https://bampfa.org/program/film-noir-classics-americas-dark-dreams

So how long has it been since the films in this PFA series have been shown at Noir City?

I'm still tied up with putting the final bows and ribbons on the upcoming FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT book that will come out in support of our 33-film series at the Roxie this fall (in two parts--more details forthcoming), so I'm not going to go through the database for the answers for the 15 noir classics in the PFA's summer line-up...

...but the short answer is: a long, long time! So it's ironic that the "classroom" is taking it to the "barroom" in terms of knocking back the basics, but (as we all know) nature abhors a vacuum. For those who don't want to click through, here are the fifteen classic titles in the PFA series that begins tomorrow nightL

June 14--Double Indemnity
June 16--The Lady from Shanghai (3:30pm)
June 20--In a Lonely Place
June 23--Out of the Past (6:00pm)
June 27--Phantom Lady
June 30--Mildred Pierce (5:00pm)
July 5--The Killers
July 6--The Blue Dahlia
July 10--The Big Clock
July 11--The Maltese Falcon
July 17--Laura
July 18--Sunset Blvd.
July 25--Criss Cross
August 4--Kiss Me Deadly
August 8--The Killing

To be blunt, none of the three "noir apostles" has ever put together a series like this, mostly because the name of the game has been either rarities, or programming alchemy, or (on rare occasions) both. So it's refreshing that a university-based "cinematheque" would be the first in the Bay Area to bring it all back home to the basics.

Hoping that someone will think to attend this Sunday to capture David Thomson's lecture on noir stylistics, which could be very interesting (and possibly a bone of contention!).

The overview from Susan Oxtoby (below, in italics) parrots much of the boilerplate party line about noir, and shouldn't be taken seriously in terms of its still-emerging history, but let's cut her (and the rest of us) some slack this summer and simply be thrilled that someone, somewhere has decided to give us a concentrated dose of the classics. Hoping that all of the Bay Area folk will make the trek to Berkeley over the next eight weeks to take in a film noir series that may never happen again in just this way...

This summer we revisit a style of filmmaking that emerged in Hollywood in the early 1940s, was later coined “film noir,” and was later still championed by the French New Wave critics. From The Maltese Falcon (1941) to The Killing (1956), BAMPFA’s series offers viewers a chance to see many archival 35mm prints and digital restorations of film noir masterpieces and revel in the plot twists of these vastly entertaining and suspenseful mysteries, melodramas, and crime thrillers.

With its distinctive play of shadows, lighting, camera angles, and compositional tension, film noir became an international phenomenon adopted by filmmakers around the world—an approach that has influenced generations of filmmakers through the neo-noir and Tech noir periods. Film noir was born out of a confluence of cinematic and literary sources. We see influences of German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism, Italian neorealism, and American pulp fiction in these films. A number of the directors represented in this series were émigrés to the United States (Michael Curtiz, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Jacques Tourneur, and Billy Wilder), who brought European influences to their Hollywood productions. Many celebrated writers (James M. Cain, Vera Caspary, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Cornell Woolrich) penned the original stories or screenplays. Archetypal elements and themes are found in these compelling narratives, such as an exploration of codes of loyalty, duplicity, and psychological concerns. In a sense, these noirs reflect America’s paranoia and cynicism during a time when disillusionment from the wars fought and the political oppression experienced in the first half of the twentieth century was a strong undercurrent in society.

The celebrated film historian David Thomson joins us on June 16 to give a fifty-minute lecture on the stylistics of film noir before The Lady from Shanghai. He will also introduce In a Lonely Place and Out of the Past. For all three appearances, Thomson will lead post-screening discussions with the audience.

—Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator