TCM host Eddie Muller brought his LA film festival "Noir City" to New York's Paris Theater. MJ O'Toole A crowd of spiffy young hepcats and dames showed up in full period 1940s dress when Turner Classic Movies host Eddie Muller kicked off the first ever NYC edition of his long-running Los Angeles “Noir City” film festival on Friday night.
Circulating among the dressed-to-the-nines flick fans at Netflix’s Paris Theater to catch the black-and-white double feature was former Focus Features CEO and Oscar-nominated screenwriter James Schamus (“The Ice Storm,” “Hulk”), “After Hours” producer and “Mean Streets” actress Amy Robinson, true crime author T.J. English and Netflix’s movie programming big cheese John Vanco.
The theme of the film noir fest is “Face The Music,” and the evening began with a screening of 1941’s “Blues in the Night,” which Muller called, “One of the weirdest movies I’ve ever shown.”
“I hope there aren’t too many people who have done drugs before coming tonight,” Muller quipped of the film about a jazz band’s rise and fall with some truly mind-bending montages by the late Don Siegel.
“It’s New York,” the fest’s co-host Elizabeth Bougerol chimed in of the possibility people were on any mind-altering substances.
(For film buffs: The late Siegel was the head of Warner Bros.’ montage department, and he worked on the opening sequence in “Casablanca.” He later won two Oscars for short films, which launched his directing career and he then made five features with Clint Eastwood, including “Dirty Harry.”)
“Blues in the Night” was directed by Anatole Litvak, who Muller said was, “For some reason… overlooked amongst the great European immigrants who came to Hollywood in the 1930s. But he was a masterful filmmaker.”
Bougerol — in a chic white suit — performed with her jazz band during an intermission, and the second film that screened to the sold-out crowd was “Black Angel” from 1946.
When Muller introduced the film by running through some of the wild behind-the-scenes scandals of its stars back in the day, Bougerol exclaimed, “I think Page Six is here, be careful!”
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