Ann Savage and Tom Neal in Detour.

Political corruption. Narcissism. Larceny. Thievery. Skullduggery. Just a few of the key plot points at this year’s entertaining 26th Annual Noir City Hollywood at the Egyptian Theatre, aping current headlines. Wicked women and their deceitful ways stole the show as several plots seemed to echo today’s nightmarish, vengeance driven headlines. Featuring both classic noirs and neo-noirs like The Last Seduction and The Grifters, offering more visceral, profane action, the festival revealed the petty, treacherous underbelly of America.

Czar of Noir Eddie Muller and associate Alan Rode offered pithy and often hilarious introductions to the films, acknowledging the often dark and combative stories occurring offscreen during production. They offered astute comments as to how the plot of contemporary America seems to be echoing the claustrophobic, hate-filled grievances and actions of seventy and eighty years ago. Muller himself conducted in-depth interviews with stars Annette Bening and Jennifer Tilly, full of insights, humor, and detail. Brian Light’s eye-popping, luscious lithographic posters captured the romantic but twisted view of noir and its evil men and women.

Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark in Road House.

Opening night Thursday, March 20 kicked off with a bang, as tough as nails Ida chanteuse Lupino seduced a microphone and lusty, male co-owners of a swinging roadhouse on the Canadian border in the aptly named Road House. A perverse love triangle ensues between quip happy Lupino, increasingly psychotic Richard Widmark, and muscular Cornel Wilde at the luxurious pineywoods inn, leading to a socko ending along the threatening border.

Friday night’s double feature blended nihilism and perversity with noir’s ultimate bleakfest Detour setting up the evening, followed by the little seen, My True Story. Detour is perhaps the most nihilistic of all film noirs, the ultimate in despair, a low budget film enhanced by spot on lighting and pitch perfect tone. My True Story was actually based on a true story from a magazine called My True Story, about a woman paroled out of prison by people hoping to con a rich woman out of a fortune. While it featured a fine performance by Helen Walker and a short running time, it lacked the manic energy associated with director Mickey Rooney.

Saturday afternoon started off with a bang with the carnivalesque inspired remake of Mildred Pierce featuring Joan Crawford as a cooch dancer who gets mixed up in party politics, Southern style. Michael Curtiz keeps things hot and heavy, with a fine performance by Sydney Greenstreet as a slimy, grifting sheriff.

A wonderful double feature of quintessential noir classics brought the heat Saturday night. Sexy stars Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas kept it hot and heavy in the melancholic but wisecracking story of love and lust gone wrong, with exquisite direction, lighting, and production design by Jacques Tourneur, Nicholas Musaraca, and Albert S. Agostino. Stanley Kubrick’s ice pick handling of Jim Thompson’s pulpy The Killing keeps it bitterly dark and fatalistic, filled with expressive performances by character actors like Sterling Hayden, Marie Windsor, Elisha Cook Jr., and over the top Timothy Carey.

Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

Sensual, lush, and filled with borderline psychotic characters, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers features a wicked four way triangle and frameups galore. Van Heflin gives a strong performance as a returning vet torn between a repentant Lizabeth Scott and a rapacious Barbara Stanwyck. Parts of the plot seemed ripped from today’s headlines, a timely story of overbearing capitalists controlling not only industry but everything in town as well.

That afternoon’s screening of The Grifters made an excellent double feature, featuring another almost sick three way romance and characters willing to commit almost anything to survive. All three stars – Bening, Anjelica Huston, and John Cusack bring sharp definition to their slick, loosely moraled losers. The film subtly updates noir conventions with bold story, fine performances, and great design, pleasing as it is sometimes repellent.

Tension and Alisa Nick Beal rounded out the perfect day of noir, with sharply defined characters, atmospheric design, and finely etched characters. Richard Basehart’s likable sad sack pharmacist finally loses his cool with his acid tongued, shrewish wife Audrey Totter. A change of contacts for glasses and magically he finds strength and desire to right his wrongs and fall for the luscious photographer next door, Cyd Charisse. Filmed around Los Angeles, the film captures the pain and conflicts of a tortured marriage, enhanced by Basehart’s subtle performance.

Perfectly designed for our times, Paramount’s Alias Nick Beal reveals the malevolent and amoral heart in many supposedly upright characters. Ray Milland brings suave villainy to the dastardly deeds of the Faustian Nick Beal, picking at troubled characters’ most haunting flaws. Do-gooder politician Thomas Mitchell sells his soul and principles to gain office at the hands of luscious but lascivious Adurey Totter as morals and bravery fail in the heart of greed and desire. Director John Farrow and his terrific team bring masterful touches to the film, from its creepy shadows and foggy waterfronts to sharply designed sets and even otherworldly sound.

Opening night of the second weekend featured another slick pairing, this time contrasting determined, truth seeking sleuth Ella Raines with a conniving but loving mother Joan Bennett in the nightcap. Phantom Lady blends mystery with psychology, featuring evocative sets, lighting, and expressive performances in a story straight out of a nightmare. While Franchot Tone pushes his suave but troubled artist over the top at times, Ella Raines brings passionate, energetic charm to the determined dame willing to do almost anything to bring a killer to justice.

Bennett brings steely resolve to the controlling but means well mother in The Reckless Moment. Shot in and around Balboa Island off Newport Beach, the film’s artful lighting and set design help define the upscale and mean to stay that wey Bennett and the slick shadiness of villains Shepperd Strudwick and Roy Roberts. James Mason brings haunting resolve and tenderness to one of his earliest US performances.

Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson in The Woman in the Window.

Friday night brought another luscious pairing filled with artistic touches bringing sharp definition to story and character. Director Fritz Lang captured the icy heart of The Woman in the Window in this story of murder, blackmail, and suicide. Filled with crack performances by Raymond Massey, Dan Duryea, Bennett, and Edward G. Robinson, design elements and musical score help set the tone for the developing film noir genre and brought a second chapter to Robinson’s career, as he transitioned from leading man tough guy to troubled middle aged family man. Adding to festivities, the grandson of Bennett allowed the painting of his grandmother to be displayed that evening, bringing a nostalgic touch to the evening.

Edward Dmytryk’s dark look at gritty private eye Philip Marlowe and shady Los Angeles enhanced Murder, My Sweet, superbly showcasing Dick Powell in a career remake from musical hoofer to sarcastic, fatalistic gumshoe. Claire Trevor brings tough as nails hauteur to her flashy femme fatale and character actors like Mike Mazurki, Otto Kruger, and Esther Howard bring sharp definition to one of the genre’s best examples, brooding and sinister.

Saturday’s early matinee screening of Raw Deal featured the mesmerizing camerawork of Prince of Darkness John Alton and taut storytelling by director Anthony Mann in a story blending prison breakout and weird romantic triangle. Strong performances by sadistic bad guy Raymond Burr, conflicted jailbird Dennis O’Keefe, morally honest social worker Marsha Hunt and conniving femme fatale Trevor highlight this searing prison breakout journey.

Saturday night contrasted dastardly dame Rhonda Fleming with questioning widow Evelyn Keyes in its dark double feature. Powell produced the energetically powerful Cry Danger, set in the seedy dives of Los Angeles and Bunker Hill in a story of manipulation and set up. Highlighted by Powell’s tough performance and Richard Erdman’s quipping right hand man, the story features sarcastic asides and comebacks and witty in-jokes like location filming in front of the Howard Hughes headquarters.

Set in Hawaii as one of the few tiki-noirs, Hell’s Half Acre showcases a weary Keyes searching for her missing GI husband Wendell Corey in Honolulu’s notorious red-light district. Blending tiki touches like slack guitar, stiff drinks, and tropic atmosphere with noir elements like backstabblng crime bosses, dastardly dames, and criminals on the run, the film contains nice performances by Keye Luke as a strait-laced police detective, Philip Ahn as a malevolent gangster, and statuesque Marie Windsor as a questioning wife. This combines B-movie zest with tiki charm.

Dead Reckoning started the concluding day off with a bang, as tough as nails Bogart seeks out the blackhearted man or woman who killed his army buddy, due to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. Set in an overbearing, humid Southern town filled with conniving businessmen and oily policemen, the film showcases Bogie at his tough but sensual best struggling with his deep attraction to the sultry but sinister Lizabeth Scott. Like many of Bogart’s noirs, it features a fatalistic backstory narrated by the actor in his inimitable sad and self deprecating best.

The evening concluded with a rock’em, sock’em pairing of The Prowler and Ace in the Hole, featuring lead actors at their slimiest and narcissistic bests. Van Heflin portrays a dirty cop willing to let nothing step in his way to seduce the sexy but lonely Keyes. Passion leads to murder and double crosses, enhanced by slick sound effects, effective lighting, and exact performances by Heflin and Keyes.

Kirk Douglas at his rotten, mean-spirited best highlights the bitter, timely, and cynical nature of tabloid journalism willing to do anything for ratings and headlines. Loosely based on the Kathy Fiscus falling down the well story, Douglas’ conniving reporter prolongs the danger of a trapped miner for notoriety and profit. Billy Wilder sadly captures the oily, selfish, and sickening side of American culture obsessed with gore, catastrophe, and destruction at the hands of media manipulation and sellout.

Consistent themes of cynicism and destruction overlaid many of the films, prescient for the destructive nature of contemporary society. Supposedly fun sports like bowling and fishing instead take on sinister, mean-spirited qualities of competitiveness and danger. In fact, sometimes coppers and others go fishing for criminals, victims, and even innocent patsies bogged down in criminal schemes. Dangerous dames attempt to flirt and manipulate themselves to power and glory, as they and morally corrupt others find themselves enveloped in shadowy nightmares of despair and desire. And of course, memorable character actors like Cook, Regis Toomey, Duryea, and William Conrad bring their unctuous best to roles.

Noir City Hollywood highlights the oozing, swamp-filled nightmares and shadows of conniving criminals and flirty femme fatales, making everything old new again. Muller and Rode’s spot-on pairings and schedule emphasized how timely and prescient many of these films are, documenting the scheming zeitgeist society currently finds itself in.