Rated: Dark    Runtime: 2 Weeks!
FILM NOIR returns in May to the ROXIE where it once enjoyed its greatest renaissance! Two weeks — from May 15 through May 28 — of darkly demented, baffling B budget curios of the American style — most not available on DVD and many not seen in theaters for decades!

From 1990 until 2003, San Francisco’s Roxie Theater enjoyed a reputation as being the foremost venue in the entire Bay Area for the absolute best in quality, esoteric film noir. The guiding hand behind the film noir programming at the Roxie was Elliot Lavine, who left the theater in early 2003 to pursue other interests, among them teaching courses in film studies at Stanford and San Francisco State University. He has also completed work on a fascinating new book called TV NOIR: I WAKE UP DREAMING. To help celebrate the appearance of his soon to be published book, Lavine has been invited to curate this film noir series at the Roxie. The focus of this series is the shadowy and gritty world of the B noir. These are not the glitzy and glamorous classics most filmgoers are familiar with. Rather, they are the doomed and forgotten, rough and ready step-children of Hollywood’s lower depths; poverty row gems that, in many ways, capture the true, brutal essence of noir far better than many of their upper-crust cousins.

Films like THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE, featuring one of Lawrence Tierney’s fiercest and most disturbing performances; THE GUILTY, among the rarest poverty row adaptations of Cornell Woolrich’s deeply unsettling fiction; RAILROADED, Anthony Mann’s luminous no-budget, high tension crime tale; the seldom seen CANON CITY, one of the most exciting prison epics ever made; atom-age oddities SHACK OUT ON 101 and CITY OF FEAR and twenty-two other amazing examples of Hollywood’s darkest and most sinister by-products—an unforgettable wallow in the weirdly wicked world of B NOIR—at San Francisco’s original House of Noir…THE ROXIE!! See the complete schedule below.

Check out the new book I WAKE UP DREAMING by author & film programmer Elliot Lavine.

"Very good news, then, that Lavine is bringing bad guys (and duplicitous dames) back to Valencia Street" - SF Bay Guardian

"A program of 28 obscure, bona fide film noir that Lavine affectionately describes as "cheap, lowdown and tawdry"..." - SF360.org

Schedule

WEEK ONE:

Thursday, May 14
Special Pre-Opening Night Shindig!
ALL NIGHT LONG

Friday May 15:
THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE (1947)
THE GUILTY (1947)

Saturday May 16:
RAW DEAL (1948)
RAILROADED (1947)

Sunday May 17:
CANON CITY (1948)
FRAMED (1947)

Monday May 18:
THE SPECTER OF THE ROSE (1946)
THE MADONNA'S SECRET (1946)

Tuesday May 19:
THE STORY OF MOLLY X (1949)
PORT OF FORTY THIEVES (1944)

Wednesday May 20:
THE LAST CROOKED MILE (1946)
VIOLENCE (1947)

Thursday May 21:
PRIVATE HELL 36 (1954)
NO MAN'S WOMAN (1955)

WEEK TWO:

Friday May 22:
NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL (1955)
THE HOODLUM (1951)

Saturday May 23:
THE BURGLAR (1957)
WITNESS TO MURDER (1954)

Sunday May 24:
REPEAT PERFORMANCE (1946)
HOLLOW TRIUMPH (1948)

Monday May 25:
WOMEN IN THE NIGHT (1948)
UNDER AGE (1941)

Tuesday May 26:
SUSPENSE (1946)
THE PRETENDER (1947)

Wednesday, May 27:
ALLOTMENT WIVES (1945)
WIFE WANTED (1946)

Thursday May 28:
CITY OF FEAR (1959)
SHACK OUT ON 101 (1955)