{"id":2755,"date":"2012-05-09T17:54:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T23:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2755"},"modified":"2012-05-09T17:54:28","modified_gmt":"2012-05-09T23:54:28","slug":"film-noir-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2755","title":{"rendered":"Film Noir Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week, I dined at Musso\u2019s with a tall, dark stranger. If that couldn\u2019t get me in the mood for a Film Noir festival, nothing would. Musso and Frank Grill, a mainstay on Hollywood Boulevard since 1919, is dark, wood-paneled, and clubby. It\u2019s famous for juicy steaks, dry martinis, a solicitous staff, and a history of welcoming great writers to its leather-upholstered booths. Patrons once included Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, and longtime regular Orson Welles. Musso\u2019s has shown up in many a Hollywood novel, including one of the best of the genre, Nathanael West\u2019s The Day of the Locust. <\/p>\n

My dining companion that night \u2013 someone I\u2019d never before met — is a writer too. If Alan K. Rode is a man of mystery, it\u2019s because he\u2019s managed to combine so many unrelated careers. After 21 years in the Navy, he earned an MBA and spent the next decade in aerospace. Now he runs a business during the daylight hours, but devotes his nights to his true passion: rescuing and restoring America\u2019s film noir heritage. As an all-around factotum for the Film Noir Foundation, Alan contributes to the foundation\u2019s magazine, Noir City, and helps organize events, like the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival that\u2019s upcoming in Palm Springs. All this, and he\u2019s still finding (scant) time to work on a biography of director Michael Curtiz. <\/p>\n

Alan, who\u2019s a fellow member of BIO (Biographers International Organization), had invited me to a screening at Hollywood\u2019s venerable Egyptian Theatre, part of the American Cinematheque\u2019s recent Noir City series. That particular evening seemed devoted to rogue cops, law officers who use their clout on the streets of L.A. to fatten their own wallets. Alan\u2019s colleague Eddie Muller introduced two not-on-DVD films from 1954, making the provocative suggestion that the moviemakers of the McCarthy era \u2013 itching to attack the powers that be \u2013 had settled on wayward elements within the LAPD as a safe target for their anger and fear. <\/p>\n

Shield for Murder is classic pulp, featuring Edmond O\u2019Brien (who co-directed) in a taut little melodrama that\u2019s been flakked as \u201cDame-Hungry Killer Cop Runs Berserk!\u201d I loved it, especially the scene of the cop showing his na\u00efve girlfriend the suburban dream house he\u2019s got all picked out, complete with tchotchkes, overstuffed sofa cushions, and a built-in rotisserie in the kitchen. The second feature, Private Hell 36, relies on the considerable talents of Ida Lupino, who co-wrote the screenplay with her ex-husband, co-stars as a world-weary lounge singer, and released the film through her own small company, known as The Filmmakers. Though she and tough-guy star Steve Cochran strike real sparks on screen, the pacing here often seems flaccid. Alan explained to me that director Don Siegel, then near the start of a long career, was asked to begin production when only 40 pages of script were ready to go. On set, the various participants (including Lupino\u2019s ex, Collier Young, and her new husband, Howard Duff) were constantly at each other\u2019s throats. Money was in short supply, but liquor was not. Alan tells me that, as Siegel remembers it, \u201cevery scene was cause for a philosophical argument with the scent of vodka in the air. The picture is an interesting mess.\u201d <\/p>\n

A mess indeed, though an entertaining one. Once Private Hell 36 was over, I slunk out into the late-night shadows of Hollywood Boulevard, unsure of what awaited me in the alleys and byways between the theatre and my parking lot. I got home safely enough, but an evening of film noir can really goose one\u2019s imagination into working overtime. <\/p>\n

For more about Alan K. Rode, including his One Way Street blog, see http:\/\/alankrode.com <\/p>\n

by Beverly Gray