Danger & Despair's  
 
  
Thursday Night Screenings
on 16mm film
 
Celebrates:
  Actor Richard Conte
  On the discovery of Richard Conte, one legend has it that while working as a restaurant waiter in a Connecticut lodge turned summer theater, Conte was spotted by director Joseph Pevney when one of the actors in his play walked off the job.
 
  The director befriended Conte and tried to persuade him to join his troupe, but the shy waiter would have nothing to do with it.  Desperate to fill the role, Joe Pevney convinced the owner of the lodge, Conte's employer, that he needed the waiter for the part of a wrongly accused man. He then had the lodge owner threaten Richard Conte with termination if he didn't help out. Reluctantly he took the stage and thus began the career of one of the most talented actors found in Film Noir.
         
               
              Thursday Nights in June     -    free admission with a reservation  
               
                June 1st - 29th  - San Francisco   -    
     
 

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  Thursday  June 1st     8:00 pm   
     
  CRY OF THE CITY         1948         20th Century Fox  
     
  Directed by Robert Siodmak   -   From the book 'The Chair for Martin Rome'  by Henry Edward Helseth  
  Script Credits: Richard Murphy & Ben Hecht        
  Photography:  Lloyd Ahern   (Laura  '44 - 2nd Camera, The Brasher Doubloon  '47,  O. Henry's Full House '52)  
     
  w/ Richard Conte, Victor Mature, Shelly Winters, Debra Paget, Hope Emerson & Fred Clark.  
     
  Richard Conte plays cop-killer Martin Rome who while recovering from being shot during capture, escapes to protect his girlfriend from being arrested for a crime she didn't commit.  Victor Mature as Police Lt. Candella, a friend of the Rome family, struggles with sentiment and his own cynicism while hunting his old friend Martin Rome.     
From the quintessential Film Noir director Robert Siodmak.  Full of dark alleys and wet streets, wonderfully atmospheric.
     
     
 

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  Thursday  June 8th     8:00 pm   
     
  THIEVES' HIGHWAY         1949         20th Century Fox  
     
  Directed by Jules Dassin   -   From the book 'Thieves' Market'  by A.I. Bezzerides  
  Script Credits: A.I. Bezzerides       
  Photography:  Norbert Brodine   (The Beast of the City '32, Somewhere in the Night '46,  Kiss of Death '47)  
     
  w/ Richard Conte, Valentine Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Joseph Pevney, & Jack Oakie.  
     
  A Socialist Noir shot on location, mostly at night, on San Francisco's waterfront. Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) returns home to the San Joaquin Valley from a overseas stint as a merchant marine.  Upon arriving he discovers that his father; a independent produce trucker, has been ripped off and then targeted for murder by a vicious produce dealer on the Embarcadero.  In the classic image of the lone-wolf Noir protagonist, forced to work outside the system, Nick Garcos sets out to revenge the wrongs dealt his father who is symbolic of the struggles of America's lower working class.     
     
  This was the last movie black-listed director Jules Dassin's made in the U.S.  Shortly after completion of 'Thieves' Highway', Jules moved to England where he made 'Night & The City' (1950) with Gene Tierney.  The Academy Award winning director continued to stay in Europe where he lives today in Greece. His good friend and fellow Lefty A.I. Bezzerides stayed homeside and rode out that dark period of American history.  Bezzeride's novel 'Thieves' Market' was the basis for the script , which he wrote as well.  A. I. continues to live and write in Los Angeles.  
     
 

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  Thursday  June 15th     8:00 pm  
     
  SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT         1946         20th Century Fox  
     
  Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz    -   From the story 'The Lonely Journey'  by Marvin Borowsky  
  Script Credits: Howard Dimsdalen & Joseph L. Mankiewicz  -  adapted by Lee Strasberg  
  Photography:  Norbert Brodine   (The Divorcee  '30, Boomerang! '47,  House on 92nd Street '46)  
     
  w/ John Hodiak, Nancy Guild, Richard Conte, Lloyd Nolan, Sheldon Leonard & John Ireland - narration.  
     
    John Hodiak establishes the archetypal role of the returning World War II veteran suffering from amnesia and obsessively tracking down his disoriented past.  Hodiak, as George Taylor is fed a series of clues which leads him to Richard Conte, a charming gent with some dangerous surprises.  Character actors Sheldon Leonard, Jeff Corey, Morris Carnovsky, Whit Bissell and Harry Morgan as noir Grotesques embellishing the atmosphere.  
This film is one of the more interesting in the noir canon, due in part to it's strong story driven plot and excellent dialogue typical of the work of Joseph L. Mankiewicz.  Between 1946 and 1951 the director & writer worked on the films Dragonwyck ('46), Somewhere in the Night ('46),BBBB A Letter to Three Wives' ('49), House of Strangers'('49), No Way Out ('50) and 'All About Eve '('51), all excellent productions.
 
  'Somewhere in the Night'  presents a case for the idea that the major early influence on Film Noir' was the Mystery genre, overhauled with urban cynicism and laced with existential psychology.  In the classic Mystery film, the game is to solve the crime.  In Film Noir, which evolved out of Mystery through the hard-boiled literature of a decade before, the end objective became to uncover the pathos of the protagonist or at least to understand it, leading to a nouveau subjective worldly resolve.  
     
 

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  Thursday  June 22nd      8:00 pm  
  NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL         1955         Challenge Productions / Warners Bros.  
     
  Directed by Russell Rouse   -   From the book 'New York Confidential' by Jack Lait & Lee Mortimer  
  Script Credits: Clarence Greene & Russell Rouse        
  Photography:  Eddie Fitzgerald   (Wicked Woman '53  &  Bait '54)   
     
  w/ Richard Conte, Broderick Crawford, Marilyn Maxwell, Ann Bancroft, Mike Mazurki & Stephen Geray  
     
    Our featured actor in the role of a low level Chicago hoodlum who arrives in New York aspiring to climb the ladder in the city's corporate crime syndicate.  The good looking thug quickly finds fast action with a kingpin's daughter, and then the mobster's girl friend.  But worry not as sex takes a back seat to a more shocking moral dilemma, even for the deadly corrupt  
     
  Inspired by the City "Confidential" books of Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer, which sold in large numbers throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, 'New York Confidential'  with it's title and iconography presents an fascinating look into the cinema of urban exposé which flourished in the Film Noir of the 1950s.  The Senate Kefauver hearings into organized crime (1950-51), which was highly published in the news media, created a commercial entertainment vacuum which was filled with a series of low-budget films which, throughout the 1950s succeeded in redefining municipal illegality as a challenge to national integrity and security, ( 'Chicago Confidential'  '57, 'The Captive City'   52' , & 'The Phenix City Story'  '55  etc. ).  What distinguishes these 1950s municipal exposés from earlier traditions of muckraking found in film, is the former's casting of urban crime and corruption in terms which pit a backward inept city against a "Voice of God" federal judicial system.  The promotion of a perceived necessity to Federalize the battle against a corporate style mafia is the basis of these films lurid stylization.  
     
  A Mysterious Stranger in Russian Red?
 		 The books of  Lait and Mortimer, namely; New York Confidential (Dell, 1949), Chicago Confidential (Dell, 1950), Washington Confidential (Dell, 1951) and Women Confidential (1960), are far from reformist journalism or even responsible investigative reporting.  But in retrospect were sensationalized copy-bait for inquiring minds ready to drop their hard earned dough on the shocking possibilities of urban human behavior.  Lait and Mortimer were conservative, syndicated columnists for whom the moral landscape of the large city was one of uncontrolled sexual deviance and racial miscegenation, both of which were seen to foster communistic sympathies and which is the books' underlying preoccupation.     
Jack Lait was the head of Hearst Publishing for many years.
 
 
 
     
  Once again The Knitting Circle comes through with another super rare offering, a film that for the last 25 years has only been seen on a almost unwatchable video. Screened here in a mint print, this is one of a handful of Noirs left out there that has not been shown anywhere in a long time. Danger & Despair is proud to run 'New York Confidential' and continue unearthing rare Film Noir thanks to the funding provided through the sales of DVD's and VHS Tapes.  
     
     
 

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  Thursday June 29th     8:00 pm  
     
  THE BIG COMBO         1955         Theodora Productions / Allied Artists  
     
  Directed by Joseph H. Lewis    
  Script Credits: Philip Yordan  
  Photography:  John Alton    (T-Men '46,  Raw Deal '47,  The Amazing Mr. X  '48, Devil's Doorway 50')  
  Original Music:  David Raksin    (Laura  '44, Fallen Angel '45, Force of Evil '49)  
     
  w/ Cornel Wilde, Richard Conte, Brian Donlevy, Jean Wallace, Lee Van Cleef & Helen Walker.  
     
     
    This is a straight-no-chaser Film Noir with Richard Conte as crime boss Mr. Brown looking to expand his sphere of influence in the hellish underworld of 1950's big city corruption. Mr. Brown, is a calm but a sadistic social path who's heads the untouchable syndicate " The Combination".  Police Lieutenant Louis Diamond, played by Cornell Wilde obsessively pursues Brown who eludes him until the gangster's blonde girlfriend tries to kill herself on a dance floor.  When Lt. Diamond finally has his target almost trapped, he's informed by his supervisor at headquarters that funding has run out on his investigation. Will that stop the forces of decency and freedom?

The Big Combo is one of the visually darkest films ever made, thanks to the photography of legendary cameraman John Alton.  It's pure film noir style where Black, Blacker & Blackest apex into a nightmare of violence for profit.

  
     
  Along with Alton's photography is an original score by David Raksin who wrote the music of 'Laura', and the direction of Joseph Lewis who's movies are now seen as having a experimental quality.  Here's a great chance to see a film that was influential on movies like 'Reservoir Dogs' & 'The Godfather'  which in fact had Richard Conte originally cast as Don Corleone before a last minute substitution with Marlon Brando  
     
  This film, like New York Confidential,  is an example of the phenomenon of 1950's American cinema which presented a campaign for J. Edgar Hoover-ization and the F.B.I.'s long arm of the law into local government.  These Hollywood pieces of entertainment played double duty in filling a vacuum of what was perceived as a inability of local government to handle organized crime because of corruption.  While "payola" was certainly a factor in the daily business of urban crime gangs, in retrospect, publicity for the F.B.I. with Hoover as head may have been like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.  Edgar never admitted that a "Mafia" existed and was careful to present organized crime as an unorganized entity.   
     
  Seen in a historical perspective films like The Big Combo are fascinating and we hope you'll catch all the films in this series.  
     
     
 

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  Cry                                                   Richard Conte on the lam with Shelley Winters in 'Cry of the City'  
     
     
     
     
 

-   FREE ADMISSION  -  Luscious Libations of all varieties - Doors & Bar open at 7:00 pm  - Films at 8:00 pm

  
     
 

 RSVP A MUST!    Get on the Door List to be admitted - Reserve a Seat.

  
 

Event location given with a seat confirmation   Contact:  screenings@hotmail.com

  
     
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