Earlier last year due to the pandemic, ‘Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival’ couldn’t continue which will resume at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. The week-long event will feature a dozen films, with some rare 35mm prints as well.
The Palm Springs event will be sponsored by TCM for the first time this year. Alan K. Rode is returning as producer and host, and will also join as a presenter by cohort Eddie Muller, the host of TCM’s ‘Noir Alley’. Rode has stated that at the Palm Springs Cultural Center, formerly called the Camelot, “you have a theater that has a restaurant in it, two bars, an elevator and a spiral staircase. And to me, it’s the best place that I’ve found for adults to watch a movie. I mean, where else can you watch a film noir movie and sip on a martini while watching Bogart and Bacall?”
Familiar picks such as ‘The Big Sleep’ (1946), ‘Night Has A Thousand Eyes’ (1948), early forgotten movies such as ‘Playgirl’ (1954) and ‘The Reckless Moment’ (1949), the ’40s and ’50s foreign films ‘Quai des Orfèvres’ (1947) and ‘El Vampiro Negro’ (1953) are to be screened. The festival will begin on this Thursday with Otto Preminger’s ‘Where The Sidewalk Ends’ (1950). Films will be screened as often as 10am, 1pm, 4pm, and at 7pm.
Keeping the pandemic in mind, the individual tickets will be sold only to people who will show evidence of their vaccination. Lyons had founded this festival in 2000 and after his death in 2008 the festival was renamed in his honor.
Victoria Mature, daughter of Victor, the star of this year’s attraction ‘Diary of a Whimpy Kid: The Long Haul’ (2017), Mark Fleischer, son of director Richard Fleischer, Dana Andrews’ daughter Susan Andrews will make an appearance in the festival where they will be interviewed.
