If the recent and upcoming glut of holiday film releases fails to impress you, an attractive alternative is the juicy noir served up at the 10th annual The French Had a Name for It in San Francisco.
The French-focused film festival salutes a durable genre known for femme fatales and sweaty, sad-sack guys caught in a spin cycle of bad behavior.
The fest returns to San Francisco’s Roxie Theater for 13 screenings on Nov. 26-27 and Dec. 3-4. Executive director Don Malcolm does his darndest to pinpoint “lost” films for Bay Area screens. Here are a few we’re looking forward to:
A nifty triple feature kicks off the program, beginning with the 12:30 p.m. Sunday matinee of “The Devil & the Angel” about an embittered forger (Erich von Stroheim) and his challenging relationship with a blind circus performer (Madeleine Sologne) who he marries. Of course, there’s a hitch; director Pierre Chenal’s 1946 feature, a box-office bomb at the time, takes the story to darker places.
Ever heard of “hospital noir”? I hadn’t until now. According to program notes, it’s an apt category for Herve Bromberger’s 1958 crisscrossing gangster thriller. In “Secrets of a French Nurse” (2:30 p.m. Sunday), a nurse (Estella Blain) gets needled by the criminal activities of a gangster (Bernard Blier) and his cagey moll (Madeleine Robinson).
Edmond T. Gréville’s “The Accident” completes the Sunday afternoon program. About an illicit love affair on a remote island that doesn’t sit well with an angry wife, it screens at 4:30 p.m.
If you’re a fan of playwright Arthur Miller or just love epics, Raymond Rouleau’s two-hour, 25- minute version of “The Crucible” is a must. The 1957 film adapts Miller’s lauded and forever relevant 1953 play about the hysterical 1692 Salem witch trials. Jean-Paul Sartre put his own stamp on the screenplay, to the dismay of some, for this little-seen adaptation starring Simone Signoret (who earned a British Academy Film Award for her performance), Yves Montand and Mylène Demongeot. It screens at 7:15 p.m. Sunday.
While many have heard of Patricia Highsmith, author of “Strangers on a Train,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Carol” (aka “The Price of Salt”), noir writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac aren’t as mainstream familiar. But the films with which they’re associated — “Diabolique,” “Vertigo, “Eyes Without a Face” — are most certainly.
The late French authors’ work served as pulpy source material for Édouard Molinaro’s 1959 “Witness in the City.” Italian-born actor Lino Ventura stars as a vengeance-seeking hubby out to take down his wife’s lover and murderer, a rich industrialist who escaped from doing the time for his crime. But a bystander catches the husband in a bloody act, leading to a chase through Paris. It screens at 7:15 p.m. Dec. 4.
That pulse-pounder is paired with Georges Lautner’s “The Seventh Juror,” a twisting and turning potboiler about a murderer finagling his way onto a jury so he can persuade others to convict the defendant accused of the murder he committed. It screens at 9 p.m. Dec. 4.
An all-festival pass costs $89 and tickets for most screenings are $14; some double bills boast an $18 bargain price. For a complete lineup and the all-fest pass, visit https://www.midcenturyproductions.com/. For individual tickets, visit https://roxie.com/.