Noir City X wraps up tonight with The Maltese Falcon. I wasn't able to make it to today's Dashiell Hammett marathon, which is too bad, but the timing didn't work out. This year...I could only do so much!
I was able to see nine films, and I enjoyed all of them. I have already talked about the first four that I saw: Dark Passage (1947), The House on Telegraph Hill (1951), Okay America (1932), Afraid to Talk (1932).
On Tuesday night, they showed a comedic double feature with Unfaithfully Yours (1948) and The Good Humor Man (1950).
On Friday, it was Thieves Highway (1949) and the newly restored print of The Breaking Point (1950).
On Saturday, I went to see the matinee of Three Strangers (1946)...and that was as far as I got.
I missed last Saturday night's event with an on-stage interview with Angie Dickinson and double feature of her films. I also missed the 10th anniversary nightclub party. However...
I did take the afternoon off work for the San Francisco Noir Bus Tour! This was a new addition to the festival, and I couldn't pass it up. Eddie Muller and Miguel Pendas were the guides on a three hour journey to visit the locations used in classic film noirs set in San Francisco.
The tour commenced at City Hall, and made its way through the Tenderloin to the area where Dashiell Hammett lived and worked. The small studio where Hammett lived when he wrote The Maltese Falcon, is located at 891 Post street, Apt. #401. It is the corner apartment on the fourth floor that faces the Post and Hyde intersection. This was the best view of the building that I got from the bus. I'll go back on my own one of these days to have a better look.
You can see pictures of the apartment on the Dashiell Hammett website.
We also visited Burritt Alley, the site where Archer's body is found in a ditch in The Maltese Falcon, and then went up through Chinatown (Lady from Shanghai) and downtown to 111 Sutter, where Sam Spade's office was supposedly located. While the bus was traveling, we watched film clips from these movies on video monitors.
Then, we visited the house from Dark Passage at 1360 Montgomery Street, which I had never seen before.
Finally, the tour traveled down to the Ferry Building (D.O.A., The Line-up, etc.), down Washington Street (Thieves Highway) and down to the site of the Sutro Baths (The Lineup) and Playland/Ocean Beach (Lady from Shanghai, Born to Kill), which was all completely lost in the fog. Then, we stopped for a cocktail at the Cliff House. See my gin and tonic below:
After that, we went down to Fort Point, to see the area where Vertigo was filmed. The Golden Gate Bridge disappeared in the fog, and the area where Kim Novak once stood is completely blocked off, but you can still get the feel of Vertigo.
So, that's the quick summary of the tour. There was more, but I haven't seen some of the films they talked about, so I wasn't completely sure what I was looking at. More to put on my list...
And so ends this year's journey to Noir City. It has been a lot of fun, and I look forward to next year!
-Christine
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