Embrace This!

Good Grief Herr Doctor -- it's the New Year, and a new decade. Now is a great time to remember last year's resolutions (neglected), and to makes lists of things. The end of the year is also a good time to sell off your losing stocks and offset your capital gains (ooops -- that is a different blog). Ok, what other lists do we compile? Class? That's right -- lists of films that may win some Academy Award. Movies, such as the cartoonish Avatar, beloved by Roger Ebert & Co., and in 3-D nonetheless, promise to run away with the awards. But we here, those of us who live in Noir Central, we'll have none of that. The movie, the very best movie of 2009 is ... Broken Embraces (Los Abrazos Rotos) by Pedro Almodóvar. And Penelope Cruz had a starring role in it. That alone sends my normally tempered [sic] sexual barometer on the rise. And Almodóvar, the gay and Spanish director, as always paints a picture of a land that could only exist in his mediterranean imagination. Bad things happen, but all is filmed in sun drenched colors and (almost) everyone lives and dies an optimist.

Critic after critic mention that this is Almodóvar's noir film. Is it? During the course of the film, Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray was mentioned and there was a play on Ray's name, and a few other analogies. There was even a mystery -- of sorts. And a crime. And a femme, but was she a femme fatale? Was there an anti-hero? What about the use of chiarascuro lighting? No? Well, there were some noir elements. I won't reveal too much in case you haven't seen it yet. But the film is not a noir and the mention of Nicholas Ray, both in passing, and in the disaffected character of Ray-X does not make it so. The film is, quite firmly, and more than anything else, an Almodóvar film. Much as a Hitchcock film can be described as hitchcockian, Almodóvar's films ought to be described as almodovarian.

The Academy Awards, also known as Oscars, have little to do with the quality of the picture, and more to do with current trends, popularity, and money. Last year's best picture winner was Slumdog Millionaire. While it was a fun movie, it was hardly the best film of the year, and was, in many ways, either an homage or a satire of Bollywood films. This "Indian" movie was directed by Danny Boyle (an Irish man), and written by Simon Beaufoy (the British screenwriter who also wrote The Full Monty). There were better movies in 2009, which is a statement of fact, and not meant to deprive Slumdog of its millions. It was a nice, fun movie that played off of Bollywood's tropes rather successfully. The other nominations for 2009 Best Picture were: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, and The Reader. Missing from that list was The Wrestler.

The best movie of this year may be Los Abrazos Rotos. Now, does that mean it will make billions in the box office or that it will be best film of the year? No. It means the exact opposite. It means the chamomille swilling cognoscenti (people who don't read books such as Sarah Palin call them the "elite") will talk for as long as they are allowed in calling such a film great and so on. Those films, for the "elite", belong in the Best Foreign Language Film category, where all the rest of the films in the entire world, are grouped. So, if it has subtitles -- that's where it goes. Oddly enough, the UK is placed in the Foreign Language category, which would be appropriate for their prolific number of Welsh, Manxian, and Celtic language films. Italy has won the most foreign language awards (10), followed closely by France (9). Spain ties Japan with four awards each. India has never received an Academy Award. Nor has China, although that appears to have much to do with byzantine Oscar rules and the fact that China is an oligarchy (or autocracy) that simply cannot allow a film director to direct a film without state approval and involvement (which is against the Academy rules).

No noir film has ever won a Best Picture Academy Award. Nor has a science fiction -- yet (perhaps Avatar will change that). If we accept the somewhat general consenus that noir films were made in the years between 1941 (the year of The Maltese Falcon and High Sierra) and ended with Orson Welles' Touch of Evil in 1958, then a noir will never win. However, Polanski's 1974 Chinatown is considered a modern noir, which just goes to show that filmic appellations, like awards, are uncertain things.

The New Year is also a harbinger of the Castro Film Noir Festival. Unfortunately, Harry Belafonte, who was scheduled to appear, will not be able to do so due to other commitments.

The 8th Annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival runs from January 22nd to the 31st.
Here is the schedule (films marked with an asterisk are not available on DVD):
Friday, January 22

PITFALL (1948) Dir. André De Toth, archival 35mm print
LARCENY (1948) Dir. George Sherman, brand new 35mm print
Saturday, January 23, Matinée

FLY BY NIGHT (1942) Dir. Robert Siodmak*
DEPORTED (1950) Dir. Robert Siodmak*
Saturday, January 23, Evening

CRY DANGER (1951) Dir. Robert Parrish, newly restored*
THE MOB (1951) Dir. Robert Parish*
Sunday, January 24

NIAGARA (1953) Dir. Henry Hathaway
THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950) Dir. John Huston
Monday, January 25

SUSPENSE (1946) Dir. Frank Tuttle
THE GANGSTER (1947) Dir. Gordon Wiles*
Tuesday, January 26

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946) Dir. Tay Garnett
HE RAN ALL THE WAY (1951) Dir. John Berry*
Wednesday, January 27

ONE GIRLS' CONFESSION (1953) Dir. Hugo Haas*
WOMEN'S PRISON (1955) Lewis Seiler*
Thursday, January 28

RED LIGHT (1949) Dir. Roy Del Ruth*
WALK A CROOKED MILE (1948) Dir. Gordon Douglas*
Friday, January 29

SLATTERY'S HURRICANE (1949) Dir. André de Toth*
PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953) Dir. Samuel Fuller
Saturday January 30, Matinée

INSIDE JOB (1946) Dir. Jean Yarbrough*
ARMORED CAR ROBBERY (1950) Dir. Richard Fleischer*
Saturday, January 30.

HUMAN DESIRE (1954) Dir. Fritz Lang*
ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959) Dir. Robert Wise

Sunday January 31

ESCAPE IN THE FOG (1945) Dir. Budd Boetticher*
A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951) Dir. George Stevens

And many thanks to Will Scovill for mentioning that a musical is being made of Nightmare Alley, which starred Tyrone Power and Joan Blondell. Part of the story of Nightmare Alley story was shamelessly borrowed by best-selling "Water for Elephants" author Sara Gruen (without attribution).

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Almodóvar did win Best Foreign Language Film with Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About my Mother).