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John Ireland and Marsha Hunt in <\/em>Raw Deal (1948).<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, there was another decade besides the ’70s when Hollywood made films with downbeat endings. The <\/em>NYT manages to write about <\/em>Raw Deal without mentioning its director, the great Anthony Mann<\/a>. Never mind, at least they credited John Alton<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, Nights Are Noir in Fog City<\/strong> SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 28 \u2014 The orange and blue neon lights of the Castro Theater shone blurrily on the damp asphalt beneath the crisscrossing catenary wires of the streetcars. The words on the marquee in the Friday night gloom, read: \u201cMarsha Hunt: In Person.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms. Hunt made more than 50 movies before her career was wrecked in 1950 by the Hollywood blacklist. One of them, a 1948 crime melodrama called \u201cRaw Deal,\u201d has gone on to an unlikely second life as a favorite of the cultish devotees of film noir. On Friday it opened the fifth annual Noir City film festival here, and Ms. Hunt, 89, was on hand to watch its dreamlike silvery hues make a rare appearance on a big \u2014 very big \u2014 screen.<\/p>\n Lithe and glowing, Ms. Hunt took the stage after the film and said she was surprised not only that this dark little B movie had found fans nearly 60 years after its release, but that so many of them were here, nearly filling the Castro\u2019s more than 1,400 seats. The crowd was a mix of young and old, polished and scruffy, with only a few fedoras in sight.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t get over this,\u201d Ms. Hunt said as the film festival\u2019s founder and organizer, Eddie Muller, genially interviewed her at the foot of the stage. \u201cIt was a strange sort of film,\u201d she added, \u201cabout as negative as you can get. They hadn\u2019t coined the term \u2018noir\u2019 yet.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s right. It\u2019s hard to imagine a darker film, literally or figuratively, than \u201cRaw Deal.\u201d Consisting almost entirely of luminescent day-for-night photography, it\u2019s the story of an escaped con (played by Dennis O\u2019Keefe) and the two women who love him (Ms. Hunt was one; Claire Trevor was the other), and features, among other pitch-black set pieces, a villain (Raymond Burr) who disfigures his girlfriend with a flaming dessert, and a furious midnight brawl in a seaside taxidermy shop. At the end everyone is either ruined, dead or under arrest.<\/p>\n And that darkness was just fine with the moviegoers here, which applauded vigorously as the closing titles rolled, just as they had at the beginning when the credit for the film\u2019s director of photography, John Alton, the master of all that darkness, appeared on screen.<\/p>\n Mr. Muller, an author and film noir aficionado, dreamed up the film festival five years ago as a way to increase visibility for the Film Noir Foundation he runs, which works to restore the movies, and to promote his own books. (He most recently helped write Tab Hunter\u2019s autobiography.) The Castro, built in 1922 and recently refurbished, had some dead time in January, and the festival (which runs this year through Feb. 4) was born \u2014 with a bang. The first double bill in 2003, \u201cThe Maltese Falcon\u201d and \u201cDark Passage\u201d \u2014 two seminal San Francisco noirs \u2014 sold out.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was huge right out of the gate,\u201d he said. \u201dIt totally threw me.\u201d In the years since, he\u2019s sold an average of 880 seats a night.<\/p>\n Of course subject matter and city are well matched. San Francisco has a noir pedigree rivaling that of New York or Los Angeles, its fog, slanting streets, circa-1940\u2019s office buildings and dank narrow streets creating untold scores of blind alleys for characters unlucky enough to be trapped in them. Several noirs, including \u201cRaw Deal,\u201d have been set here.<\/p>\n On Friday the weather didn\u2019t disappoint, with a steady rain falling much of the day. The sun made a half-hearted attempt to appear around noon, then gave up and went back to bed.<\/p>\n The Noir City festival may not be Sundance, but it too has its celebrities and scenes. Before \u201cRaw Deal\u201d on Friday the Castro\u2019s balcony was crammed for a reception, with an open bar, a jazz band and Ms. Hunt signing copies of her book, \u201cThe Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and \u201940s and Our World Since Then\u201d (Fallbrook, 1993).<\/p>\n Among those on hand was Richard Erdman, 81, a character actor whose face is as recognizable \u2014 his credits include \u201cStalag 17\u201d and \u201cTora! Tora! Tora!\u201d \u2014 as his name is unknown. He had a supporting role in \u201cCry Danger,\u201d the first film on Saturday night\u2019s double bill, and looked so familiar standing there at the reception that it was almost impossible not to run up to him and say, \u201cHaven\u2019t we met before?\u201d<\/p>\n Like Ms. Hunt, Mr. Erdman seemed a little puzzled as to why exactly, so many years later, these movies are finding a new following. Asked for a theory, he thought for a moment and said: \u201cI really have no idea. I\u2019m not putting it down, I just don\u2019t understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n He heaped praise on Mr. Muller and his crew of volunteers for running a high-class operation. \u201cThey\u2019re not chintzy,\u201d he said, sipping a glass of white wine.<\/p>\n Film noir is enjoying something of a second golden age at the moment. In addition to the San Francisco festival, the Film Forum in New York City offered a major noir series last year, and studios like Warner Brothers and Fox have ratcheted up their noir reissues to such an extent that many films that never made it out on VHS are appearing on DVD. Just last week Warner Home Video released 1952\u2019s \u201cAngel Face,\u201d starring Robert Mitchum, which had only been available on foreign or pirated VHS tapes. Mr. Muller provides the commentary track.<\/p>\n \u201cWith film noir, if you show it to a group of 20-year-olds, they\u2019ll find something to get hooked on,\u201d said George Feltenstein, Warner Home Video\u2019s voluble senior vice president for marketing for its classic catalog. \u201cThere is a sexiness to it, there is a mystery took it. These are very seductive movies, they are not cookie-cutter.\u201d<\/p>\n Warner Brothers has released three noir box sets. The first, which came out in 2004 and featured titles like \u201cOut of the Past\u201d and \u201cThe Asphalt Jungle,\u201d hit No. 1 on Amazon.com\u2019s DVD list. This year Warner\u2019s fourth noir set will include 10 rather than 5 movies. Here\u2019s a scoop for noir fans: Two will star Mr. Mitchum.<\/p>\n Whatever the machinations of the DVD business, here at the Noir City festival, everyone was in a pretty good mood by the time the second title of opening night, \u201cKid Glove Killer,\u201d a super-rarity from 1942, rolled to its conclusion. This one had a happier ending, with Ms. Hunt getting a marriage proposal, delivered beneath a microscope, from a skinny and surprisingly big-haired Van Heflin.<\/p>\n Coats and fedoras went back on, and the crowd headed for the exits. Ms. Hunt stood by the door, shaking hands and signing autographs, as her new legions of fans emerged onto the shiny street and headed off into the night.<\/p>\n Previously on { feuilleton } John Ireland and Marsha Hunt in Raw Deal (1948). Yes, there was another decade besides the ’70s when Hollywood made films with downbeat endings. The NYT manages to write about Raw Deal without mentioning its director, the great Anthony Mann. Never mind, at least they credited John Alton. Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt, Nights … Continue reading “Raw Deal”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-pulp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-m4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy WENDELL JAMIESON
\nNew York Times<\/a>, January 29, 2007<\/p>\n
\n\u2022 Film noir posters<\/a>
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