Serena Bramble's short film tribute to film noir created a sensation at the Castro Theatre's 8th annual Noir City Film Festival last month. This is on several blogs, as Bramble's brilliance brings a luminosity to flickering frames in the dark balconies of memory. A 20-year-old psychology student at Santa Rosa Junior College, she created The Endless Night with iMovie on her MacBook, commenting, "After many long hours, this is my tribute to my favorite genre, to the dark shadows and the profound despair of the soul." The music is "Angel" by Massive Attack. (Control click heading at top for David Raksin's "Laura".)
The films: THE LETTER (1940, William Wyler. Bette Davis) THE MALTESE FALCON (1941, John Huston. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor) SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943, Alfred Hitchcock. Joseph Cotten) DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, Billy Wilder. Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray) MURDER, MY SWEET (1944, Edward Dmytryk. Dick Powell) SCARLET STREET (1945, Fritz Lang. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett) LAURA (1945, Otto Preminger. Gene Tierney) DETOUR (1945, Edgar G. Ulhmer. Ann Savage) NOTORIOUS (1946, Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman) GILDA (1946, Charles Vidor. Rita Hayworth) THE KILLERS (1946, Robert Siodmak. Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster) THE BIG SLEEP (1946, Howard Hawks. Humphrey Bogart) THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946, Tay Garnett. John Garfield, Lana Turner) THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947, Orson Welles. Rita Hayworth, Welles) OUT OF THE PAST (1947, Jacques Tourneur. Jane Greer, Robert Mitchum) BRUTE FORCE (1947, Jules Dassin. Burt Lancaster) FORCE OF EVIL (1948, Abraham Polonsky. John Garfield, Marie Windsor) THE SET-UP (1949, Robert Wise. Robert Ryan) THE THIRD MAN (1949, Carol Reed. Orson Welles) CRISS CROSS (1949, Siodmak. Burt Lancaster, Yvonne de Carlo) GUN CRAZY (1950, Joseph H. Lewis. John Dall, Peggy Cummins) IN A LONELY PLACE (1950, Nicholas Ray. Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame) THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950, Huston. Sterling Hayden) NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950, Jules Dassin. Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney) SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950, Billy Wilder. Gloria Swanson, William Holden) ACE IN THE HOLE (1951, Billy Wilder. Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling) ANGEL FACE (1952, Otto Preminger. Jean Simmons) PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953, Samuel Fuller. Richard Widmark) THE BIG HEAT (1953, Fritz Lang. Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin) KISS ME DEADLY (1955, Robert Aldrich. Gaby Rodgers) NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955, Charles Laughton. Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish) THE KILLING (1956, Stanley Kubrick. Sterling Hayden) ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958, Louis Malle. Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet) TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, Orson Welles) THE NAKED KISS (1964, Samuel Fuller. Constance Towers)
Much to my disenchantment, Corvallis has only two DVD rental stores, Blockbuster and Hollywood, neither of which carries my favorite genre, film noir. I miss the little store in Arcata, California—La Dulce—where I could rent every film noir made.