Noir City festival explores how film noir translated abroad

A walk through postwar Berlin in Germany's "The Murderers Are Among Us" (1946), showing Monday at the S.F. Film Noir Festival. A walk through postwar Berlin in Germany's "The Murderers Are Among Us" (1946), showing Monday at the S.F. Film Noir Festival. Photo: S.F. Film Noir Festival Photo: S.F. Film Noir Festival Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Noir City festival explores how film noir translated abroad 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

The images are still bleak. They are still black and white - or more specifically, shaded grays and deep blacks punctuated by sharp stabs of bright light, a potent, dreamlike cocktail of light and non-light that femmes fatales, murderers and audience members alike get lost in.

But this time, they have subtitles.

Although the movement was named by the French, film noir has always been an American genre. But as the 12th San Francisco Film Noir Festival shows, the bitterness of American crime films of the 1940s found some kindred spirits in Europe and in Asia - places that had been ravaged by World War II.

"In many cases you are watching bleak, dark, cynical movies made by people working directly in the aftermath of the war," said Noir City director Eddie Muller. "If you think Hollywood noirs are about postwar cynicism and nihilism, wait till you see movies made by the countries that lost the war.

"It's eye-opening. You realize how fortunate America has been in that the war wasn't fought on our soil. When you look at 'Stray Dog' and 'Drunken Angel' (showing Sunday, filmed on the streets of Tokyo by Akira Kurosawa), you're looking at the losers of the war literally living in atomic fallout. They are crime stories, but the real story is about survival."

But even the winners were rebuilding their lives. Friday's opening-night film, "The Third Man" (together with the American "Journey Into Fear" - both have Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten), is a British project filmed amid the rubble of postwar Vienna. Tuesday's "Death Is a Caress" (1949) is a bleak love triangle that plays as "The Postman Always Rings Twice" as interpreted by Norway (and directed by a woman, Edith Carlmar), a country occupied by the Nazis for five years.

Perhaps the most mind-bending night is Monday, when postwar Berlin is seen from two perspectives: the defeated and shamed "good" Germans ("The Murderers Are Among Us," the first German film to directly address the spiritual destruction of World War II) and the American view ("Berlin Express," a thriller starring Robert Ryan and directed by the French-born Jacques Tourneur).

"To see those back-to-back will provide not just a historical background, but a lot of insight," Muller said.

Despite its foreign flavor - 16 of the 27 films are in a foreign language with English subtitles - there is an unmistakably American noir angst: gangsters (Britain's "Brighton Rock," starring Richard Attenborough, screening Wednesday), meticulously planned heists (France's "Rififi," Feb. 1), and even the deliciously titled "Never Open That Door" (next Thursday), a 1952 Argentine film based on the work of American crime author Cornell Woolrich ("Rear Window").

Argentina, by the way, is represented by three films, including a feminist reimagining of Fritz Lang's "M" (1953's "The Black Vampire," Jan. 31).

"When you see these films, a lot of theories get blown out of the water," Muller said. "We're just scratching the surface of Argentinian cinema, and you realize how cosmopolitan Buenos Aires was. There was such a strong European influence."

If you go

San Francisco Film Noir Festival: Friday-Feb. 2. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F. (415) 621-6120. www.noircity.com.