Noir City DC 2013: The Postman Always Rings Twice and More

Sun, Oct 20, 2013, brings day two of NOIR CITY: DC featuring five more fab film noirs and Foster Hirsch to shine a light in the darkness. Kicks off at 11am at the AFI Silver Theatre. Peruse the fest's entire line-up and buy tickets at the AFI website.
Sunday's line-up:

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE
(1946, MGM. 113 min. Scr. Niven Busch, Harry Ruskin. Dir. Tay Garnett), 11am

"Their Love Was a Flame That Destroyed!" James M. Cain's 1934 novel -- essentially the blueprint for noir -- was so hot, and so wrong, it took MGM 12 years to figure out how to put it on the screen, heat intact. It helped to have Lana Turner and John Garfield playing the sex-starved, ill-fated lovers who plot murder. A huge hit in 1946, it remains one of the most revered films in the genre, and the progenitor of a thousand "erotic thrillers" to follow.

SORRY, WRONG NUMBER
(1948, Paramount. 89 min. Scr. Lucille Fletcher, Dir. Anatole Litvak), 1:20pm

Barbara Stanwyck gives a tour-de-force performance (Oscar-nominated) as a bedridden woman who, through crossed phone wires, overhears a murder being planned. This engrossing extension of the legendary 22-minute radio drama is pure noir, tracking an ill-fated romance that spirals into deceit, despair, and death. Featuring Burt Lancaster in one of his earliest roles, mesmerizing direction by Anatole Litvak, and richly atmospheric camerawork by the great Sol Polito. Famous, yet still underrated!

THE WINDOW
(1949, RKO [WB/UCLA/FNF], 73 min. Scr. Mel Dinelli, story by Cornell Woolrich Dir. Ted Tetzlaff )
FNF 35mm Preservation!, 3:30pm

A young boy in a New York tenement witnesses a murder but no one, not even his own parents, believes him, except his upstairs neighbors . . . the killers! A fantastic cast helps make this the best adaptation ever of a Cornell Woolrich story, and one of the greatest suspense films of all time.

THE HITCH-HIKER
(1953, The Filmakers, RKO Radio Pictures (Kino). 71 min .Scr. /Dir. Ida Lupino, Scr./Pro. Collier Young.), Blu-ray, 5:20pm

In this gripping suspense piece, a murderous madman (William Talman), on the lam from the law, kidnaps two businessmen (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) on a hunting trip in Mexico. Directed by the talented Hollywood actress turned writer, director and independent producer Ida Lupino. Like her other films, she deftly combines film noir with social insight, in this case, raising questions about masculinity in post-war America.

THE SNIPER
(1952, Columbia [Sony], 97 min. Dir. Edward Dmytryk, Scr. Harry Brown, story by Edna Anhalt, Edward Anhalt), 7:10pm

San Francisco is the backdrop for one of the first movies about a modern serial killer. Decades before such stories became commonplace, husband and wife writers Edna and Edward Anhalt researched dozens of actual cases to create this psychological "exposé" of a murderous misfit who wants to be caught, but finds it too easy to slip into the margins of a bustling post-WWII metropolis. Arthur Franz gives an edgy performance as the psychologically scarred sniper, whose murderous trail leads viewers on a fascinating tour of mid-century San Francisco, from Pacific Heights through the back alleys of North Beach to the once-industrial China Basin.