Friday, January 20, 2012

Noir City X: Trailer and Poster

NOIR CITY X: January 20-29, 2012, The Castro, San Francisco, CA
Movies, Stars, Tours, Nightclub and Noir!!

From the Noir City Website:

To commemorate its 10th anniversary, the NOIR CITY Film Festival returns to the source. This year's poster was created in the San Francisco apartment where Dashiell Hammett, between 1927-29, wrote Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon, in an inspired burst of creativity that forever changed the course of American literature and laid the groundwork for film noir.

Ms. NOIR CITY 2012, Helena Bianca Stoddard, portrays The Maltese Falcon's delectable but duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy, in a variation on the scene that Hollywood's Production Code demanded be cut from all film versions of the book. When one of the ten $1000 bills he's been paid to locate the Black Bird goes missing, Sam Spade demands that Brigid undress to prove she's hasn't stolen the money. "I've got to know what happened to that bill and I'm not going to be held up by anybody's maidenly modesty."

Hammett's actual apartment, located at 891 Post Street, is clearly the model for Spade's digs in the novel. It was for many years the home of NOIR CITY announcer William P. Arney, who carried the torch until local author and impresario Robert Mailer Anderson took over the lease. Under Anderson's stewardship, and the creative hand of designer Leonardo, Hammett's digs have been restored and preserved down to the last detail: Murphy bed, original fixtures, and all. When the fog rolls in off the ocean, and shadows streak across the ceiling, you can almost hear Sam Spade snarl, "I don't care who loves who—I'm not going to play the sap for you."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent!

Well done!