The 13th edition of the Noir City film festival opened in San Francisco recently with the screening of a film that was restored with help from a grant that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave the Film Noir Foundation last year.
More than 1,400 enthusiastic fans of film noir, many dressed in period clothes, jammed the historic Castro Theater to capacity, and gave a loud and warm welcome to the re-premiere of Woman on the Run, a 1950 film noir starring Ann Sheridan. The Castro was a fitting venue for the screening as well as for the rest of the 25-title program over the following ten days. Built in 1922 in a Spanish colonial style, the theater echoes the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. It is a San Francisco historical landmark, complete with period interiors, a mighty Wurlitzer organ that entertained the opening night crowd before show time and an imposing restored neon sign and marquee.
The man behind the revival of interest in film noir is affectionately known as the “Czar of Noir” aka Eddie Muller. He is the head of the Film Noir Foundation and a native of San Francisco, a city  deeply steeped in the noir tradition. Fittingly, the opening night film is set in San Francisco, in the middle of the last century (even though a few key scenes were filmed in Los Angeles locations: Bunker Hill and the old Ocean Park amusement park near the Santa Monica pier). Woman on the Run has all the elements of the quintessential film noir: Luminous black and white, mostly night photography, in this case by another San Franciscan, the celebrated and innovative cinematographer Hal Mohr; a story set in the dark underbelly of society, riddled with crime, murder, and mystery. There’s a gangland murder to silence a potential witness, a beautiful woman enters the picture and the chase is on.
The unifying theme of this year’s edition of the film noir festival was “Unholy Matrimony”. Muller explained: “[the films] are centered around how the bonds of marriage affect an array of characters – those who’ll stop at nothing to preserve it, and those who will do everything to escape it”. After all, “the main impact of film noir on American culture was to dispel the movie-made myth of ‘happily ever after’ and nowhere was noir’s subversive influence more strongly felt than when it probed behind closed doors”.
Woman on the Run, fits right in: The story is one of intrigue and mistaken identity. A man walking his dog at night witnesses a murder. He does not want to get involved, so he runs from the police to avoid being taken to protective custody and having to identify the killer, thereby risking his own life. To find him, the police follow his wife, assuming she will lead them to her husband. But the couple’s marriage has been on the rocks, and she’d rather not see him again. Evading the police, she befriends a crime reporter who has charmed her into helping him track the husband and land a big story… and who turns out to be the last person that wants to help her. 
Ann Sheridan, the leading lady and producer of the movie, was known as “the Oomph Girl,” at the peak of her career, but never achieved the super-stardom of some of her contemporaries. She turned down the title role of Mildred Pierce (which rescued the career of Joan Crawford) and was passed over for other juicy roles. Woman allowed her to show her mature beauty and acting chops. The script is smart and witty, full of sharp noir cracks, provoking frequent gales of laughter at the screening.
Woman was screened in 2003, at the first Noir City and is still an audience favorite. But the print which was the only 35 mm copy in the world, was stored at Universal Studios’ vault, and was lost along with thousands of other reels in a 2008 fire, ironically as it was awaiting a transfer to the UCLA Film and Television Archives. Muller did not give up, and while searching the newly completed database of the holdings of the British Film Archive, he found another copy, a duplicate negative, along with a separate sound track. The elements were lent to the UCLA Archive, and that is when the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s charitable trust supplied a grant covering most of the restoration cost.
Yoram Kahana