoming Flicker Alley release of the opening night film, NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR (1952).

A great photo of friend Ruth Mundsack with Jeffrey Mantor of Larry Edmunds Bookshop:

The opening night movies were NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR (1952), known in Argentina as NO ABRAS NUNCA ESA PUERTA, and THE WINDOW (1949), which I first saw at the 2012 Noir City Festival. I really enjoyed revisiting THE WINDOW.

As mentioned above, NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR will be out on Blu-ray from Flicker Alley. I expect to review it when it's released this June, but suffice it to say for now that I quite enjoyed it. With its dual stories, including one about a blind woman, it called to mind FLESH AND FANTASY (1943), which I saw at the 2016 Noir City Festival.  (Update: Here is the link for the NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR Blu-ray review!)

Above, Eddie Muller introduces one of the opening night films. We saw a total of half a dozen films that weekend, returning on Saturday afternoon to see all-time favorite KISS OF DEATH (1947).

After dinner on Saturday, we say two "railroad station" themed films, UNION STATION (1950) and CAIRO STATION (1958). It was wonderful to see UNION STATION for the first time theatrically; I quite enjoyed my first viewing in 15 years, although Allene Roberts screams too much!

The Egyptian film CAIRO STATION (aka BAB AL HADID) has many admirers but really wasn't for me, at least on this initial viewing. I found it too loosely plotted, visually ugly, and generally dark to be enjoyable.

Sunday afternoon we saw one more film for the weekend, enjoying the very colorful DESERT FURY (1947) in a beautiful 35mm print. I can say that the audience was...surprised...by some of the film's unusual content. It was my first time to see it since visiting the locations in 2021, and it was great fun to recognize them on the big screen.

Thursday night we returned for an all-time favorite, THE NARROW MARGIN (1952), plus the excellent RIFIFI (1955). It had been nearly a decade since I last saw RIFIFI for the first time at UCLA.

I've been fortunate to see THE NARROW MARGIN several times theatrically, including when star Jacqueline White was in attendance at the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival, and it's always a treat. It was particularly special to have Mark Fleischer, son of the film's director Richard Fleischer, interviewed by Alan Rode before the screening.

We saw a total of eight films at the festival, including two new-to-me foreign films. It was a fantastic festival, and I only wish we could have been there on more than four days! My preview of all of the festival's films can be found here.

There's more theatrical film noir ahead, not just at the TCM Classic Film Festival later this month but at the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival in May!

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