By The full lineup has been announced for Columbia University’s second annual Kit Film Noir Festival, which runs from Wednesday, March 27th to Sunday, March 31st at the Lenfest Center for the Arts. The theme of this year’s festival is Into the Night: Cornell Woolrich and Film Noir. All of the films and lectures will focus on movies adapted from the novels and short stories of pulp writer Cornell Woolrich, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, François Truffaut’s The Bride Work Black, and Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man. As part of the festival, Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library will also host a Cornell Woolrich exhibit.
Tickets for the film festival are now on sale. Discount ticket packages, senior discounts, and student discounts are available. I caught a few films at the inaugural Kit Noir Film Festival last year and had a good time taking in some shadowy, cynical, hard-boiled classics.
Below is the full daily schedule from 3/27 to 3/31. For tickets and more information, be sure to visit arts.columbia.edu/noir.
Wednesday, March 27
7:30pm: Keynote address by James Naremore, Indiana University
Thursday, March 28
7:30 pm: Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Director: Harold Clurman
Screenwriter: Clifford Odets
Cast: Susan Hayward, Bill Williams, Paul Lukas
Adapted from Deadline at Dawn (1944)
83 minutes
9:20 pm: Nightmare (1956)
Director: Maxwell Shane
Screenwriter: Maxwell Shane
Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Edward G. Robinson, Connie Russell
Adapted from the short story “And So to Death,” Argosy, March 1, 1941
89 minutes
Friday, March 29
7:30 pm: Black Angel (1946)
Director: Roy William Neill
Screenwriter: Roy Chanslor
Cast: Dan Duryea, June Vincent, Peter Lorre
Adapted from The Black Angel (1943)
81 minutes
Black Angel will be followed by a conversation between Ann Douglas, Columbia University’s English and Comparative Literature, and Francis M. Nevins, Saint Louis University.
Saturday, March 30: “B Movie” Woolrich
1:00 pm: The Guilty (1947)
Director: John Reinhardt
Screenwriter: Robert Presnell Sr.
Cast: Bonita Granville, Regis Toomey, Don Castle
Adapted from the short story “He Looked Like Murder,” Detective Fiction Weekly, February 8, 1941
71 minutes
2:25 pm: Fall Guy (1947)
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Screenwriter: Jerry Warner
Cast: Clifford Penn, Robert Armstrong, Elisha Cook, Jr.
Adapted from the short story “C-Jag,” Black Mask, October 1940
64 minutes
4:15 pm: “Woolrich Noir” and the B Film, Lecture by Frank Krutnik, University of Sussex
6:00 pm: The Leopard Man (1943)
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Screenwriter: Ardel Wray
Cast: Dennis O’Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks
Adapted from Black Alibi (1942)
66 minutes
7:25 pm: Return of the Whistler (1948)
Director: D. Ross Lederman
Screenwriter: Edward Bock, Maurice Tombragel
Cast: Michael Duane, Lenore Aubert, Richard Lane
Adapted from the short story “All at Once, No Alice,” Argosy, March 2, 1940
61 minutes
9:15 pm: The Chase (1946)
Director: Arthur Ripley
Screenwriter: Philip Yordan
Cast: Robert Cummings, Michele Morgan, Peter Lorre
Adapted from The Black Path of Fear (1944)
86 minutes
Sunday, March 31: Woolrich/Hitchcock/Truffaut
1:00 pm: The Window (1949)
Director: Ted Tetzlaff
Screenwriter: Mel Dinelli
Cast: Bobby Driscoll, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart
Adapted from the short story “The Boy Cried Murder,” Mystery Book Magazine, March 1947
73 minutes
2:30 pm: “Four O’Clock” (1957)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Francis M. Cockrell
Cast: E. G. Marshall, Nancy Kelly, Harry Dean Stanton
Adapted from the short story “Three O’Clock,” Detective Fiction Weekly, October 1, 1938
51 minutes
4:15 pm: Lecture by Pamela Robertson Wojcik, University of Notre Dame
6:00 pm: The Bride Wore Black (1968)
Director: François Truffaut
Screenwriters: François Truffaut and Jean-Louis Richard
Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Claude Brialy, Michel Bouquet
Adapted from The Bride Wore Black (1940)
107 minutes
8:45 pm: Rear Window (1954)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: John Michael Hayes
Cast: Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter
Adapted from the short story “It Had to Be Murder,” Dime Detective Magazine, February 1942
115 minutes
