First Look at the 2024 SLO Film Fest

June Squibb and Fred Hechinger appear in THELMA by Josh Margolin. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by David Bolen.

The 2024 SLO Film Fest opens on April 25 and celebrates its 30th festival, bringing its characteristic mix of aspirational cinema and sheer fun to California’s Central Coast. This year’s program will be presented at the Fremont, Palm and Downtown Centre in San Luis Obispo, and the Bay in Morro Bay. An encore week will play at at Paso Robles’ Park Cinemas May 1-5. There will also be a Virtual Encore for selected titles, also May 1-5.

Here are festival highlights:

  • The closing night film is a hoot – Thelma, starring 93-year-old June Squibb (Oscar-nominated for Nebraska) in an action picture. Squibb plays a scammed senior who goes on a quest to recover her money from the scammers. . I’ve seen it, and it’s a surefire audience-pleaser. Thelma also features indie favorite Parker Posey and the sweet final performance of Richard Roundtree (Shaft).
  • The opening night film is the family dramedy Ghostlight, also a Sundance hit, with the filmmakers in attendance.
  • The always popular Surf Night featuring Trilogy: New Wave. Expect the Fremont to be packed again with surfers enjoying drinks in the lobby and the Riff Tide surf band before the screening. The documentary Trilogy: New Wave profiles three emerging pro stars on the world tour as they travel together to some of the world’s top surf destinations. The young guys are engaging, and the audience will be stoked by the cinematography.
  • Surf night is only one part of the richest Skate/Surf program that I’ve ever seen at a mainstream film festival (and I’ll be writing more about it this week). Filmmaker and skateboard icon Stacy Peralta will attend the SLO Film Fest, which features two of his films, Dogtown and Z-boys and Riding Giants.
  • Actress/director Heather Graham will appear to receive an award, and present her new film Chosen Family.
  • A screening of Camera, filmed in Morro Bay, with appearances by star Beau Bridges and director Jay Silverman,
  • A 45th anniversary screening of the zombie classic Dawn of the Dead.
  • Audience favorites that reflect the 30 years of SLO Film Fest, including Double Indemnity, Big Night, Muriel’s Wedding, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
  • I haven’t seen this Canadian horror comedy, but it has my favorite title in the fest: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.

There’s plenty more, with features, workshops and six programs of shorts. I’m screening my way through the program, and will post my MUST SEE recommendations before the fest opens. Peruse the program and get your tickets at SLO Film Fest.

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL is back with a rich slate of docs

Raya Burstein and Uri Burstein in CHARM CIRCLE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

One of the Bay Area’s top cinema events is back – the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF). This year’s festival is a hybrid, with in-person screenings at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre and the Albany Twin in Albany through July 31, with some films streaming from the SFJFF digital screening room August 1-7. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest and largest Jewish film festival, and the program offers over 71 films from over 14 countries (but mostly from the US and Israel), plus 4 programs of short films (Jews in Shorts).

The SFJFF always presents an impressive slate of documentaries, in recent years including What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, Satan & Adam, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, The Mossad and Levinsky Park.

The Must Sees from this year’s documentary program are:

  • Charm Circle: You think YOUR family has issues? In this superbly structured film, writer-director Nira Burstein exquisitely unspools the story of her own bizarre family, a cautionary and ever-surprising chronicle of mental illness.
  • Speer Goes to Hollywood: In this absorbing documentary, filmmaker Vanessa Lapa takes us inside a Nazi war criminal’s brazen attempt to rehabilitate his image into “the Good Nazi”. Previously unheard private audio recordings of Albert Speer himself reveal him to be one of history’s most audacious spin doctors.
  • The Faithful: The King, the Pope, the Princess: Filmmaker Annie Berman follows the people who are devoted to iconic celebrities, both dead (Elvis Presley and Princess Diana) and alive (the Pope du jour). I don’t mean “fans”, I mean “devoted”, as in those who make annual pilgrimages and who decorate shrines. Who are these faithful, and how did someone they never met “touch their lives”? The journey is sometimes amusing, sometimes appalling, but fundamentally meditative.

You can peruse the festival’s program and schedule at SFJFF.

Previewing this weekend’s Noir City

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

  • As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
  • This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
  • The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
  • Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

  • The Accused (1949)
  • Open Secret (1948)
  • The Sniper (1952)
  • Force of Evil (1948).

I particularly recommend the unfortunately prescient The Sniper, which presages the Texas Tower shooting, the Zodiac Killer and all manner of overtly misogynistic violence. Journeyman television actor Arthur Franz comes through in a career-topping performance as a woman-hater who can’t control his compulsions. Director Edward Dmytryk enhances the drama, Marie Windsor unleashes dazzling charm and the San Francisco locations are vivid. This is your best chance to see the rarely-seen The Sniper; (I have the French DVD).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER

NOIR CITY returns in-person in January

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, returns IN-PERSON January 20-23, 2022. What’s new in the 2022 edition of Noir City:

  • As usual, Noir City will be held in a vintage movie palace – but it will be the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (not San Francisco’s Castro).
  • This year’s program contains all American movies from the classic film noir period; (no international titles or neo-noirs this year).
  • The festival will be compressed into four days from the usual ten.
  • Masks and proof of COVID vaccination will be required.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and hard-to-find movies.

Muller, host of the popular Noir Alley franchise on Turner Classic Movies, explains, “The Grand Lake provided Noir Alley with a temporary studio during the pandemic, and I realized its vintage movie palace atmosphere, and the care and upkeep of the venue, would work perfectly for the type of show NOIR CITY loyalists have come to expect. Plus, I love Oakland. It hurts that the town has lost the Warriors and the Raiders, so I’m happy to give a little something back to the city’s cultural life.

The 2022 Noir City will host the world premiere of the Film Noir Foundation’s 35mm restoration of The Argyle Secrets. The Argyle Secrets (1948) is not available for streaming, nor are these Noir City titles:

  • The Accused (1949)
  • Open Secret (1948)
  • The Sniper (1952) – shot on location in San Francisco.
  • Force of Evil (1948).

The rest of the program includes the more familiar titles On Dangerous Ground, The Prowler, Odds Against Tomorrow, No Way Out, The Killer That Stalked New York, All the King’s Men and Crossfire. The 2022 program, subtitled “They Tried to Warn Us!“, offers movies that address contemporary issues: racism, anti-Semitism, sexual predators, serial killers, police brutality and a KILLER CONTAGION. Muller describes them as “warning flares about issues that still plague our culture more than seventy years later.”

Make your plans now. Review the program and buy tickets at Noir City.

Arthur Franz in THE SNIPER. Courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.

coming on TV: NIGHTFALL

NIGHTFAL

Here’s a rare chance to watch a highly recommended film on my list of Overlooked Noir. Nightfall (1957) is not available to stream, but it plays Saturday and Sunday on Turner Classic Movies.

The set-upl: How’s this for a hard luck guy? Aldo Ray is camping in the Tetons with a buddy, when two bank robbers careen into a car accident, kill his buddy and frame poor Aldo. Aldo manages to escape, and, in the chaos, the crooks misplace their bag of loot, which is soon obscured by an early Wyoming snowfall. Now both Aldo and the robbers have to wait for the spring thaw to recover the treasure. In the mean time, Aldo – now in hiding from both the police and the outlaws – skips from town to town.

As the movie opens, we’re in a neon-lit LA night. Just as Ray meets a beautiful but broke model (Anne Bancroft), the bad guys appear with lethal intent. Brian Keith made for one coldblooded bank robber, and his partner (Rudy Bond with a machine gun laugh) is psychotically blood thirsty. Ray and Bancroft go on the run through LA, and then head for Wyoming to locate the money. Unknown to both the good guys and the bad guys, James Gregory (most well-remembered as Inspector Fran Kruger in TV’s Barney Miller) is also closing in on the loot on behalf of the bank’s insurer.  It’s a crackerjack plot, adapted from a novel by David Goodis (Dark Passage, The Burglar).  The final confrontation involves a death by snow plow.

The LA scenes are dark and shadowy, no surprise since Nightfall was directed by noir master Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past). Tourneur evokes Hitchcock with a set piece when the killers hunt Ray and Bancroft at a poolside fashion show where Bancroft is on the runway. Bancroft bolts, and Ray has to pick her up because she can’t run in her long, clingy gown.

Anne Bancroft and Aldo Ray in NIGHTFALL

An important part of the appeal of Nightfall is the chemistry between Ray and Bancroft. Ray is a sympathetic Everyman, trying to make the best out of a hopeless circumstance. Bancroft was 31, ten years before her Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, and very believable as a stunning model down on her luck. Because of the Production Code of the time, these two spend a lot of time NOT having sex when it’s clear that they SHOULD BE having sex. Bancroft purrs to Ray, “You’re the most wanted man I know”.

Rudy Bond and Aldo Ray in NIGHTFALL

The best of CINEQUEST 2020

cq logo

I’ve already seen over twenty offerings from Cinequest 2020, and here are my initial recommendations. As usual, I focus on the world and US premieres. Follow the links for full reviews, images and trailers. I’ve also included some tips for making the most of the Cinequest experience under “Hacking Cinequest”.

[NOTE: This was a preview post written just before the festival opened. The best film in the 2020 Cinequest program was Driveways (which I actually saw after the festival because of COVID-19).]

Jenna Lyng Adams in BEFORE THE FIRE. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

MUST SEE

  • Before the Fire: In this year’s Must See at Cinequest, the only escape from an apocalyptic flu pandemic is a woman’s long-estranged rural hometown – but the scary family who traumatized her childhood is there, too. Written by its female star Jenna Lyng Adams, and the first feature by its female director Charlie Buhler, this indie thriller rocks. World premiere.

3 DAY WEEKEND. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

THRILLERS

  • Before the Fire, of course and
  • 3 Day Weekend: In this inventively constructed thriller, the point of view keeps shifting, and so does the genre. The screenplay is a triumph of storytelling. World premiere.
  • Fox Hunt Drive: One gobsmacking plot twist. World premiere.
INEZ & DOUG & KIRA. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

INDIES

  • Inez & Doug & Kira: A tangle of love, friendship and bipolar disorder – and obsession. Bay Area premiere.
  • Small Time: Rural America’s opioid crisis explored through its impact on one little girl; what is the shelf life of innocence? Shot over three years with insight and verisimilitude. World premiere.
OWNERS. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

WORLD CINEMA

  • Owners: This dark Czech comedy takes a jaundiced view of human foibles – as if penned by a modern Czech Mark Twain. Recognized as the year’s best film from the Czech Republic. North American premiere.
  • Willow: This triptych by Oscar-nominated master Macedonian filmmaker Milcho Manchevski plumbs the heartaches and joys of having children; there’s a scene in the final vignette with a mother and son in a car that is one of the most amazing scenes I’ve ever seen. North American premiere.
  • I Am Frank: This excellent Slovenian drama is about the return of a charismatic misfit who just can’t leave well enough alone. US premiere.
BREAKING FAST. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

FEEL GOOD

  •  Breaking Fast: Just another gay Muslim romantic comedy…I predict that Breaking Fast will become the Feel Good hit of the 2020 Cinequest. World premiere.
THE QUICKSILVER CHRONICLES. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

DOCUMENTARY

  • The Quicksilver Chronicles: Two bohemians live in a ghost town close (yet far) from Silicon Valley, and life happens. World premiere.

AND TWO I HAVEN’T SEEN YET

  • The Burnt Orange Heresy: See it here before its wide release. This neo-noir features Elizabeth Debicki, Claes Bang, Donald Sutherland and…Mick Jagger.
  • The Longest Wave: I am a sucker for a surfing documentary, and this one comes from filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster).

CLASSIC MOVIE EXPERIENCE

  • The silent 1920 The Mark of Zorro with Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling across the screen will be projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre, accompanied by world-renowned Dennis James on the Mighty Wurlitzer organ. I hear that last year’s Buster Keaton triumph has encouraged Cinequest to open this year’s silent screening with a Keaton short.

BEFORE IT’S IN THEATERS – SEE IT HERE FIRST

  • Several Cinequest films already are planned for theatrical release later this year. I haven’t seen them yet, but you can see them first at Cinequest.  Resistance, The Burnt Orange Heresy, Hope Gap, Roads Not Taken, The Longest Wave and Driveways are among the movies slated for theatrical release later this year.

HACKING CINEQUEST

Cinequest retains its Downtown San Jose vibe, with concurrent screenings at the 1122-seat California, the 550-seat Hammer and the 257-seat 3Below, all within 1600 feet of the VIP lounge at The Continental Bar. There will still be satellite viewing in Redwood City; if you’re going to and from Redwood City between 3 and 7 PM on a weekday – take Caltrain instead of driving.

At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $165, and you can get individual tickets as well. The express pass for an additional tax-deductible $100 is a fantastic deal – you get to skip to the front of the lines!

Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST page, with links to all my coverage.  Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

Klaes Bang and Elizabeth Debicki in THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

First look at the 2020 CINEQUEST

JOHN PINETTE: YOU GO NOW, the opening night film at Cinequest. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

Make your plans now to attend the 30th edition of Cinequest, Silicon Valley’s own major film festival. By some metrics the largest film festival in North America, Cinequest was recently voted the nation’s best by USA Today readers. The 2020 Cinequest is scheduled for March 3 through March 15 and will present almost 100 feature films and dozens of short films and virtual reality experiences from the US and over fifty other countries. And, at Cinequest, it’s easy to meet the filmmakers.

This year’s headline events include:

  • New movies with Annette Bening, Bill Nighy, Elizabeth Debicki, Jesse Eisenberg, Elle Fanning, Javier Bardem, Anthony Mackie, Jamie Dorman, Donald Sutherland, Kristin Scott Thomas, Gina Gershon, Ed Harris, Mira Sorvino, Thomas Sadoski, Christina Ricci and…Mick Jagger.
  • Hong Chau (Treme, Downsizing) gets an award and appears in person with her new film Driveways.
  • See it here FIRST:  Resistance, The Burnt Orange Heresy, Hope Gap, Roads Not Taken, The Longest Wave and Driveways are among the movies slated for theatrical release later this year.
  • The 1920 Douglas Fairbanks silent The Mark of Zorro will be projected in a period movie palace, the California Theatre.

Cinequest is the Bay Area’s preeminent PREMIERE festival – this year with 154 US, North American or World Premieres – be in the FIRST AUDIENCE ANYWHERE to see these films. Indeed, the real treasure at Cinequest 2020 is likely to be found among the hitherto less well-known films.

So, it’s fitting that, for only the second time in Cinequest’s 30-year history, the opening night film will be an open submission: John Pinette: You Go Now, a documentary tribute to the comedian John Pinette. (The only previous open submission to open the festival was Chuck Workman’s The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Movies in 1995.)

In recent years, Cinequest hosted the debut features for directors Charlie Griak (The Center) and Julie Sokolow (Aspie Seeks Love), both world premieres. Griak returns with his new film Nina of the Woods and Sokolow will bring her latest, BAREFOOT: The Mark Baumer Story. Oscar-nominated director Milcho Manchevski (Before the Rain) premiered his Bikini Moon at the 2018 Cinequest and his new Willow will play the 2020 Cinequest.

Cinequest revels in its Downtown San Jose vibe, with concurrent screenings at the 1122-seat California, the 550-seat Hammer and the 257-seat 3Below, all within 1600 feet of the VIP lounge at The Continental Bar. There will still be satellite viewing in Redwood City.

At Cinequest, you can get a festival pass for as little as $165, and you can get individual tickets as well. The express pass for an additional tax-deductible $100 is a fantastic deal – you get to skip to the front of the lines!  Take a look at the entire program, the schedule and the passes and tickets.

As usual, I’ll be covering Cinequest rigorously with features and movie recommendations. I usually screen (and write about) over thirty Cinequest films from around the world. Bookmark my CINEQUEST page, with links to all my coverage (links on the individual movies will start to go live on Sunday, March 1). Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

Hong Chau in DRIVEWAYS. Photo courtesy of Cinequest.

NOIR CITY 2020 is here

PALE FLOWER – in this year’s Noir City

The Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, opens this weekend in San Francisco. Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace (San Francisco’s Castro Theatre) with a thousand other film fans.

Eddie Muller, whom you should recognize as the host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley series, has programmed this year’s version as Noir City: International II, with vintage film noir from Argentina, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, England, West Germany, Sweden and Poland. Noir City’s first intentional foray, six years ago, was one of my favorites, highlighted by the Argentine Bitter Stems and the Swedish Girl with Hyacinths.

The Film Noir Foundation restored the Argentine films The Beast Must Die and The Black Vampire, which open the fest on Friday night. This is your only chance to see these and sixteen other Noir City films, which cannot be streamed.

My personal favorites on the program:

  • Pale Flower: Writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece is a slow burn that erupts into breathtaking set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence. I predict that the Thursday night Castro Theatre audience will be THRILLED.
  • Any Number Can Win: In this Perfect Crime flick, Jean Gabin plays a veteran crook who plans One Last Big Job – the heist of a Cannes casino. He trains a raw former cell-mate (Alain Delon) to perform the key role. There’s incredible suspense in the heist, the getaway and the recovery of the loot, with an ending worthy of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
  • The Long Haul: This British noir was a vehicle for the 25-year-old curvy blonde Diana Dors, who could Wear A Dress (and look up her real life!). Victor Mature stars as a GI who stayed in Britain after WW II because his English wife doesn’t want to emigrate; he is stuck in a job as a truck driver and becomes entangled in a hijacking ring. Mature, whose best work was in film noir, was an underrated actor; if acting is reacting, Mature does it all here – his eyes and face reflect his weariness, disgust, desperation and adherence to a code. The snarling villain (Patrick Allen) meets a uniquely fitting fate.
  • Ashes and Diamonds: Auteur Andrzej Wajda ‘s filmmaking gifts are on display in this Hit Man Finds Love tale, set as the Polish Resistance battles for a place in post-war Poland. As kinetic and unpredictable as James Dean, Zbigniew Cybulski makes for an irresistibly charismatic leading man.

Trench coats and fedoras are not required (and no smoking, please), but, other than that, you’ll get the full retro experience in the period-appropriate Castro. Noir City runs from Friday, January 24 through Sunday, February 2. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. I’ll be there myself on both weekends.

NOIR CITY: the great San Francisco festival of film noir

PALE FLOWER

Here’s a once-in-a-lifetime film noir experience, the opportunity to be a part of an audience to see films that haven’t been projected in a theater in over sixty years. Make plans to attend the Noir City film fest, always one of the best Bay Area cinema experiences, in San Francisco January 24-February 2. Noir City has become an irreplaceable Bay Area cultural treasure like Alcatraz or John’s Grill.

Noir City is the annual festival of the Film Noir Foundation, spearheaded by its founder and president, the Czar of Noir, Eddie Muller. The Foundation preserves movies from the traditional noir period that would otherwise be lost. Noir City often plays newly restored films and movies not available on DVD or streaming. And we get to watch them in a vintage movie palace, San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, with a thousand other film fans.

The 2020 Noir City will focus on international film noir, as it did so successfully six years ago. Then I was enthralled by the Argentine Bitter Stems and the Swedish Girl with Hyacinths, and must admit that I had never even imagined that vintage film noir from those nations existed. This year’s fest brings us titles from Argentina, France, Germany, Korea, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Italy, England, West Germany, Sweden and Poland.

One of best things about Noir City is the opportunity to see a few films that are not available to stream. This year Noir CIty is outdoing itself by presenting EIGHTEEN films that can’t found on a streaming platform, most of them impossible to see outside of Noir City in any format.

  • The Beast Must Die (Argentina 1952)
  • The Black Vampire (Argentina 1953)
  • Panique (France 1947)
  • Razzia (France 1955)
  • Any Number Can Win (France 1963),
  • Black Hair (South Korea 1964)
  • The Facts of Murder (Italy 1959)
  • …And the Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Czechoslovakia 1965)
  • 90 Degrees In the Shade (Czechoslovakia 1965)
  • The Long Haul (England 1957)
  • Never Let Go (England 1965)
  • The Devil Strikes at Night (West Germany 1957)
  • Black Gravel (West Germany 1961)
  • Another Dawn (Mexico 1943)
  • Twilight (Mexico 1945)
  • Night Falls (1952)
  • Salon Mexico (Mexico 1949)
  • Ashes and Diamonds (Poland 1958)

The films on this year’s program are SO difficult to find that only one of them (Pale Flower) is even on The Movie Gourmet’s list of Overlooked Noir.

“Difficult to find” doesn’t mean “obscure”. The program includes films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Pierre Melville and Roebert Siodmak and starring Ingrid Bergman, Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Peter Sellers, Emilio Fernandez, Victor Mature and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

The Film Noir Foundation has restored the Argentine films The Beast Must Die and The Black Vampire, and the opening night will feature these films. (These are coincidentally the most lurid titles on this year’s program.) Think about it – you can be in the first movie theater audience to see these films in over sixty years – and perhaps the first US movie audience ever.

This year, I predict that the Thursday night Castro Theatre audience will be THRILLED by the Japanese neo-noir Pale Flower. Writer-director Masahiro Shinoda’s masterpiece is a slow burn that erupts into breathtaking set pieces. This is pioneering neo-noir; its look and feel is as different from classic noir as are Elevator to the Gallows and Blast of Silence.

Noir City runs from Friday, January 24 through Sunday, February 2. To see the this year’s Noir City program and buy tickets, go here. Incidentally, the woman escaping with the loot on this year’s Noir City poster is Victoria Mature, daughter of movie star Victor Mature, whose best work was in film noir.

I’ll be posting a comprehensive Noir City preview on January 20. And you may run into me at Noir City as I cover both weekends.

MR. KLEIN: finally – a 43-year-old critique rediscovered

Alain Delon in MR. KLEIN

Here’s a chance to see a brilliant movie almost nobody has seen in 43 years. The Roxie and BAMPFA are screening Joseph Losey’s slowburn thriller Mr. Klein, a searing critique of French collaboration with the Nazis. Mr. Klein stars Alain Delon as a predator trapped by his own obsession.

To make sure we understand the stakes, Mr. Klein opens with a sobering pseudo-medical exam, absurdly intended to determine if a woman is Jewish; the waiting room overflows with others awaiting the humiliating and terrifying “examination”.

Only then do we meet Robert Klein (Delon) in his splendid silk dressing gown, living in an opulent Paris apartment with his randy mistress. Klein is a bottom feeder who profits from the desperation of Jewish art collectors; when they flee France to escape the Nazis, Klein unapologetically buys their art at rock bottom prices.

Then Klein gets a Jewish newspaper delivered to his door. He is Alsatian and his name is Klein, but some Jews are named Klein. There is another Robert Klein – a Jewish Klein. What is the extent of the mistaken identity? Is it inadvertent, or is someone trying to paint Klein as Jewish? Who is this other Robert Klein, and is he masterminding a frame job? Klein hits the streets in his trench coat and fedora, trying to solve the mystery himself.

Klein’s journey becomes surreal and then Kafkaesque, as what he thinks is a whodunit is interspersed with clips of the ever more riuhkess French police hunting down Jews. Klein, at first only vaguely understanding that he, too, is at risk, is racing against the clock.

The improbably handsome Alain Delon has eyes that can switch off any glimmer of empathy – perfect for playing sociopaths. The best analysis of Delon’s gift is Sheila O’Malley‘s.

Mr. Klein showcases Delon at 41, after his iconic run of Jean-Pierre Melville crime classics: Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge and Un Flic. Seven years earlier, he had been able to play the young guy matched with Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura in The Sicilian Clan. Now, even with his still dazzling looks, Delon has the weight of a life lived into his forties.

Mr. Klein also features a slate of French actresses: the great Jeanne Moreau, Francine Bergé, Juliet Berto and Francine Racette. Michael Lonsdale, so good in The Day of the Jackal three years before, is also excellent here (and has his own luxurious dressing gown).

Joseph Losey and his regular cinematographer Gerry Fisher keep both Robert Klein and the audience off-balance, bouncing between Klein’s richly-colored apartment, his surreal dreamlike visit to a country estate, the noirishly mysterious haunts of the other Klein and a starkly realistic depiction of France’s most unpleasant history. Losey ironically inserts an Alsatian dog. It all culminates in Klein’s one final miscalculation.

Losey’s 1947 directorial debut was the political parable The Boy with the Green Hair. In 1951, he remade M with an inventive basement-to-roof exploration of Los Angeles’ storied Bradbury Building. Later that year, he turned the usually sympathetic good guy Van Heflin into the twisted bad guy in The Prowler. After being named at HUAC, he was blacklisted and, in 1953, successfully set up shop in Europe. His The Go-Between won the Palm d’Or at Cannes, and he made four of Dirk Bogarde’s most notable movies in the late 1950s and 1960s. He was 67 when he directed Mr. Klein.

Mr. Klein depicts the historical Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, when French police swept up over 11,000 Jews on the same day, July 16, 1942, and detained them in a stadium, the Velodrome d’Hiver; they were then transported to Auschwitz to be murdered.

French audiences in 1976 did not want to be reminded that collaboration was a mainstream phenomenon. Mr. Klein depicts French police enthusiastically hunting down Jews, theater patrons laughing heartily at a grotesquely anti-Semitic farce, and regular Parisians nonchalantly lining up for bread at the boulangerie indifferent to Jews being bused off to concentration camps.

Mr. Klein was nominated for seven Césars (the French equivalents of Oscars) and won best film and best director. Until this reissue by Rialto Pictures, Mr. Klein has essentially been a lost film. It is not currently available on the major streaming platforms, nor can it be found on DVD, except for some bootlegs from Asia.

Mr. Klein will play at BAMPFA in Berkeley on December 4, 14 & 18 and at San Francisco’s Roxie December 6-12.

Alain Delon in MR. KLEIN