noir classics | First Impressions

I wanted to do a podcast on FILM NOIR UK to draw attention to the extraordinary work James Harrison and everyone involved with the festival are doing. The festival is on its third year now, growing its audience, and itself growing in importance year upon year. It’s an opportunity to be immersed in noir Halloween weekend in a perfect setting (Weston-super-Mare), a perfect cinema (the art-deco Merlin) and get the opportunity of seeing great classics, in brilliant restored versions, on a big screen with an audience, whilst also offered the opportunity of enhancing one’s understanding and knowledge by the screening of more marginal, tangential, lesser known works that are of undoubted interest. One can relive pleasures and discover new ones, in a setting that in spite of its success, still feels familial and intimate: one gets endless opportunities to meet, chat, debate, explore, often with a beer in a group at the pub next door. Many congratulations to all involved for another successful festival, one which is sure to grow as more and more people discover it.

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I wanted to talk to Sergio Angelini specifically, well….because I like talking to Sergio Angelini. But I wanted to record a podcast with him for you because, as anyone who’s listened to Tipping My Fedora, his brilliant podcast on all things noir, he’s informed, knowledgeable and articulate. He’s also on the advisory board of FILM NOIR UK, the programmer of the Ida Lupino section, and I had a bone to pick with him: while no one can question the importance of Ida Lupino; as an actress; as one of two female directors during the classic sound era; as someone who focussed the films she wrote, produced and/or directed on female centred-subjects often neglected by Hollywood; does one also have to make claims for her as a great director?

I had also appreciated the section on Spanish noir – all UK premieres — more than he, and bridging these differences of opinion are the basic structure of the podcast, though we touch on the festival as a whole: the boxing films programmed by Steve Hunt; the British section, many of the films kindly facilitated by TPTV; the wonderful screening of The Racket with Neil Brand playing his own score for the film live – a highlight amongst highlights; the Supernatural section programmed by Tom Vincent; and of course all the screenings of great classics in superb often restored versions (The Killers, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Notorious, the UK premiere of the restoration of Orson Welles’ The Stranger – a revelation).

A marvellous festival, one already a fixture on my annual calendar.

The podcast may be listened to here: