As on a regular basis, the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Pageant in Palm Springs — taking place this Thursday by way of Sunday — will consider movement footage from the primary noir interval of the ’40s and ’50s, along with a handful of films that haven’t been screened theatrically in a lot of a very long time. Moreover as on a regular basis, the 2025 model of the desert fest will reserve a spot for a contact of neo-noir, as seen with the inclusion this time of the Nineteen Seventies crime thriller “The Associates of Eddie Coyle.”
This yr, though, the competitors will embrace a really neo-neo noir. To close out the gathering Sunday night time time, director Guillermo Del Toro and co-screenwriter Kim Morgan may be coming to Palm Springs with an apparently never-before-seen extended cut back of their 2021 film “Nightmare Alley,” launched in black-and-white, a la nearly every one in every of many 12 traditional films that may be earlier this newbie over the weekend.
“I do know Guillermo’s very passionate about this,” says longtime competitors director Alan Okay. Rode. “He and Kim are good ample to return out and spend some time introducing the film and watching it. I’m honored that he’s coming out to try this, and I’m really attempting forward to introducing his black-and-white extended cut back from actually one in every of our most honored filmmakers. He’s treating it kind of as a premiere, which can be very thrilling.”
Del Toro’s remake of the standard 1947 “Nightmare Alley” was launched in shade 4 years up to now, in spite of everything, adopted by a brief run of a black-and-white mannequin that appeared in select theaters after which on Hulu sooner than being put once more throughout the vault. Nonetheless the filmmaker launched in December in a Bluesky social-media publish that he was engaged on a model new B&W edit. “I’m remastering the B&W Nightmare Alley w/ an extended cut back. Maintain tuned,” the filmmaker posted on the app on Dec. 3, alerting his followers to the existence of the expanded mannequin that the viewers in Palm Springs will presumably see.
Nonetheless hardcore noir buffs is also merely as passionate about a couple of of the titles which will as correctly be considered premieres, they’ve been out of public view for subsequently prolonged. “Swell Man” (1946) may be seen in a newly made 35mm print and is being screened theatrically on Friday afternoon for the first time wherever in a very long time, Rode says. The similar gap between theatrical screenings is true of “Paid in Full” (1950), having fun with on Friday night time time, although on this case, it’s a mannequin new digital print from Paramount that may be having an official premiere on the competitors. On Saturday morning, “Unmasked” may be getting its private digital theatrical premiere, ending the roundup of newly revived obscurities.
If these selections make it sound similar to the Arthur Lyons Film Pageant shouldn’t be a roundup of the identical previous noir suspects, that’s by design. Although noir novices are as extra prone to profit from the programming as loads as anyone, Rode figures that the loyal viewers that returns to the Palm Springs Cultural Center (beforehand the Camelot Theatres) every Mother’s Day weekend has already seen “Double Indemnity” and “The Huge Sleep” and wishes to experience titles from the darker corners (so to speak) of the noir vault.
Says Rode, “I’m retaining with the customized of not displaying the similar film in 18 years,” which is how prolonged it’s been since he took over programming the competitors, which began in 2000. “That’s kind of an unconscious issue, nevertheless film noir is kind of the current that retains on giving,” with many an entire lot of titles that firmly or loosely match all through the type, to the extent that noir can really be considered one. This emphasis on lesser-screened films doesn’t indicate that Rode doesn’t nonetheless program movement footage that are broadly considered classics by noir buffs, that he merely hasn’t gotten spherical to in Palm Springs however. An occasion of that will probably be “Act of Violence,” the Fred Zinneman film that displays Sunday afternoon; that one has confirmed higher than as quickly as at Noir Metropolis, the competitors that he and Eddie Muller co-host on the American Cinematheque in Hollywood, nevertheless it’s going to lastly be unspooling throughout the desert this yr.
Muller, who’s actually one in every of Rode’s companions throughout the Film Noir Foundation, and naturally a TCM host, may be turning into a member of Rode as quickly as as soon as extra in Palm Springs to introduce a handful of films he’s a fan of. A sort of is “Johnny O’Clock,” which may be confirmed on Friday afternoon. That screening may be preceded by a information signing Muller will do for a newly revised conventional of his private, “Darkish Metropolis Dames: The Girls Who Outlined Film Noir,” with Hollywood’s venerable Larry Edmunds Bookshop out to cope with information product sales.
Sadly, the distinctive stars of these films who bought right here out to Palm Springs to speak throughout the competitors’s early years have largely handed on, nevertheless Rode has made some extent of getting relations out for introductions or Q&As. That’ll be the case in a couple of circumstances this yr, first on opening night time time Thursday, with Rory Flynn, daughter of Errol Flynn, out to discuss “Cry Wolf” (1947), by which the actor co-starred with Barbara Stanwyck. Then on Saturday night time time, Wyatt McCrea, the grandson of Joel McCrea, may be available to discuss his grandfather’s career, collectively together with his work as a result of the star of “The Unseen” (1945).
“Cry Wolf,” displaying at Arthur Lyons Film Noir Pageant in Palm Springs
Specific individual tickets for the screenings on the Palm Springs Cultural Center are $16.29 (along with a $1.79 processing worth). There could also be one exception: “Nightmare Alley” tickets on closing night time time are $32.65 (along with a $2.64 worth). A full-access go on your total 13-film lineup is on the market for $158.19. That competitors go doesn’t embrace admission to “Nightmare Alley,” nevertheless passholders are ready to buy a ticket for that film at half-price. Advance tickets for all of the individual films or competitors go are on sale by way of Eventbrite proper right here.
Scanning the itemizing of titles having fun with this yr — which can be browsed intimately proper right here — one may stand out as not merely most likely essentially the most well-known film being screened, nevertheless an outlier: “On the Waterfront.” Rode readily acknowledges it’s not an precise match. “I do know purists will argue with me whether or not or not that’s film noir or not — and I don’t assume it really is,” he admits. “Nonetheless it’s one in every of many good films ever made in Hollywood. And it put me on the path to righteousness, by way of an elective film course I took in 1970 all through my junior yr in highschool in New Jersey. It’s a film that meant hundreds to me, and I believed it could possibly be good to point it on the massive show display screen, so that’s what I’m doing. And I’ve a pair tales to share, courtesy of Nehemiah Persoff, who made his film debut driving the taxi that Rod Steiger and Marlon Brando had been in making the well-known ‘I might need been a contender’ scene. That was moreover the debut movie of such actors as Pat Henning, Martin Balsam, Fred Gwynn and Nehemiah, who all went on to good careers as character actors” in and out of noir.
There are completely different films that could possibly be seen as outdoor of film noir which Rode will make a case for, similar to the Western “Lust for Gold,” starring Ida Lupino and Glenn Ford. (Rode is conscious of his noir Westerns, as scant as that subgenre is also; he really wrote the information on one different actually one in every of them, “Blood on the Moon.”) “Not one of many characters in ‘Lust for Gold’ are good,” he laughs to degree out, which helps company up its noir credentials.
“Lust for Gold,” displaying at Arthur Lyons Film Noir Pageant in Palm Springs
Moreover crossing genres a bit is “The Unseen,” “one different film that hasn’t been seen in a very long time, and this was like a follow-up to the additional well-known movie ‘The Uninvited,’ the ghost story that Louis Allen made with Ray Milland and Gail Russell. ‘The Unseen’ is further of a kind of noir-stained murder thriller, with McCrea and Russell as soon as extra starring and Allen as soon as extra directing. Wyatt McCrea is an excellent good man who I’ve grow to be nice with, and he’ll be there to discuss his grandfather and the McCrea Ranch Foundation.”
Rode is joyful about “Swell Man,” “a forgotten movie that (producer) Mark Hellinger made in between his massive hit of ‘The Killers’ and ‘Brute Strain’ that has been completely forgotten and ignored. I was really fortunate that Widespread cleared up some rights factors on it, and we’re displaying what I’m instructed is a pristine 35mm print of a most unusual movie, written by Richard Brooks… The film is a couple of Hemingway-esque warfare correspondent who’s presupposed to be an vital hero, who comes once more to his hometown after the warfare, and it appears he’s an entire miscreant shit. And who larger to play that than Sonny Tufts, of all of us? And he’ll get involved with Ann Blythe. It’s a extremely, very odd and attention-grabbing movie.”
“Paid in Full,” within the meantime, “has been missing for lots of, a couple of years, and I really should thank Charlotte Barker, who’s the top archivist at Paramount. She made me DCPs of ‘Paid in Full’ and likewise a Republic programmer, ‘Unmasked,’ with Raymond Burr working a scandal sheet, blackmailing and stealing and murdering his means into quite a few mayhem. These two films haven’t been confirmed in I don’t know how prolonged.”
Nonetheless the first attraction of the week for a lot of ought to nonetheless be “Nightmare Alley.” Del Toro may be making his first look on the competitors, although Morgan was a well known face there in earlier years. “She interviewed Julie Garfield once more in 2010 and has been to the competitors a lot of cases; I’ve acknowledged Kim for years and I consider we did a commentary monitor on a ‘New York Confidential’ DVD years up to now.” As for the director, “The time interval genius could also be very usually tossed spherical and probably misused in relation to of us involved in cinema, nevertheless as far as I’m concerned, Guillermo is as close to a genius as we now have,” Rode says. “He can do one thing from make-up to drawing to writing, directing and producing, nevertheless he’s moreover obtained loads humility and loads passion, and it’s all actual. Merely sitting and listening to him focus on… He did an element with the top of the British Film Institute all through the TCM Primary Film Pageant and he was talking about what the Powell and Pressburger movement footage meant to British Cinema, and cinema usually, and it was in order that eloquent and spot-on… and he’s such a wonderful particular person.
“I’ve to kind of pinch myself, because of that’s 26 years that this event has gone on. If memory serves, the first yr that I was involved on this was 2002, and I was sitting in actually one in every of what was then generally known as the Camelot Theaters, watching ‘Nightmare Alley’ with (star) Colleen Gray, who I turned mates with. And I think about Eddie Muller was introducing it, and Linda Christian, Tyrone Vitality’s widow, the actress, walked in and sat down throughout the theater. So now proper right here we’re, 23 years later, and we’re displaying Del Toro’s mannequin of William Lindsay Gresham’s information, and it seems like we’ve really come full circle.”
The viewers on the Cultural Center leans in the direction of the older and the long-term-loyal, not surprisingly, given the native inhabitants. Nonetheless that’s not true of every film noir competitors. When Noir Metropolis occurred on the Egyptian in Hollywood in March, the viewers skewed youthful. In a unusual occasion of that competitors screening the apparent classics, they put up a double-bill of “Out of the Earlier” and Stanley Kubruck’s “The Killing,” hosted by Muller and Rode, who each requested for a gift of palms of who hadn’t seen the film in question sooner than. “
The viewers on the Cultural Center leans in the direction of the older and the long-term-loyal, not surprisingly, given the native inhabitants. Nonetheless that’s not true of every film noir competitors. When Noir Metropolis occurred on the Egyptian in Hollywood in March, the viewers skewed youthful. In a unusual occasion of that competitors screening the apparent classics, they put up a double-bill of “Out of the Earlier” and Stanley Kubruck’s “The Killing,” hosted by Muller and Rode, who each requested for a gift of palms of who hadn’t seen the film in question sooner than. “I anticipated probably six to 10 of us to spice up their palms, nevertheless I’d say about two-thirds of the viewers for each film did, which was gorgeous. I’ve been doing this a really very long time, and likewise you start getting these assumptions that, ‘Properly, all folks has seen this,’ nevertheless we’re into one different know-how or so of audiences for these films.”
Why they attraction to the very youthful along with the very earlier is apparent to Rode. “The reason these films are literally kind of a connective, umbilical to conventional films for a up to date viewers is because of the themes are timeless… I indicate, even though any individual who’s of their early twenties is also confused over: ‘Why are the boys carrying these hats? Why is a doctor in a maternity ward smoking a cigarette? Why do the telephones seem like boomerangs?’ Nonetheless the elemental themes of the human scenario and the themes of striving, lust, larceny, greed, all of that… our accoutrements throughout the fashionable world have modified significantly from, say, 1947, nevertheless I don’t assume of us have modified that loads.”
Within the case of definitions, “I don’t assume it’s a method. I consider it’s a mode,” Rode says, “and I consider, like magnificence, noir is normally throughout the eye of the beholder.” Nonetheless there are obvious near-common denominators. Clearly not every crime film from that interval is a film noir, nevertheless there’s an argument that’s been made that every film noir is a prison offense film in the end. Does that preserve true?
Rode wouldn’t primarily go that far, nevertheless he notes, “You probably can say that one in every of many points that characterizes a film noir is when people are involved in doing one factor that they know is flawed — each legally, morally, culturally or regardless of — after which they do it anyway. That’s one in every of many sturdy traits of a film noir. Or as Arthur Lyons put it, ‘You probably can on a regular basis inform it’s a film noir when the protagonist will get screwed over throughout the first 5 minutes and it goes downhill from there.’”
The entire program for the 2025 Arthur Lyons Film Noir Pageant:
Thursday, Would possibly 8
• 7:30 p.m.: “Cry Wolf” (1947) with Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck [followed by Rory Flynn Q&A]
Friday, Would possibly 9
• 10 a.m.: “Swell Man” (1946) with Sonny Tufts, Ann Blyth, Ruth Warwick
• 1 p.m.: “Johnny O’Clock” (1947) with Dick Powell, Evelyn Keyes, Lee J. Cobb [preceded by Eddie Muller book signing]
• 4 p.m.: “Lust for Gold” (1949) with Ida Lupino, Glenn Ford
• 7:30 p.m.: “Paid in Full” (1950) with Robert Cummings, Lizabeth Scott, Eve Arden
Saturday, Would possibly 10
• 10 a.m.: “Unmasked” (1950) with Robert Rockwell, Barbra Fuller, Raymond Burr
• 1 p.m.: “Angel Face” (1953) with Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons
• 4 p.m.: “The Associates of Eddie Coyle” (1973) with Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle
• 7:30 p.m.: “The Unseen” (1945) with Joel McCrea, Gail Russell [with appearance by Wyatt McCrea]
Sunday, Would possibly 11
• 10 a.m.: “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye” (1950) with James Cagney, Barbara Payton and Helena Carter
• 1 p.m.: “Act of Violence” (1948) withVan Heflin, Robert Ryan, Janet Leigh, Mary Astor
• 4 p.m.: “On the Waterfront” (1954) with Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning and Eva Marie Saint
• 7 p.m.: “Nightmare Alley” (2021) with Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette [with Q&A with Guillermo Del Toro, Kim Morgan] (separate admission)