In Noir Heaven

The American Cinematheque’s 25-film “Side Streets and Back Alleys: The First Annual Festival of Film Noir” not only is chock-full of B-movie classics, plus some obscure items, but will also feature numerous personal appearances by stars and directors. Fast-paced, unpretentious, exciting and gritty, the best of these films, mainly crime thrillers, tend to age better than many of the prestige pictures of their era. Film noir captured postwar disillusionment, increasing Cold War paranoia and in general offered a refreshing relief from the “Ozzie and Harriet”-”Father Knows Best” image of American life in the 1940s and ‘50s.

The series is fittingly launched as a tribute to Marie Windsor, who has played a wide range of women over the years but is the definitive film noir heroine--glamorous, smart, tough and dangerous. Windsor will be represented in the series in five films. Her best role is arguably in Richard Fleischer’s “The Narrow Margin” (1952), which opens the festival Friday at 7 p.m., followed by a discussion with Windsor and Fleischer.

If ever there was an argument for less being more, it’s “The Narrow Margin,” directed tautly by Fleischer and written tersely by Earl Felton from Martin Goldsmith and Jack Leonard’s Oscar-nominated screen story. In this thriller-on-a-train classic, Charles McGraw is the decent, reflective cop escorting hard-as-nails Windsor from Chicago to Los Angeles, where she is to testify in a racket-busting trial. The finish is a stunner. “The Narrow Margin” will be followed by two more Fleischer-directed gems: “Armored Car Robbery” (1950), which also stars McGraw, again as a cop, out to nail the gang who killed his partner; and “Violent Saturday” (1955), a caper film with Victor Mature, Sylvia Sidney and Lee Marvin.

Evelyn Keyes will be on hand Saturday at 7 p.m. for “The Killer That Stalked New York” (1950), which will be followed by “99 River Street” (1953) and “Kansas City Confidential” (1952), both directed by Phil Karlson and starring John Payne. In the first, one breathless development follows another as Payne’s washed-up boxer becomes implicated in his wife’s murder, and Keyes, as an actress who pulls off a mind-boggling stunt to land a starring role in a Broadway play, insists on coming to Payne’s aid. Payne and Karlson attack the dated “Kansas City Confidential” with the same panache, and you couldn’t ask for better bad guys than Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef and Neville Brand, recruited by disgruntled ex-cop Preston Foster for a robbery.

Tuesday brings director Robert Wise in person, along with his “Born to Kill” (1947) and a Jules Dassin double feature, “Brute Force” (1947) and “Thieves Highway” (1949). “Born to Kill” is a superb demonstration of Wise’s wry control over lurid material, in which an utterly humorless sociopath (Lawrence Tierney) zeros in on a sultry San Francisco socialite (Claire Trevor). The picture wouldn’t have had a prayer of succeeding without the aura of virility and danger Tierney exudes, and only an actress of Trevor’s skill and strength could make credible her fatal attraction toward him.

On Wednesday Ann Savage will appear with Edgar Ulmer’s “Detour” (1945), the archetypal film noir and one of the most relentlessly intense psychological thrillers ever made; Tom Neal has good reason to regret ever crossing paths with Savage, whose dazzling performance is so commanding that “riveting” doesn’t begin to describe its impact. “Detour,” which screens at 7 p.m., will be followed (after a discussion with Savage) at 9:30 p.m. with a Felix Feist triple feature, “The Devil Thumbs a Ride” (1947), with Tierney as a homicidal maniac, “The Threat” (1949) and “Tomorrow Is Another Day” (1951), with Steve Cochran and Ruth Roman. Feist is one of the least-known directors in the series, but judging from “The Threat” the other pictures are worth a look. Charles McGraw stars as an ice-cold gangster who escapes prison to kidnap the cop (Michael O’Shea), the D.A. and a stripper (Virginia Grey) whom he holds responsible for his conviction. Told with ruthless economy and maximum tension, “The Threat” is an effective throat-grabber.

Note: The Cinematheque is also screening, tonight only, at 8 p.m., “Queer Shorts ‘99,” a collection of gay and lesbian short films. (323) 466-FILM.

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In “Music on the Nile,” the UCLA Film Archive has one of its most unusual offerings: five vintage musicals, a genre popular in Egypt over the decades. Made for mass audiences and anything but subtle, they cannot remotely compare with the better Hollywood productions, which are clearly an influence. They are perhaps closer to popular Indian cinema in their lack of sophistication, broad humor and heavy melodrama. As corny as they are, they feature beloved, enduring stars and are enlivened by much potent music. Most remain entertaining (if campy), and all are revealing of the times in which they were made.

The series, which runs through April 10, commences Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz Hall with Ahmad Diya’ al-Din’s exuberant “Every Beat of My Heart” (1959), starring voluptuous dancer Samiya Gamal, who remains one of the few Egyptian stars who achieved any renown in the U.S. Gamal plays a celebrated dancing film star--what else?--whose Cadillac knocks down a music teacher and aspiring singer (Muhammad Fawzi), breaking his leg. When he recuperates at her home, they fall in love, but not without complications, natch. Gamal has a winning, unpretentious personality, and her film has a brisk, bouncy pace.

In the 1950s Ali and Mahmoud Rida formed a dance troupe that would become world-famous for its balletic interpretations of regional dances, and in 1967 Ali directed Mahmoud in “Love in Karnak,” in which he plays the leader of such a troupe that travels to Luxor to perform amid the spectacular ruins of the Temple of Karnak. The dances are breathtaking and imaginatively staged, but their sophistication offers a jarring contrast to the silly and contrived plot, with its tempestuous love story between Mahmoud and his stunning partner (and off-screen wife) Faridy Fahmy.

The most recent and most effective of the films is Khairy Bishara’s 1992 “Ice Cream in Gleam” (screening after “Karnak”), which stars handsome pop idol Amr Diyab as a struggling Cairo singer whose friends span the political spectrum. The film focuses on his struggle to establish his identity amid local influences and pervasive American pop culture.

The most historic film in the series is Anwar Wagdi’s 1949 “The Flirtation of Girls” (April 10, at 7:30 p.m.), for it features five legendary stars who span the history of the Egyptian cinema. Naguib al-Rihani, a cherished star of the Egyptian theater plays an aging teacher hired to tutor a beautiful, spoiled heiress (gorgeous and talented singing star Layla Murad).

Wagdi also directed the 1953 “Dahab,” which follows “Flirtation,” and in which he also stars. He plays an impoverished street performer who raises an abandoned baby, who by age 8 has become an obnoxious kiddie star (Fayruz). The plot is preposterous, and even contemporary critics felt ill at ease with Fayruz’s suggestive belly dancing. (310) 206-FILM.

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The UCLA Film Archive’s “Out of the Past: Film Restoration Today” begins Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Melnitz Hall with “The White Hell of Piz Palu” (1929), the most renowned of the German “mountain films,” with Leni Riefenstahl as an emperiled newlywed.

LACMA concludes its Paul Morrissey series Saturday with a rare presentation of “The Chelsea Girls” (1966), a three-hour-and-20-minute gallery of decadents. (323) 857-6010.

A new 35-mm print of the uncut European version of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” opens Friday at the Nuart, where it will be followed by screenings Wednesday and next Thursday of “12 Monkeys” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” (310) 478-6379.