‘The Big Sleep’ and more on the big screen

Tonight (Wednesday, June 13) at 8 p.m., the Film Noir Foundation’s Alan K. Rode will host a screening of “The Big Sleep” (1946, Howard Hawks) at the Los Angeles Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. Hawks’ adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s labyrinthine mystery stars Humphrey Bogart as private eye Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as a rich girl who may be helping or hindering him.

The event is sold out, but there will be rush tickets available on a first-come first-serve basis at the box office. For more info on the screening, visit the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Additionally, the Pacific Film Archive, in Berkeley, Calif., is hosting One-Two Punch: Pulp Writers, a film series that explores movie adaptations of three divergent authors: Dorothy B. Hughes, Mickey Spillane and Elmore Leonard. The series comprises classic films noirs such as Nicholas Ray’s “In a Lonely Place” (1950) and George A. White’s “My Gun is Quick” (1957), as well as thrillers like Roy Rowland’s “The Girl Hunters” (1963), starring Spillane as Mike Hammer.

For full details about the series, running June 23-30, visit the Pacific Film Archive.

And on Thursday, the Los Angeles Film Festival begins downtown.

Hard-edged ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ is a brutal beauty

Kiss Me Deadly/1955/United Artists/105 min.

If you fancy a sci-fi chaser with your classic noir, be sure to check out 1955’s “Kiss Me Deadly,” recently rereleased by Criterion.

Director/producer Robert Aldrich’s evocation of popular pulp writer Mickey Spillane’s apocalyptic novel (with a script from A.I. Bezzerides) has dazzled critics and influenced directors from the French New Wave to Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg. (Aldrich also directed the campy noirs “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” from 1962 and “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte,” 1964)

The story of ultra-macho Los Angeles gumshoe Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) smiting bad guys and spurning women as he wrestles with a whodunit is a tad misogynistic, but I’ll let that pass because this is a portrayal of a rough and violent, sometimes sadistic, world overall.

Besides, there is much to enjoy – the intense cinematography, for starters, from Ernest Laszlo, also the superb eye of 1950’s “D.O.A.” The film looks great and there are some unforgettable shots, from the arresting opening to the amazing finale. Laszlo creates a harsh, almost merciless, world. “Kiss Me Deadly” also features a fast-paced, hairpin-turn plot, a sexy score, sharp LA location shooting and excellent acting from the entire cast.

Actress Cloris Leachman (who later played the wacky neighbor Phyllis on “The Mary Tyler Moore” show) makes her debut in the film as Christina Bailey, a hitchhiker who snags a late-night ride with Hammer. Christina has just escaped from an insane asylum, in the nude except for a trench coat. She says she was dumped at the asylum and really doesn’t belong there. Oh, that old line.

She gives Hammer vague answers to his questions and tells him to remember her. She’d be a bit hard to forget, actually. The two are run off the road, taken to a house where Christina is tortured and Hammer is punched out, then put back in Hammer’s car and pushed over a cliff. [Read more…]

Quick hit: ‘Kiss Me Deadly’

Kiss Me Deadly/1955/United Artists/105 min.

An escapee from a mental institution (Cloris Leachman) snags a late-night ride from steely, surly private eye Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker), which sets him on the path of a bevy of bad guys and a mysterious leather case. Oh, and the advances of every woman he meets. An intense detective story with a sci-fi twist. From a Mickey Spillane novel; directed and produced by Robert Aldrich.