Film Noir Fest UK 2025

Weston-Super-Mare is the perfect setting for  a film festival on noir; gorgeous views of the sea, a seedy centre full of nail bars and affordable pubs;  a fantastic cinema – the Merlin Plaza, with two screens devoted to the festival and a staff that welcomes you right onto the on-screen low-lifes, skewed desires and dead ends that brought a weekend of viewing bliss. Film Noir Fest  began last year, is already developing an increasing, and increasingly loyal audience, and it’s already guaranteed to return for at least two more years. A success. James Harrison and his team deserved all the applause they got. What follows is some notes and observations on a wonderful weekend in the dark.

Stanley Kubrick Double Bill:

 

Killer’s Kiss, 1955. I’d never seen it; and what a surprise! It’s made on minimal means. The sound is overdubbed and sometimes not quite in sync But an explosion of extraordinary images; Vinnie looking through the fishbowl, the fight in the factory surrounded by mannequins, the first shot of the ballerina, ballet drenched in noir. The story is the height of pulp noir wit. A defeated deflated boxer with a bit of a crush on his neighbour in the tenement next door, watches her being strangled. He rushes over to her, nurses her, and they fall in love. They plan to runaway to Seattle but the underworld won’t let them go. The  Times Square scenes seem vibrantly shot on the fly, the energy and alienation one is so often told is the essence of mid-century New York but so rarely visualised as vividly or expressed as beautifully as here. The neon, the bustle, the people, the seamyness and glitz. These scenes are beautifully inversely rhymed with the hero on the run through the rooftops of New York, betrayed, fighting for his life, a lone figure across a vast expanse of tenements with hidden doors, iron fire-escapes. Superb.

This was on a double-bill with The Killing (1956), which is as great as I remembered.

 

Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. It remains energetic and funny thirty-odd years later. And a reminder of how cinema and time play tricks on your mind. One is now so used to seeing them aged, that  It’s a surprise to see the actors so young: Steve Buscemi looking so pretty with his light eyes and smooth face, Tarantino himself almost handsome, Masden with the cat eyes and the low voice, so deadly and appealing; it’s also surprising to see Lawrence Tierney, fixed in my mind from his 40s work,  looking so much older, white eyebrows wild, probably with rage at having aged so. The use of the n word, the racism, misogyny and homophobia upset me more now than it did then, when I barely noticed it; the excuse that it’s what these characters might voice ‘in real life’ less convincing. If verisimilitude is the excuse, then what’s with these white bros walking around LA in skinny ties and black suits? It’s a world empty of women except as verbalised by men whose views seem  skewed by recurrent rejection.  The soundtrack is as energising as ever; and is to me now the best part of the film. It still works, but now as a more muddied pleasure.

 

Du Rififi chez les hommes (Jules Dassin, 1955)

Interesting to revisit films after several years, now accompanied by greater knowledge, perhaps also hampered by it. In this viewing, the heist remains extraordinary, but what I’d forgotten was the nightclub number with Magali Noël, immortal for her ‘fais moi mal Johnny’ duet with Boris Vian, a compendium of noir images and feeling, visually extraordinary; as is the killing of the Italian, and the exciting end, end with Jean Servais driving the boy, who’s playing with guns, gleeful at the ride and totally oblivious that Tony le Stèphanois is dying, racing against time to get him home, a travelogue of Paris a backdrop to the death and rescue. A pleasure also to see Robert Hossein, young and broody, as the junky killer. One of the greatest of heist films. Director Jules Dassin, exiled by McArthyism and transferring all his artfulness here to Paris. Melina Mercouri and an international career would follow.

 

El expreso de Andalucía (Francisco Rovira Beleta, 1956)

Spanish films of the 1950’s illustrate the opposite of what Thomas Schatz described as the ‘Genius of the System’, where the set-up of the studios ensure that even b films looked great. In Spain, even expensive co-productions (Italy on this one) with a big star (Jorge Mistral), always have something off – the costumes, the hair, bit players that are not quite right….This film has all of those faults; and it doesn’t matter. It’s an absorbing noir about a former sportsman who’s injured, loses his income and his status, and is so bent on restoring it he’s willing to pull a jewel heist and kill whoever stands in his way. There are exciting train sequences, a great noir finale, backstage plottings, a thrilling murder set on the same viaduct Almodóvar used in Matador’. It also has Vicente Parra, young, charismatic and on the verge of stardom, as the young bourgeois torn with guilt about having facilitated the heist. Much of it is shot on location, and one sees Correos when it was still a postal service, the calle Alcala at the height of Francoism, the Rastro when people were still buying porcelain chamber pots, the old Corralas, tenements built around a courtyard where working people lived. It’ a document of a Madrid full of repression and murder.

 

IDA LUPINO:

 

In the Forties, Ida Lupino was a star at Warners but ranked pretty low in the totem pole. Bette Davis got all the top parts, Olivia de Havilland was there, Barbara Stanwyck had a non-exclusive; and I’m sure Lupino even competed with Anne Sheridan (though it’s hard to imagine them being up for the same roles). Lupino described herself as a ‘poor man’s Bette Davis’. She’s certainly a quintessential noir figure, a combination of intelligence, pragmatism, a cool acceptance of the cards life deals, with extraordinarily beautiful eyes in a face that, in the movies at least, could pass for merely pretty, which together evoked a touching vulnerability. At the festival I met a fan who told me Lupino was his favourite star of all time.

Film Noir Fest provided a great opportunity to revisit some Ida Lupino films in the wonderful strand programmed by Sergio Angelini for the festival. I was not able to see HIGH SIERRA (Raoul Walsh, 1941) or ROAD HOUSE (Jean Negulesco, 1948) this time around. My favourite of those I did see was Nicholas Ray’s ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951), about a lonely, alienated cop, constantly on the verge of violence, who ends up coming into contact with a lonely and brave Ida Lupino, residing in a remote snowy area, living to protect a brother constantly pushing the boundaries of the socially acceptable. Robert Ryan is tremendous here, small shifts in eyes or posture communicating ….sadness? A life made meaningful only by violence? Lupino as a blind woman is every bit Ryan’s match. Sad, alienated, complex, internal lives expressively exteriorised. Beautiful work.

WOMAN IN HIDING (1949) is a so-so melodrama about a woman faking her own death to escape the husband who want to murder her in order to inherit her factory. It’s gorgeously  lit by the great William Daniels, and it made me think how the big screen affects our viewing because I found it totally absorbing in spite of a derivative plot (Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD, Sturges THE PALM BEACH STORY, etc ) and unspectacular direction (by Michael Gordon) which prevented it from being quite good. Ida Lupino is skilled and beautiful, constantly on the verge of being offed, but resiliently overcoming each new attack. I love Wikipedia’s comment:’ some observers regard the picture as a film noir, a view not universally embraced’. I nonetheless very much enjoyed seeing it, and it is a definite addition to the ‘Gaslit Women’ cycle.

 

BEWARE MY LOVELY (1952):

An early home invasion film. A re-teaming of Ida Lupino and Robert Ryan (who are always great together and should have made more). It’s 1918 and he’s suffering from PSTD. He does awful things and forgets, like strangling a woman and leaving her in the mop closet. She’s a widow looking for a handyman. The film’s all about Ida keeping her cool whilst Robert loses his mind. There’s a wonderful shot of a renewed threat by Ryan being conveyed by his face reflected on the Christmas Tree decorations as he descends the stairs (Harry Horner, the director, is most famous for art directing, which partly explains, the combination of clunky direction and superb imagery one often finds here) . The script and direction are pedestrian, the stars superb, the great print on a big screen, absorbing.

 

I also saw the 1s part of the TALKING PICTURES TV double bill, THE GHOST CAMERA (Bernard Vonhaus). I wanted to see a very young Ida, and once I did, well…she’s great, and so very young! – but the film was painful and I left.

 

An informative and absorbing programme, a great opportunity to revisit these films in beautiful prints on a big screen.

 

FORGOTTEN FACES (Victor Schertzinger, 1928)

‘Have you seen Forgotten Faces?’ friends whispered, ‘you musn’t miss FORGOTTEN FACES’. ‘FORGOTTEN FACES  was the hit of last year’s Pordenone.’ ‘It was chosen as the closing film of this year’s Hippodrome Silent Film Festival. Be sure not to miss it.’

I can see why friends were excited, and this Film Noir Fest screening, on a double bill with THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (Edwin S. Porter, 1903), with live accompaniment by the wonderful Neil Brand, was particularly memorable. It was visually inventive with some dazzling shots, from below, of people gathered around a roulette table. The Raffles-esque, debonair thief opening scenes, witty and elegant. The surprise of seeing a young William Powell as the thief’s sidekick…All wonderful. But why did no one warn me of the film’s relentless misogyny? Oh it’s a given for the time say some. But I don’t agree.

A man catches his wife with a lover, shoots him, steals their baby, gives it up for adoption so it won’t be polluted by the mother; and then the whole film is about preventing any contact by the mother that would ruin the child and socially stunt her upbringing. How many ways can a mother be punished? The film is gleeful in showing you. This is the inverse of the female-centred melodramas were a woman will do anything for a child. But in those films, fathers aren’t treated with the contempt and disdain the mother is here. A fascinating film, a wonderful experience seeing it with live accompaniment. But also an experience that might have been enhanced with a brief introduction.

 

HEIST FILMS

Alongside the Ida Lupino strand, Film Noir Fest UK 2025 also had a strand of heist films, some classics (ASPHALT JUNGLE, THE KILLING, CRISS CROSS, RESERVOIR DOGS), some foreign films I’ve mentioned previously (DU RIFIFI CHEZ LES HOMMES, EL EXPRESO DE ANDALUCÍA), some I was unfortunately unable to see (PLUNDER ROAD). A new discovery for me was Bruce Beresford MONEY MOVERS (Australia, 1976) a heist-gone-wrong film , programmed by Stephen Morgan, with a young and handsome Bryan Brown, clearly on his way to stardom, though here cast as a sidekick. It’s a smart and funny film, with the excitement of on-location shooting, some dazzlingly inventive filmmaking  (the rolling money trucks, rambling onwards, and slightly out of focus, like in a dream about to become a nightmare) and a reminder of how awful amateur Farrah Fawcett haircuts could be. What’s underneath the sunshine and tans, lurking in garages, and ready to pop. I understand it was very difficult to get the DCP and all the efforts were worth it. Wonderful to see.

 

FINALE:

Film Fest UK ended with two stone-cold noir classics, DETOUR (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945) and GUN CRAZY (Joseph H. Lewis, 1950). The former a much-viewed favourite, with dialogue that still sparks: What you do? Kiss him with a wrench? I love tough-guy hard-boiled talk, especially when spoken by a woman. DETOUR overspills with it, spewingly, through the sneery mouth of Anne Savage’s Vera. I’d not seen GUN CRAZY before, and I’m an instant fan. Baby-voiced Peggy Cummings loves and kills, and she’s got Jon Dall wrapped around her finger. Both are crack shots and they go from bank to bank robbing and …eventually killing, something he can’t bring himself to do…until he does. The film is full of wonderful scenes, the running through the abbatoir, the close-ups shot from below in the car, the steaminess of their hiding in the wild, again in close-up, a picture of love and death. It’s a brilliant movie and a wonderful way to end the festival.

Oh and did I mention that on top of an amazing selection of films, the organisers also produced a catalogue of original essays to accompany the program? An extraordinary accomplishment, a wonderful way to see films, easy to meet other devotees after screenings, have a pint, chat about what you’ve seen, and all in the best possible setting, in the mist and rainbows of Weston-Super-Mare, by the seaside.  I can’t wait for next year.

José Arroyo