Noir City 16 comes to a close tonight, and as usual, it was a delightful week packed with great movies and great audiences. The Castro Theatre is unlike any other theater I’ve experienced in its audience enthusiasm and positivity. Watching a movie at the Castro is like having a movie night with 1,400 of your friends. The audience laughs at all the “right spots,” but there are also knowing laughs and claps when someone makes an unintended innuendo, when a character is overly dramatic, or when there is a connection between a line in the movie and present-day life. The Castro is San Francisco’s historically gay district, and it has a long legacy of loyal neighborhood support and camaraderie. When you watch a movie at the Castro, you are welcomed and accepted into a warm and loving community.
Noir City is similar. Passionate noir fans come from all over the country to attend this festival, and many dress up in 1940s attire for the occasion. The atmosphere is one of friendliness and acceptance. Noir fans tend to be an intellectual crowd, with deep knowledge of the genre, its movies, and its stars. They’re fun to be around, and in combination with the venue of the Castro Theatre, the festival is irresistible. This year’s theme was “1941-1953: Classy A’s and Trashy B’s,” each day presenting a double bill featuring one of each.
Conflict (1945), screened on Monday, has been my favorite movie of the festival thus far. It is reminiscent of The Two Mrs. Carrolls and even Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca in its haunting tone, telling the story of a man (Humphrey Bogart) who has fallen in love with his wife’s much younger sister, and the man plots to kill his wife and cover up the crime. When he thinks his wife is dead, he goes about pursuing the sister. But soon, eerie things begin to happen…and his plan slowly unravels.
It is relatively easy to spot a good noir, and Conflict is a really good noir. There are several features that, when done well, contribute to a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat and glued to what’s happening on the screen. A tightly woven plot where every event and every word forms a chain leading to the ultimate conclusion, with plenty of suspense and cunning, intelligent, meticulous characters. Conflict features all of these. Often, a good noir will have what Hitchcock termed a “MacGuffin,” an external motivator that drives the actions of the main character. MacGuffins are usually used as framing devices, but are not the true focus of the movie (examples are “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane, and the falcon in The Maltese Falcon). The MacGuffin in Conflict, I would say, would be Bogart’s desire for the younger sister. It drives him to murder, and then it continues to be relevant throughout the movie, popping up again at a key moment later. But it’s not the focus, though we initially think it’s going to be.
Conflict was actually filmed in 1943 but released in 1945, which perhaps was a detriment to the film’s legacy as the genre was already well established by 1945. Conflict is relatively rare, but its inaccessibility is at odds with how brilliant this movie is. Had it been released in 1943 as originally intended, Conflict may have been considered one of the great noir classics.
In his introduction, “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller noted that despite the quality of the movie, Conflict was one of Bogart’s least favorite movies, due to the fact that it somewhat reflected his real life situation. Much like Katharine Hepburn, Bogart always seems to play Bogart. Whether he’s acting in a comedy or a drama, the Bogart character usually remains the same type–a stoic, crusty type who generally tolerates people. Audiences felt that what they saw on the screen was what Bogart was like in real life. In 1945, Bogart had fallen in love with a much younger woman (Lauren Bacall) and was in the process of divorcing wife Mayo Methot. He was uncomfortable with the idea that the audience might associate him with spousal murder during this rocky time in his life. He needn’t have worried–Bogart and Mayo divorced and he soon married Lauren Bacall, remaining married to her until his death in 1957.
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall at their wedding.
Thanks for reading! If Noir City is coming to a town near you, be sure to check it out. Once again, here are the tour dates and cities:
NOIR CITY SF: January 26-February. 4, 2018
NOIR CITY Seattle: February 16-22, 2018
NOIR CITY Denver: March 23-25, 2018
NOIR CITY Hollywood: April 13-22, 2018
NOIR CITY Austin: May 18-20, 2018
NOIR CITY Boston: June 8-10, 2018
2018 dates for NOIR CITY Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. TBD
_03.jpg)
Backlots 