You gotta stay one step ahead of the cops—I mean the audience—if you’re the all-hours, whiskey-snorting, snappy-patter proprietor of Noir City. After 15 years of tunneling through the bleakest, bitterest parables of corruption and cynicism that slinked out of Hollywood’s glam studios and the Poverty Row exploitation mills in the 1940s and ’50s, Eddie Muller needed a fresh angle on the whole “crime doesn’t pay . . . if you’re not already powerful and rich” ethos that undergirds film noir.
So Muller’s gone all in on the heist film, redrawing Noir City’s borders beyond American film and even venturing into the 21st century to program “The Big Knockover” (Jan. 20–29 at the Castro). Sure, you can ride along yet again with your favorite bands of doomed outsiders in The Asphalt Jungle, Kansas City Confidential and The Killing. Better yet, revisit or discover next-generation classics like the original The Taking of Pelham 123, Blue Collar, The Brink’s Job and Sidney Lumet’s last masterpiece, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.
While you’re at it, sample some of the top-shelf noir Muller boosted from Italy, France, the U.K., Japan, Germany and Argentina. How’s that Dylan song go? “Steal a little and they throw you in jail / Steal a lot and they make you king.” The house band at Noir City does a first-rate version — even if you ask for it by its street name, “Inauguration Blues.”
‘Noir City’ runs Jan. 20–29 at the Castro Theatre. For complete program of films (with a surprising number of color titles this year), see here.
