Rarities brighten noir fest

The American Cinematheque’s “Side Streets and Back Alleys: The 5th Annual Festival of Film Noir” opens Friday with the Hitchcock classic “Strangers on a Train” (1951), to be followed by a discussion with its star, Farley Granger, and Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, who had a key role in her father’s film. It is the first of a four-film tribute to Granger.

“Strangers” will be followed at 9:45 p.m. with a “Proto-Noir” double feature composed of the seldom-seen 1935 first version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key” starring George Raft -- remade in 1942 with a sultry teaming of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake -- and Boris Ingster’s “Stranger on the Third Floor” (1940), one of a number of rarities that make this series so intriguing. In “Stranger,” John McGuire plays a young reporter who gets a career boost when he happens upon the throat-slashed corpse of a restaurant proprietor but becomes distraught when his testimony placing Elisha Cook Jr. at the scene is enough to convict Cook of murder. What ensues is taut psychological suspense.

Charlton Heston’s Hollywood career began in the 1951 Hal Wallis production “Dark City,” which screens with a new 35mm print Saturday and which was directed by William Dieterle.

Heston is a brooding World War II vet turned small-time bookie who, with cohorts Jack Webb and Ed Begley, fleeces Don DeFore at poker, driving him to suicide. Steeped in postwar disillusion and the pitfalls of wartime marriages, the film develops considerable complexity and suspense as it moves from Chicago to Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Another key rediscovery is the terse “Woman on the Run” (1950), directed by Norman Foster and screening Wednesday. When a man (Ross Elliott) witnesses a gangland killing and disappears, his sullen wife (Ann Sheridan) couldn’t care less. As she teams reluctantly with a hotshot reporter (Dennis O’Keefe) in trying to track him down, she begins to discover how much her husband, a struggling artist, actually cares for her. The entire series is packed with gems, and its second week brings a Hugo Haas “bad girl” double feature, “Bait” (1954) and “Pickup” (1957), with Haas cast opposite Cleo Moore and Beverly Michaels, respectively.

Several years ago Norwegian filmmaker Knut Erik Jensen filmed a documentary, “Cool and Crazy,” on the robust Berlevag Male Choir, from a fading fishing village within shooting distance of the Arctic Circle. He subsequently documented the choir’s American tour, which started just three weeks after Sept. 11. The result is “Cool and Crazy on the Road,” which screens Saturday and Sunday. On the cross-country tour, the men express varying opinions about how Americans are responding to Sept. 11.

*

Screenings

“Strangers on a Train,” “The Glass Key,” “Stranger on the Third Floor”: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. Friday, 7 p.m. (323) 466-FILM.

“Dark City”: Saturday, 5 p.m. “Woman on the Run”: Wednesday, 7:15 p.m. “Bait,” “Pickup”: April 15, 7 p.m.

“Cool and Crazy on the Road”: Laemmle Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. (323) 848-3500.