Victoria Mature, the wonderful daughter of the great Victor Mature made an amazing video introduction to the brilliant noir I Wake Up Screaming (1941) screened at the 9th edition of Noir Film Festival held at Český Šternberk Castle. Thank you very much!
We would like to thank our entire festival team and all our supporters for helping us organize the 9th Noir Film Festival. Our big thanks go to Český Šternberk Castle for providing us with a new home, and to all the visitors for sharing an amazing five days of festival with us!
We are looking forward to the 10th edition, the outlines of which are already forming in our heads. 🙂
And we’re going to the finale! Four farewell films will be screened on the last day of the festival: in the morning, it will kick off with the noirish gangster film in the Hammett style, Miller’s Crossing (1990) by the sibling duo Joel and Ethan Coen. Those who missed the festival’s first screening on Wednesday afternoon, the prejudice-themed noir Crossfire (1947), will have a chance to see it before noon, as well as Snake Poison (1981), which will be introduced in person by actress Ilona Svobodová, for whom Vláčil’s film was her feature debut. At 2:30 pm we will bid farewell to the visitors with a screening of the visually refined The Crooked Way (1949), which tells the story of a war veteran who, with shrapnel in his head and amnesia, sets out to find his lost past.
Saturday morning statistics report that six of the seventeen screenings tonight are sold out! From 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 after midnight, a diverse selection of films across all program sections will be screened in the five interior theaters. The stories of noir men without a past will be told with sophisticated playfulness by films such as Somewhere in the Night (1946), The High Wall (1947) and The Man Who Wasn’t (2001). This time, visitors will ride to the rhythm of Bollywood with Madhumati (1958) and The Fog (1964). Lawless (1950), Queen & Slim (2019) and Storm Warning (1951) will tell the story of prejudice. The latter will be screened in the Kaspar Sternberg Courtyard, for the last open air screening of the year. Before that, however, Starej pán will play the film’s tunes in the Hanna Maciuchová Courtyard. So don’t miss any of it!
The third day of the festival will bring fifteen screenings – twice visitors will be able to ride the rhythmic Bollywood waves of singing and dancing amidst the crime plots of C.I.D. (1956) and Gamble (1951). The Coen pranksters will entertain them with inventive variations on imperfectly conceived crime in Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996).
Friday will be marked, among other things, by tributes to acting icons: Bette Davis will be seen as a conniving femme fatale in the dark melodrama Beyond the Forest (1949), Victor Mature will dazzle with charisma as a wrongly accused man in I Wake Up Screaming (1941), and Hana Maciuchová will be remembered at a screening of the TV production of Deth on the Hour (1981). This year, we will honour the iconic noir face Humphrey Bogart with The Enforcer (1951), in which he portrayed a prosecutor on the trail of organised crime and which will be screened in the open air in the castle courtyard.
Before the open-air screening begins, the audience will see the winning short film of the Night of Film Hopes, which has been organised by TV Nova for 14 years and which, in cooperation with the Noir Film Festival, has announced this year a special category „Make a Noir Film“. The author of the winning film, Sleepless Night (or Norma is not Bates), Rudolf Vodička from the Theatre Faculty of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno, will be presented with the award in the evening. Those who won’t want to sleep after midnight and will be hungry for a movie are invited to a midnight screening of the breezy noir B-movie Clay Pigeon (1949).
During the opening ceremony we remembered our beloved patron and supporter, actress Hana Maciuchová (1945-2021).
Visitors will be able to choose from ten screenings during the second day of the Noir Film Festival. Three Czechoslovak titles will be on the program – Ošklivá slečna (The Plain Old Maid, 1959), starring Dana Medřická and Karel Höger, a psychological drama about the disturbing bond between a young girl and an older man, made by the creative duo of Karel Kachyňa and Jan Procházka under the title Závrať (Vertigo, 1962), and the silent film Příchozí z temnot (The Arrival from the Darkness, 1921), made a hundred years ago, which will be accompanied by cellist Terezie Kovalová.
During the second day, the Coen brothers will also be on hand with the cult classic Fargo (1996) and their „miraculous“ debut Blood Simple (1984), in which they entertain the audience with a sophisticated, unpredictable play on noir archetypes and narrative patterns, much like they did with the classic noir Somewhere in the Night (1946). The gothic Bollywood noir The Fog (Kohraa, 1964) will provide a thrilling exotic spectacle, while the melodrama Not Wanted (1949), about the hardships of a single mother, and the socially engaged The Lawless (1950), set in a racist American small town, will stir strong emotions.
The second night of the festival will also be marked by the launch of a special Blu-ray edition of No Way Out (1950), released by Art4Film in cooperation with the festival (having previously released Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success on blue disc). „The film, about a young black doctor (debuting Sidney Poitier) who is wrongly accused of murder by a racist criminal, is the best example of the socially conscious filmmaking championed by Darryl F. Zanuck at Twentieth Century-Fox,“ says programmer Milan Hain, who wrote the accompanying study for the booklet. The disc will be christened by the festival’s godfathers: actor Igor Bareš and director and producer Václav Marhoul. No Way Out (1950) will be enjoyed under the night sky in the castle courtyard, where before the film the dreamy melodies of melancholic songs by the singer Sara Vondrášková aka Never Sol will be played.
Here we go! After a year, we are finally meeting again to experience noir dramas together and share unforgettable film adventures, this year at a new venue! The first of the chambers of Český Šternberk Castle, which will be transformed into screening rooms for five days, will open to visitors of the Noir Film Festival at 4 pm. The first film to be screened at the 9th edition will be Crossfire (1947) with „old familiar“ Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum and Gloria Grahame in the story of an investigation of a violent murder whose perpetrator is hiding among a group of American soldiers. High Wall (1947), in which Robert Taylor, as a war veteran, comes to terms with his memory loss and the violent death of his wife, which he allegedly caused, will also be shown in the early evening. The first day will also feature one title from Ida Lupino’s directorial retrospective, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), which will be re-released in Saturday’s midnight screening.
In Hana Maciuchová’s courtyard, which will be the so-called „heart of the festival“, jazz tunes by saxophonist Kamil Janský, who has played in bands such as Laura a její tygři, OverHead and D.O.R.A. An hour later, the opening ceremony will take place, where actors Jiří Dvořák and Jaromír Hanzlík will christen the festival’s DVD edition of the film Závrať (Vertigo, 1962). During the gala evening, there will also be a commemorative event for former festival patron, actress Hana Maciuchová (1945-2021). The first day of the festival will culminate with an open-air screening of the classic American noir On Dangerous Ground (1951), starring Robert Ryan as an aggressive policeman and Ida Lupino as the blind woman who offers him salvation.
The festival hasn’t started yet and we are already announcing several sold-out screenings. If you don’t want to miss a film you are really looking forward to, get your tickets early at vstupenky@noirfilmfestival.cz
SOLD OUT SCREENINGS
Crossfire (18. 8.)
High Wall (18. 8.)
Somewhere in the Night (19. 8.)
The Bigamist (20. 8.)
I Wake up Screaming (20. 8.)
The Plain Old Maid (21. 8.)
Not Wanted (21. 8.)
Somewhere in the Night (21. 8.)
Last chance to have accommodation at the festival, even in Český Šternberk!
Details and reservations at ubytování@noirfilmfestival.cz.
