The South Korean film “Parasite” has become a leading contender this awards season, and as director Bong Joon Ho picked up the Golden Globe for best foreign language film this month, he urged Americans to see more foreign films.
“Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films,” Bong said through a translator.
Let’s extend that to classic film as well.
This year, the San Francisco Film Noir Festival, which normally celebrates classic American noir, will practically fly as many flags as the Fairmont Hotel. For the first time in its 18 years, every movie in the 10-day festivalwill be foreign-made. The festival, a.k.a.Noir City, runs Friday, Jan. 24, through Feb. 2.
Turns out, there is darkness all over the world — including in South Korea, where the twisted 1960 film “The Housemaid” (screening Sunday, Jan. 26) contains some of the same class warfare themes as Bong’s “Parasite.” Indeed, director Kim Ki-young, a towering figure in classic Korean cinema, was an influence of Bong’s.
“That’s why the whole noir thing is fascinating to me,” said festival founder Eddie Muller, who also hosts “Noir Alley” on Turner Classic Movies. “It’s because people think they understand what it is. But they get it from an American perspective. So when you show them noir from Mexico, France — all these other countries — they recognize it, and they see how it’s different, and how it’s the same.
“It’s culturally significant because it shows our commonality even more than it shows our differences. And that’s why I think it’s very timely.”
穆勒,他第一次交货perimented with aninternationally themed festival in 2014— although eight of the 27 films that year were Hollywood films with international settings — said he likes the idea of becoming a world traveler through cinema.
“For people who come to the whole festival, it’s like they’re traveling around the world at a particular time. You can immerse yourself in the late ’40s, early ’50s. It gives people an insight into the world that is inescapable.”
Understanding different cultures is a worthy pursuit, but noir is often a genre of misunderstanding. The sordid characters that populate these films thrive on it. So how to build a cultural bridge through cynicism and desperation?
Well, by sharing those experiences. After two world wars and a global economic depression, the world had just about had it, and the films reflected that. Noir might have grown out of the Hollywood system, but international directors embraced the bitter disillusionment of the genre.
Jean-Paul Belmondo’s gangster in“Finger Man” (Saturday, Jan. 25) would fit right in if he wandered onto the set of a Bogart picture. Victor Mature’s trucker in the British-made “The Long Haul” (Jan. 29) shows England had its own version of Teamster-like corruption. And who wouldn’t recognize Mariko Kaga’s obsessive gambler in the Japanese thriller “Pale Flower” (Jan. 30)?
“I don’t want to shortchange these creative people by saying they were copying the American style,” Muller said. “Like the Antonioni film we’re showing, ‘Story of a Love Affair’ ” — an early work by Michelangelo Antonioni that screensJan. 27 — “is clearly inspired by American film noir. It’s another take on ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice,’ but done in that particular Antonioni style.
“法国电影Ame的亲密关系rican film noirs. Obviously Jean-Pierre Melville took his name from an American writer. If an American who is obsessed with France is a Francophile, he’s an Americanophile, I guess.”
But the truth is, noir has always been an international thing, even from its conception. The distinctive, moody look that is its hallmark was brought to Hollywood by German directors, rooted in German expressionism, who were fleeing Hitler’s regime. One of them, Robert Siodmak, one of the greatest of Hollywood’s noir directors, brought his techniques back to West Germany to “The Devil Strikes at Night” (Jan. 31).
French film critics coined the term “noir” to describe the American genre. And the opening night film on Friday, Jan. 25, a gem from Argentina called “The Black Vampire,” is based on Fritz Lang’s 1931 German classic “M.”
Muller discovered that film — and the other Argentine film on the program, “The Beast Must Die” — through Fernando Martín-Peña, an internationally renowned film historian based in Argentina. Martín-Peña is known for discovering the complete version of Lang’s silent science fiction masterpiece “Metropolis” in a Buenos Aires archive. Muller met him in 2008 and visited his museum there.
“He would show me these films that he had in 16mm that he had collected,” Muller said. “He would project the films for me in this empty theater and then sit with me and explain, because my Spanish is not really great. … That’s how I discovered both of these movies.”
“The Black Vampire” will be a premiere of sorts; it has been restored byMuller’s Film Noir Foundation.
“To be honest, my big motivation for doing this festival is that I want to make sure that Americans aren’t so ethnocentric that they think all this stuff is specific to America. I want to make sure stuff isn’t overlooked,” Muller said. “Like, I’ve seen 40 or 50 Jean Gabin films. But I’m going to show ‘Razzia’ (Saturday, Jan. 25) in a theater where the majority of people will be seeing Jean Gabin for the first time. It’s becoming more and more important and imperative that you show these movies in a big event type thing so that people can say, ‘Oh this guy’s amazing! I’m going to look for those other films.’
“So that’s what this is all about.”
Noir City International: The 18th San Francisco Film Noir Festival:Friday, Jan. 24-Feb. 2. $12.50 per double feature. $125 festival pass. Castro Theatre. 429 Castro St., S.F. (415) 621-6120. www.noircity.com.