Happy NOIRvember from Gartenberg Media!

STILL: THE HITCH-HIKER (1953). SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.

Down-on-their-luck detectives. Devious dames. Lust, lies, betrayal, murder... who doesn’t love a good film noir?

As November — or should we say, Noirvember — comes to a close, we reflect on our collection of noir titles on DSL, DVD, and/or Blu-Ray. From bona fide classics to long forgotten and recently rediscovered diamonds-in-the-rough, these macabre gems are currently available for North American institutional acquisition from Gartenberg Media Enterprises.

Directed by legendary actor-turned-director Ida Lupino, 1953’s THE HITCH-HIKER is notable for being the only classic American film noir directed by a woman. In 1998, it was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant by the Library of Congress and entered into the National Film Registry.

Inspired by the true-life murder spree of serial killer Billy Cook, THE HITCH-HIKER is a tension-laden saga of two men on a camping trip (Edmond O'Brien and Frank Lovejoy) who are held captive by a homicidal drifter (William Talman). Lupino visited the real serial killer at San Quentin, where he granted her exclusive rights to his story. THE HITCH-HIKER was independently produced, which allowed Lupino and ex-husband/producer Collier Young to work from a treatment by blacklisted writer Daniel Mainwaring and tackle an incident that was too brutal for the major studios to even consider.

This film is available from GME as a Digital Site License (DSL), DVD, and/or Blu-Ray,  in conjunction with Kino Lorber, and includes audio commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith.

In hard-boiled film noir tradition, reminiscent of the work of James M. Cain, greed, unstoppable sexual attraction, and betrayal set off a doomed course in which a femme fatale leads a once upstanding citizen down a dark path. THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF (1950) was the first independent production of Phoenix Films, the company run by Jack M. Warner, son of Warner Bros. Studios mogul Jack L., and a highlight in the lengthy career of director Felix E. Feist.

Blinded by love, homicide lieutenant Ed Cullen (Lee J. Cobb, fresh off originating the role of Willy Loman on Broadway in DEATH OF A SALESMAN) goes to great lengths to cover up a murder. His girlfriend Lois (Jane Wyatt, best known for her work on the television series FATHER KNOWS BEST) has killed her scheming husband before he could bump her off. John Dall (GUN CRAZY) co-stars as Ed’s kid brother Andy, a rookie on the force who is determined to break his first big case. These accomplished actors are nearly eclipsed by the incandescent star power of San Francisco, and especially the world’s most photographed bridge, the Golden Gate.

THE MAN WHO CHEATED HIMSELF was restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive and funded by the Film Noir Foundation. It is currently available from GME as a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack in conjunction with Flicker Alley. Bonus materials include a featurette on the production of the original film; a virtual tour comparing the locales from the original movie with how they look today; the restored original theatrical trailer; and a souvenir booklet.

Rescued and preserved after a five-year effort by the Film Noir Foundation, 1949’s TOO LATE FOR TEARS is at long last available in a pristine digital version, transferred from a 35mm print painstakingly restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. GME distributes this title as a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack in conjunction with Flicker Alley.

TOO LATE FOR TEARS provides noir icon Lizabeth Scott with the meaty role of frustrated housewife Jane Palmer, whose married life careens out of control with murderous greed when a suitcase filled with $60,000 is accidentally “tossed” to her and husband Alan (played by Arthur Kennedy). Beyond the fantastically theatrical turn by Scott, the production highlights an exceedingly menacing performance by another regular of the genre, Dan Duryea.

Before making Hollywood epics such as 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954), THE VIKINGS (1958), and BARABBAS (1961), director Richard Fleischer started his career in the mid-1940s with a series of low-budget B-movies, often taking crime stories and transforming them into taut noir dramas.

In Fleischer’s TRAPPED, a young Lloyd Bridges stars as hardboiled hoodlum Tris Stewart, a convicted counterfeiter doing time in the Atlanta penitentiary. When a fresh batch of fake bills starts circulating, treasury agents bail Stewart out to help lead them to the maker of the fake plates. But Tris double-crosses the Feds, hooking up with his gun moll (22-year-old Barbara Payton in her breakout role). They plan to heist the plates and hightail it across the border. With the T-Men closing in and the double-crosses piling up, Stewart finds himself increasingly trapped by his own devices.

Although long sought by the Film Noir Foundation, TRAPPED was believed to have been lost, like so many other B-films of the era. When a private collector deposited a 35mm acetate print at the Harvard Film Archive, the Film Noir Foundation and UCLA Film & Television Archive (with support from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust) sprang into action, restoring the film. The result, presented in a Blu-ray/DVD dual-format edition in conjunction with Flicker Alley, honors the assured direction, crisp cinematography, and convincing performances of this heretofore largely unseen film noir.

Bonus materials include a documentary on the film’s creation, a remembrance of director Fleischer, an audio commentary track, and rare photos and poster art.

Shot largely among the gritty working class landscapes of mid-century San Francisco, WOMAN ON THE RUN spotlights Ann Sheridan as an acerbic, wise-cracking wife in search of her estranged husband who suddenly disappears after witnessing a gangland assassination.

After suffering through a series of disappointing roles at Warner Bros. Pictures, Sheridan bought out her remaining contract and turned to the upstart independent production company Fidelity Pictures in an attempt to re-establish her career as a leading lady. The resultant work was this 1950 noir gem, which has been rescued and restored to its original luster by the Film Noir Foundation in conjunction with UCLA Film & Television Archive, with special thanks to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s Charitable Grant Trust and the British Film Institute. WOMAN ON THE RUN is currently available from GME as a DVD/Blu-Ray combo pack in conjunction with Flicker Alley.

Suffused with wry humor, Jean-Pierre Melville’s BOB LE FLAMBEUR melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. It could be argued that Jean-Luc Godard could not have made BREATHLESS (1960) without BOB LE FLAMBEUR. When François Truffaut first saw the film — the first of Melville’s series of noirs — he exclaimed, “This is the kind of film that we want to make!”

BOB LE FLAMBEUR follows an aging safecracker and compulsive gambler named Bob (Roger Duchesne) who must navigate a treacherous underworld of pimps, moneymen, and naïve associates while plotting one last score — the heist of the Deauville casino. Bob lives by night and sleeps by day, thriving on his nostalgia for the prewar gangster milieu. He drives through the streets of Paris in an American car dogged by a daring camera, a swinging jazz track, and a cool obsession. Like Max, the protagonist in Jacques Becker’s heist film TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), Bob is a loner surrounded by a loyal coterie of men. Yet, whereas Max seems invulnerable, Bob has a fatal flaw: his gambling addiction. From cards and dice to harness racing, if Bob can bet or play the odds, he does.

A young woman named Anne (Isabelle Corey) is one of the films femme fatales, and her character seems to have been an inspiration for Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s BREATHLESS. Ambitious and amoral, Anne both receives and gives information, acting as a conduit through her sexual liaisons. Bob’s world is generally male-dominated, and he seems unfazed by femininity. Suzanne (Colette Fleury) the nagging wife of croupier named Jean and the film's other femme fatale, proves the age-old noir wisdom of "never confiding in a dame." The two women know about the casino heist and neither of them remain discreet about it.

BOB LE FLAMBEUR is available from GME as a Digital Site License (DSL), as well as a DVD and Blu-Ray, in conjunction with Kino Lorber. The DVD and Blu-Ray contain a number of bonus features, including a documentary about the production and historical significance of the film, an audio commentary track by film critic Nick Pinkerton, and the film's original theatrical trailer.

Jean Luc-Godard’s ALPHAVILLE (1965) cleverly amalgamates the genres of dystopian science fiction and film noir. In Godard’s endless journey to subvert cinematic conventions and tropes, he took the archetype of the “male anti-hero” and transposed him into a sci-fi setting.

Secret agent Lemmy Caution (played by Eddie Constantine) is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville where he must track down and kill the inventor of the all-controlling computer Alpha 60, which has outlawed free thought and individualist concepts like love, poetry, and emotion. People who show signs of emotion are presumed to be acting illogically and are gathered up, interrogated, and executed. As a result, Alphaville has become an inhuman and alienated society.

Caution enlists the assistance of Natasha von Braun (played by the darkly luminous Anna Karina), a programmer of Alpha 60. Caution falls for Braun, and his affection introduces emotion and unpredictability into the city. Braun’s programmed responses slowly break down as the hardboiled detective introduces her to the concepts of “conscience” and “love” — words with which she is unfamiliar, since they have been progressively redacted from the dictionary of her father's totalitarian state.

ALPHAVILLE is replete with gun-toting criminals, fisticuffs, and murder, recalling the classic gangster archetypes of American films noir (such as Ida Lupino’s THE HITCH-HIKER, Byron Haskins’ TOO LATE FOR TEARS, and Richard Fleisher’s TRAPPED) and even the French films noir of Jean-Pierre Melville (such as BOB LE FLAMBEUR) and Jacques Becker. As the archetypal American anti-hero private eye in a trench coat, Lemmy Caution’s old-fashioned machismo conflicts with the puritanical Alpha 60. This character was a hard-boiled FBI agent from English author Peter Cheyney’s series of detective novels in the 1930s and ‘40s. While never as popular in the United States, Lemmy Caution became something of a proto-James Bond film hero in France, with American expat Eddie Constantine portraying Caution in seven pulpy detective movies between 1953 and 1963.

ALPHAVILLE is available from GME as a Digital Site License (DSL), as well as a DVD and Blu-Ray in conjunction with Kino Lorber. The DVD and Blu-Ray include audio commentary by film historian Tim Lucas, an interview with Anna Karina, and the film's original theatrical trailer, among other bonus features.

In Curtis Harrington's NIGHT TIDE (1961), a sailor on shore leave named Johnny (Dennis Hopper) becomes fascinated by a woman, Mora (Linda Lawson), who poses as a mermaid in an oceanfront carnival. As their relationship blossoms, Johnny realizes that Mora is more than a sideshow illusionist. She seems to be a descendent of the mythical sirens of the sea, and is under the mesmeric control of a mysterious woman (Marjorie Cameron) who beckons Mora to return to her home beneath the waves.

Curtis Harrington, regarded as one of the important avant-garde directors of the 1940s as well as an early influential figure in what would come to be known as “New Queer Cinema,” was born in Los Angeles in 1926. He began making films as a teenager, which were often surreal and intuitive and owed much to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe (THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, 1942). After graduating from UCLA with a degree in film studies, his unique career trajectory led him from the academic circles of cinematic criticism to the Hollywood assistant desk of writer/producer Jerry Wald. He subsequently joined the elite group of independent filmmakers associated with Kenneth Anger before working for the famed film factory of cult icon Roger Corman.

NIGHT TIDE helped establish Dennis Hopper as one of cinema's most eclectic leading men, and launched Harrington’s career as a cult director of genre movies. As noted by critic Dana Reinoos in Screen Slate, NIGHT TIDE  "is ostensibly a horror film, but it's more complex than that: a mix of Anger-style occultism, 1950s beach movies, and a little film noir." Harrington's film was also characterized by film noir expert and Turner Classic Movies co-host Eddie Mueller as "Hopper noir," in reference to the film's star and its affinity with the genre.

NIGHT TIDE is currently available as a Digital Site License (DSL) from GME, as well as a DVD and Blu-Ray, in conjunction with Kino Lorber. Bonus features on the DVD and Blu-Ray include audio commentary by Harrington and Hopper as well as the film's original theatrical trailer.