In this post, veteran noir programmer Don Malcolm considers the sub-genre implications of rare films
noir - from the US, Croatia and Germany - set to screen when Midcentury Madness '22 returns to San Francisco’s Roxie Theater on March 12 and 13:
VEHICULAR NOIR
Looking over the long list of films noir screened by one-time
colleagues Eddie
Muller and Elliot Lavine, I was shocked to discover that the
1957 heist noir PLUNDER ROAD has never been shown by either of
those estimable individuals. (Eddie even had a entire festival devoted to heist
noirs back in 2017, with 24 films, but enigmatic director Hubert
Cornfield—as was so often the case for him—was on the outside
looking in. And he still is…)
Man used to live
by his wits; PLUNDER ROAD tells us that we’re now utterly dependent on our
machines for whatever crazy scheme that comes to mind…
That
unfathomable situation will be remedied on Saturday, March 12 when we’ll screen
it as we simultaneously christen a new noir sub-genre: “vehicular noir.” Some
of you might quibble with me that most noir is vehicular, given the ubiquity of
automobiles—and you wouldn’t be wrong.
But
what I’m after is a more rarefied subgroup of films where the vehicles are
large and lumbering—a kind of metaphor for the existential state of the noir
hero, often caught up in grandiose schemes that are overly ambitious and
recklessly expansive. Trying to pull a caper in a big rig is like trying to
beat the system while wearing a blindfold AND having one hand tied behind your
back.
