Film noir in a city of dreams

FOR decades, Los Angeles has been a mythic El Dorado for millions of people who have come West to seek their fortune, lured by the sunshine, the ocean and the glamour of Hollywood’s golden facades. And when, in that familiar arc, expectations of ease have given way to a grimmer reality, L.A.’s gilding has only heightened the despair.

A swath of L.A.-set film noir crime dramas from the 1940s and ‘50s used that contrast to maximum effect, and beginning Thursday, American Cinematheque’s eighth annual Film Noir Festival will offer a delectable sampling of L.A.-based crime dramas at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.

Included in the festival is the gritty 1946 “Nobody Lives Forever,” starring John Garfield as an ex-GI trying to bilk a war widow (Geraldine Fitzgerald), and 1944’s “Murder, My Sweet,” a taut, sophisticated adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel starring Dick Powell as L.A. shamus Philip Marlowe. There’s also a particularly juicy Joan Crawford double bill: 1945’s “Mildred Pierce,” based on James M. Cain’s bestseller, for which she received an Oscar, and 1955’s “Female on the Beach,” in which Crawford’s character learns something evil happened to the previous owner of the beach house she’s living in.

“There’s no question that these films are intrinsically connected to their environment,” says film historian-writer Leonard Maltin. “The ethos of Los Angeles, especially 60 years ago when so many of these films are made, was that it was still a land of possibilities, unsettled in many ways, and it attracted opportunities because of that. You see all of those ingredients in those films.”

Plus, Maltin adds, “ocean adds drama. The crashing waves are a great backdrop for almost any story with dramatic ingredients.”

“The ocean is that place to end it all -- to commit suicide,” says USC film professor Drew Casper. “In ‘Humoresque,’ [Joan Crawford] walks into the ocean.”

L.A. noir, Casper adds, “had this penchant in terms of its settings, all of these transitional points -- it was always staircases, curbs, the edge of the city. It is where people went for the last time to have a dream happen, and of course the dream didn’t happen -- it turned into a nightmare, which made it doubly ironic, doubly sad and doubly fatal. L.A. was the promise, the last paradise. A lot of people came here to make money and relationships, and it all soured.”

Film noir historian Eddie Muller, who co-programmed the festival, says that one of the differences between New York and L.A. noir is that in the former, “the characters want to escape the big city, the teeming metropolis. In L.A., you get to the Promised Land and you realize there’s no escape. I find the most effective L.A. noirs are always set in places where there is an horizon, which you don’t see in New York noir.”

In fact, a lot of these films are really what Muller calls “ocean noir.” In “Nobody Lives Forever,” Muller says, “it ends in a fog on the coast at one of those wharfside dives where everybody meets. In ‘Mildred Pierce,’ she’s going to throw herself off the wharf in Santa Monica at the beginning of the film. And ‘The Spiritualist’ takes place right on the coast in a house overlooking the ocean up on the cliffs.”

Ironically, says Muller, filmmakers probably didn’t put in a lot of thought on the location, save for the ones based on novels such as “Murder, My Sweet’ and “Mildred Pierce.”

“I don’t think they had incredible intentions,” he says. “It was more like, ‘Let’s shoot it down the street.’ ”

Some of the films in the festival stretch the definition of film noir. “ ‘The Spiritualist’ has a real wink-wink, nudge-nudge quality about it,” says Muller. “ ‘Shack Out on 101’ is an absolutely outrageous piece of work. If anybody thinks they were serious for a split second....”

Noir purists, Muller says, often bristle when he programs these films at festivals. “They say it’s not film noir -- people are going to come and just laugh at it,” says Muller, who just shrugs off their complaints.

“With this renaissance in noir that has happened in the last few years, the comeback of a lot of old films that are being rediscovered and the proliferation of festivals, we have expanded the whole idea of what noir is, which allows us to resurrect these marginal films and call them noir and get them exposed again. I think it is a terrific thing.”

susan.king@latimes.com

*

‘Noir City’

Where: American Cinematheque at the Aero Theatre, 1328 Montana Ave., Santa Monica

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Sunday

Price: $7 to $10

Contact: (323) 466-FILM or go to www.americancinematheque.com

Schedule

Thursday: “Nobody Lives Forever” and “711 Ocean Drive”

Friday: “Murder, My Sweet” and “The Spiritualist”

Saturday: “Mildred Pierce” and “Female on the Beach”

Next Sunday: “Shack Out on 101” and “Tension”