Good to see you, Carl. I posted on this just a few days back but it's nice to get another take on it--and to give folks the list here as opposed to the link to the Stanford Theatre site that I provided...

And yes, I too noted the often oddball pairings by David Woodley Packard, who (as I recall from my years going there when I lived in the Bay Area) kind of specializes in that! :-)

There was a similar series earlier this summer at the PFA--not nearly as extensive as the one at the Stanford, but as you'll see, there was some serious overlap:

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 (played last weekend to open the Stanford series)
July 17--Laura
July 18--Sunset Blvd.
July 25--Criss Cross
August 4--Kiss Me Deadly
August 8--The Killing

Common titles for both series shown in bold type.

There is very little 50s noir in Packard's schedule--Angel Face, Night of the Hunter, Sunset Boulevard (which is kind of on the cusp). Night of the Hunter is kind of "out of time" with respect to decades, of course. The PFA got a little further into the harder-edged part of the 50s with KMD and The Killing, two films that I don't think Packard would be particularly interested in screening.

THE WHISTLER idea is a good one, but I've also never seen Packard get gooey over B-noir (with a few rare exceptions: I remember being stunned some year back when he screened Specter of the Rose--is that B-noir? Maybe it actually defies classification...)

I think the Lewton films and the Whistler series would make a great pairing for an early summer festival at the Stanford.