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Naturally, as with any expanding midriff, things need to be let out and restitched here and again to accommodate growth. The increased popularity of Noir City's opening night has necessitated new strategies of ticket tiering, crowd control and media access, adjustments that inspire both grumbles and grins. The opening night reception customarily held in the Castro's mezzanine is fast becoming an unwieldy mass of elbow shoving and spilled wine; but, one thing holds constant throughout the proceedings and that is the surety with which the Film Noir Foundation (FNF) delivers a program of noir favorites assembled from the best prints available or recently restruck under the aegis of film education, restoration and preservation. In other words, as this year's theme attests, Noir City is "keeping it reel." That's bang for your buck, folks.
With the theater packed with an audience buzzing with anticipation, the now legendary disembodied "voice of Noir City", William P. Arney, situated the audience's attention towards the stage and screen with his wry drawl: "Alright ladies and gentlemen, you might as well settle in because no one is going anywhere for a while. I see a lot of newbies in the audience tonight, and plenty of repeat offenders, but all of you have drawn the same sentence. So start rationing your popcorn, planning your bathroom breaks, and budgeting for those parking tickets, because you have been found guilty of extreme movie fanaticism and you're about to serve your time." Introducing Eddie Muller as "writer, noirchaeologist, San Francisco literary laureate, boss of the Film Noir Foundation, and Lindsay Lohan's personal media consultant", the crowd erupted into affectionate applause for everyone's beloved Czar of Noir.
Once the applause subsided, Muller let out a huge sigh. "It seems like about 10 seconds ago I was on this stage concluding our fantastic 10th anniversary celebration of Noir City … and then I must have blinked, because an entire year has gone by. But I know that something happened in the middle there because things are very different now than they were at the end of the last festival and a lot of those things have to do with this city and an incredible sense of civic pride, this coming from a native San Franciscan. The last time I stood on this stage and we closed the Noir City Film Festival, there was a different world champion in baseball, and when this festival concludes next Sunday, we will be the city of champions!" Muller noted that another "surge of pride" this week stemmed from the opening of the San Francisco Jazz Center, which in his estimation provides San Francisco an official claim to being the jazz capitol of America. "And, as if there was any doubt at all, the 11th edition of this festival proves that San Francisco—and specifically the Castro Theatre—is the film noir mecca of the world. Yes, that's right, I said mecca. I'm afraid the FBI is going to start tapping my phone line."
"Last year when we celebrated our 10-year anniversary," Muller continued, "I was actually secretly a little bit disappointed because the Film Noir Foundation did not have any restorations to present to you, so we made up for it this year because—during the next 10 days—we will be presenting the world premieres of four 35mm restorations, three of which are funded fully or partially by the Film Noir Foundation, which means that you guys actually paid for it.
"Since all of this began, it has occurred to all of us at the Film Noir Foundation that we are not only in the business of preserving films, we are actually in the business of preserving the filmgoing experience. So it's incredibly great to see all of you packing this house tonight and there are people in here who are here because they remember what it was like back in the day to come out and see movies like this with other people, to socialize, to actually get out of the house and meet other people and see other human beings and we're actually doing this for a new generation because we want them to know that movies [and here Muller turned towards the Castro screen and spread out his arms wide] are this big!"
Speaking of the next generation of noir aficionados, Muller shouted out to Serena Bramble whose new clip reel "When Death Comes" preceded his introduction. Technical glitches marred that premiere a bit; but, those kinks will assuredly be worked out by the film's next presentation on Bad Girls night. Bramble has a keen sense of editorial rhythm and assembles her images judiciously.
As for the opening night film Gun Crazy, Muller advised, "If somebody tells you that the movie you are about to see is the most exciting, dynamic and cinematically influential film noir movie ever made, just agree with them. It's not worth arguing, okay? Without this film Jean-Luc Godard would never have been inspired to make Breathless, David Newman and Arthur Penn would have had nothing to shoot for when they made Bonnie and Clyde, nobody would refer to Joseph H. Lewis as the most creative B-movie director ever, and all of those guys owe an incredible debt to the woman we have here tonight, whose performance in this movie is plainly and simply the most ferocious female ever to appear on a motion picture screen. We do it right here at Noir City so I am absolutely thrilled to welcome to San Francisco—I made her leave the sixguns at the hotel—please give a San Francisco welcome to Annie Laurie Starr, the fabulous all-the-way-from-London Peggy Cummins."
A San Francisco welcome is always a thunderous event and Cummins was visibly moved as she stood to receive her standing room ovation; an ovation that was repeated as she found her way to the stage to converse with Muller after the screening of Gun Crazy.
On stage, Cummins found it difficult to speak at first, "tremendously moved." She admitted that she felt a little bit like Cinderella, in that a few days down the line she would be back home, washing up over the sink, peeling potatoes, and doing all the normal things one does. "My son will say, 'How'd you get on, Mum?' How can I tell them? What's the song? I left my heart in San Francisco? That's the song that I'll be singing."
"That would have been Darryl F. Zanuck," Muller clarified.
"Well, it was the studio. Anyway, a very good actress played the part. Linda Darnell is, sadly, no longer with us; but, she actually—when I think of it—was probably much better than I could have been really. But then I got my luck with getting this part. When I say 'my luck', well, it was a part that I felt I could play. Don't ask me why. And it wasn't only me. Nothing is only you. It's the writer, the script, the director: I'm sure you've all heard these things before but they are true, aren't they?"
Noting that Forever Amber was a huge bestselling romance novel by Kathleen Winsor and that the search for the actress to play Amber was commensurate to the search for Scarlett in Gone With the Wind; 20th Century Fox did a worldwide search for the actress to play Amber in the film. Zanuck chose Cummins—who was then only 18—to play Amber. Muller asked if Cummins could first detail her acting background in the U.K.
Cummins outlined that she started off in Ireland at the Gate Theater in Dublin. They wanted a child to do a silhouette scene in The Duchess of Malfi. Although she initially wanted to be a ballet dancer, and took classes at a local school, she was singled out to play the child in the Gate production. "I looked like a boy," she said, "I was straight up and down with short hair and very small, so I got the part. On the first night I had to stand [sideways] which was a silhouette on stage; but, I thought—well, I didn't think, mind you, in this part—'I just don't understand. I want to look at the audience.' So I turned right around to look at the audience. When the scene was over, and we came off [stage], the director said to me, 'You should not have done that. You were meant to stand the other way.' And I said, 'But I wanted to look at the audience.' So.
The play was called Junior Miss and Louis—the young man who saw her in that production—was, at the time, a G.I. stationed in the U.K., 24 years of age to her 18. Now living in the East Bay, Louis had recently written Cummins reminding her that he had seen her in Junior Miss at the Savoy Theater in London "with the doodle bugs coming down." Cummins recalled having to act against the sound of those falling bombs as if nothing were happening. "That's acting," she boasted. When Muller and the Film Noir Foundation were arranging for Cummins' travel to the U.S., she mentioned this anecdote about the letter she received so the Foundation contacted Louis, inviting him to come meet her at Noir City. Of course, he had written her the letter with no knowledge that she would be in San Francisco, but welcomed the opportunity for Noir City to be the chance to reunite with her after some 60 years or so.
Not wanting to bring up bad memories, Muller nonetheless presumed it must have been devastating for Cummins to lose the role of Amber after having initially been cast. In typical Hollywood fashion, they had started filming the movie with Cummins in the role and then rather unceremoniously announced that the production was closing. "It was shattering," Cummins admitted, "to get a part like that and then find that the whole production had been shut and that was it." She went home to the U.K., made other films—including Curse of the Demon (1957) and Hell Drivers (1957), both included in Noir City's Cummins tribute—but of course the film that did more for her than any of them was Gun Crazy.
As for director Joseph H. Lewis, Cummins recalled he had made quite a few very good films, but emphasized that credit couldn't lie just with the screenwriter, or the director, but must include the camera man, and the make-up technicians, etc.. "I'm taking credit now," she said, "which should be their credit. You know what I mean?" Muller conceded that, yes, a project like Gun Crazy was much like "catching lightning in a bottle" where all the right collaborators together made something so special.
Muller then wanted to know about the film's action sequences and stunts, all of which Cummins performed herself. Cummins recalled that when it came to shooting the film's final sequence in the marsh, Lewis complained to her that she was putting too much black dirt on her face but the truth was that she was going through all that water and she was falling down and getting dirty. It was difficult to shoot, as well as emotional for her because she felt Annie's desperation in being hunted and caught. Hopefully, she said, that emotion came through? Cummins confirmed that her multiple stumbles and falls in the film were not choreographed or rehearsed by Lewis, they were genuine, and "poor" John Dall had to keep dragging her and telling her, "Come on!" And, of course, she joked, she couldn't let go of her handbag. What self-respecting woman would let go of her handbag while running through a swamp?
Photos courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.
Of Related Interest: Marilyn Ferdinand interviews Cummins for Keyframe. G. Allen Johnson does the honors for the San Francisco Chronicle. Further write-ups for Noir City 11's opening night include Lara Fowler at Backlots; Michael Strickland at Civic Center; and Sean Martinfield for The Huffington Post. Festival overviews provided by Tavo Amador for the Bay Area Reporter and Tom Mayer for Cinesource (which includes an interview with Eddie Muller). Daily updates from Noir City can be found at the Film Noir Foundation's Facebook page.
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