MID-CENTURY PRODUCTIONS PRESS/RESOURCES

France's own Film Noir takes no back seat to America's

“This festival, like the ones past, gives people a chance to see good noirs that they've never seen before—and might not ever see again.... Before Malcolm came on the scene in 2014, everyone thought that Americans invented film noir, and the French just gave it a name. Au contraire. In fact, noir seems to have been invented simultaneously, or, if anything, the French got there first.... French noir is brisk. It has great stars and directors, and—this is big—it wasn't censored like American noir.... The new festival has something worth seeing every day. You can immerse yourself or dabble, and you'll be ok either way.”

—Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle

The French Had a Name for It: take 6

"It's hard to beat the provocative, alluring title or argue with the success of the immensely popular noir series "The French Had a Name for It." The brainchild of its enthusiastic curator Don Malcolm, the sixth iteration, subtitled "The Sixties and the End of the Line," arrives with 15 thematically dark and perverse selections from the most fraught decade of French Noir. ...This time around, with a roster of both famous and underappreciated directors at the helm, and great French stars like Yves Montand, Jean Rochefort and Jean Gabin... lighting up the screen, there will be more deception, self-destruction, nefarious capers and dangerous liaisons than one person can possibly bear."

—Sura Wood, Bay Area Reporter

The French Had a Name for It 6 brings noir and Aznavour to the Roxie

"When Charles Aznavour died just over a year ago in October 2018, it brought the end of not just one of the world's great singers but also an actor of considerable charisma. That quality is on full display in The Fabiani Affair (1962), a tense crime drama that is one of fifteen 1960s Gallic film noirs screening at The French Had a Name For It 6... The directing debut of actor André Versini, The Fabiani Affair builds suspense over a long night in Paris as the two sets of brothers alternately hunt for one another. None of them really seem to have their hearts into the fight, but their clash is a matter of family honor and destiny, so they drive on. Versini displays a gift for setting atmosphere with Marcel Grignon's striking cinematography and Paul Mauriat's evocative jazz score. Aznavour further amps the tension through his performance as a man increasingly giving himself over to the despair of an untenable situation in a film that is as downbeat as it is suspenseful."

—Pam Grady, CinezineKane.com

French Noir returns to the Roxie, as guilt-ridden and glorious as ever

"There's a lot that will stick with you at the latest eye-popping installment of Don Malcolm's "The French Had a Name for It" series."

...The only color film in this festival, Obsession (1954), stars Italian heartthrob Raf Vallone and megastar Michele Morgan as married trapeze artists Aldo and Helene....Aldo is haunted by his past — he once killed a man — and Helene appoints herself his emotional protector. After a fellow trapeze artist is murdered, she pulls out all the stops to shield him from suspicion, even as she begins to question their marriage. "Anyone can kill," Aldo observes. "That's just how it happens. It's not like there are murderers on one side, and innocents on the other side. … One can never tell."

So it's not just the fog that obscures in these noirs. It's the troubled human conscience.

—Allen Johnson, SF Chronicle

The French do it in fractions

"Noir fanatics, rejoice! You don't have to wait until November, when the sixth installment of "The French Had a Name for It" (by far the catchiest title for a series yet devised) arrives at the Roxie Theater and zeroes in on the 1960s. In the meantime, you can get a midway fix of the down-and-dirty genre with The French Had a Name for It 5 ½.

"The films span four decades, from the 1930s through the 60s, a period, according to series programmer Don Malcolm, when the French invented film noir, and created masterpieces and first-rate movies in far greater numbers than previously imagined. 'I needed to cover all four decades to ensure folks understood that noir starts in France in 1932, not anywhere else,' he says. That the stylized form didn't originate in America, he adds, 'is a controversial contention, but I'm confident that ultimately this will be seen as 'how it really was.'"

—Sura Wood, Bay Area Reporter

Maigret Steps into spotlight at San Francisco fest

"Malcolm has put together a strong slate. Pick any of the 14 and you won't go wrong, but I want to make a special plea for three films in the festival: Night at the Crossroads (La nuit du carrefour) (1932) and the closing night double-bill of Maigret Sets a Trap (Maigret tend un piége) (1958) and The Head of a Man (La tête d'un homme) (1933). Georges Simenon's great French detective, Commissaire Jules Maigret, the protagonist of 76 novels and 28 short stories published over four decades from 1931 to 1972, remains a popular figure in movies and TV to this day. The French Had a Name for It is screening three of the most memorable."

—Pam Grady, Cinezine Kane

Screen Grabs: All weekend long, the Roxie celebrates French noir

Dennis Harvey waxes enthusiastic about early French noir La Tete d'un Homme aka A Man's Head [1933]:

"[Its] noir ambiance is so sophisticated you'll be amazed it wasn't made ten or fifteen years later. Julien Duvivier (Pépé le Moko) directed Harry Bauer as Maigret in a vivid tale of murder and revenge amongst the denizens of lower-end cafe society."

—Dennis Harvey, 48 Hills

French Noir in the Spring, too? Incroyable!

"Last year was the biggest French noir fest yet—20 films that proved just how deep the 1950's French noir filmography really is. This November Don will do something similar for the 60s—a decade that the current "wisdom" holds that there really wasn't any noir (a notion that is never quite vanquished despite abundant evidence to the contrary). But that wasn't enough for Malcolm.

"...[H]e became fixated by what he jokingly calls "an odd round number." With a little extra work and planning—and a spring festival, "The French Had a Name for It 5½" (running from May 10-13, 2019 at San Francisco's Roxie) with coverage for all four decades of French noir, he could pull it off. "101 French noirs in five years," he says. 'That's a difficult number to forget.'"

Owen Field interviews Don Malcolm on EatDrinkFilms.com

French Noir you never heard of—but must see

"American movies were forced, by censorship, to conform to a rigid code that mandated, for example, that all crime had to be punished. But French noir was unshackled, and so filmmakers could take their movies to anyplace they wanted. Anything could happen, and everything did....The festival kicks off Thursday, Nov. 15, and my first recommendation is total immersion: Make this all you do for six whole days....Really, you can walk into the Roxie at any time between Thursday night and Tuesday, Nov. 20, and find something unexpected and good that you might otherwise have never had a chance to see. "

—Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle

French Noir: Cinquième fois!

"Although both American and French Noir teem with wicked, smoldering women and Machiavellian, black-hearted men on their way down or out of town, the focus of this series is a mostly unknown canon its programmer, Don Malcolm, calls "a lost continent of French Noir (close to 600 works) hidden in plain sight for nearly a half-century." The films are characterized by class consciousness, sexual frankness, cynicism in some cases exacerbated by the German occupation and WWII, and the early use of unconventional leading men or "monstres sacres" like Louis Jouvet, Michel Simon and Pierre Brasseur, whose forceful, eccentric personalities were more persuasive than their looks."

—Sura Wood, Bay Area Reporter

Screen Grabs: The French Had a Name for It

"Importation of foreign language films has reportedly been on the decline for many years because US audiences are growing more resistant to reading subtitles. That doesn't appear to be the case at the Roxie, however, where this week brings the fifth edition of The French Had a Name for It, Midcentury Productions' popular series of vintage Gallic noirs, melodramas and miscellany....One of the finds of the program, a European classic that should be much better known here, is Andre Cayette's 1949 The Lovers of Verona...a marvelously complex screenplay and a beautifully atmospheric, ambitious film. ."

—Dennis Harvey, 48 Hills

Andrée Clément brings Goth Noir to Roxie Theatre in S.F

"[Andrée] Clément (1918-54) was a seriously weird and interesting talent, with a quality unlike anyone else: fierce, intelligent, desperate, scary and uncompromising."

—Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle

Discover Andrée Clément, France's Goth actress of 1940s, at Roxie Theater

"Clément made only 13 movies and has been but a minor footnote in French film history. Hopefully, that will change, beginning with Malcolm's enthusiastic push. Thursday's double feature is a sterling example of the value of repertory houses — I can't recall these films, which are not on home video, ever showing in the Bay Area, and it's possible they never have."

—Allen Johnson, SF Chronicle

Roxie Spotlight Shines on Forgotten Andrée Clément

"Resurrected [...] for a Roxie double bill culled from the dozen-odd movies she made between 1943 and her premature death in 1954, [Andrée] Clément possessed an unpredictability and instinctiveness that gave her a wild-card quality. Especially in the crime-slash-relationship dramas on view July 26, she seems perpetually on the verge of breaking some convention of (im)polite society."

—Michael Fox, KQED

Roxie's FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT 4 offers
rare Jeanne Moreau, Jean Gabin

"The best thing about Don Malcolm's annual The French Had a Name for It noir festival at the Roxie Theater is that most of the selections are not available on home video, shown on Turner Classic Movies or programmed anywhere else. They are more than a half century old, but many are screening in the Bay Area for the first time."

—G. Allen Johnson, SFGate.com

A French feast of Film Noir

"The term "film noir" was duly invented in France to describe American crime movies of the 1940s and '50s. But as these series have demonstrated, it could be applied equally to many French productions of that period, albeit with a broader brush that encompassed more diverse kinds of melodrama than are usually associated with American noirs. This fourth "Name" collection expands the category further to embrace films made as early as 1935 and as late as 1966, plus a couple made by foreign directors (England's Tony Richardson, German-born Hollywood veteran Robert Siodmak)."

—Dennis Harvey, 48Hills.com

Mademoiselle not to be missed at San Francisco's 4th French Film Noir Festival

"Based on a story by Jean Genet later adapted by Marguerite Duras and others for the screen, Richardson made of Mademoiselle a blindingly visual film. Dialogue is spare, there is no music on the soundtrack, only the sounds of man and nature. The eye is dazzled by David Watkin's (Out of Africa, Moonstruck) black and white photography of forest, field, stream, lake, and shore. And Moreau is devastating as the lethal mademoiselle."

— Lady Eve's Reel Life

Introducing Lemmy Caution at SF Gallic noir film fest THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT 4

"This Man Is Dangerous is a terrific introduction to Lemmy Caution, full of actions and plot twists. It is also a great introduction to Constantine and his gruff charm."

—Cinezinekane.com

The French have their reasons

"The heart has its reasons that Reason fails to comprehend, at least that's what the French say. If you have a heart, it might enjoy going out to see some old French films that'll surprise your cynical American expectations....Mostly there are complex narratives, tense gender relations, cobblestones, cafes, and ruins underscored with "le jazz hot" or accordion, con men, gangsters, and ex-pats Hazel Scott and Eddy Constantine. "

—Erin Blackwell, The Bay Area Reporter

Roxie's International Noir Series Turns Up the Heat

"The recent heat wave to blanket the Bay Area ain't got nothin' on the second edition of the international noir festival at the Roxie Theater. Sweltering heat drenches this 12-film, four-day series, which goes by the name A Rare Noir Is Good to Find 2 — if not in outright temperature, then certainly in passion."

—G. Allen Johnson on SF Gate

A Rare Noir is Good to Find 2 Unearths International Gems at the Roxie

"You may not have noticed it, but foreign films have grown increasingly scarce on American movie screens....Offering twelve features from 11 countries... the four-day series provides a few titles that are well-known (at least in their countries of origin), along with others that no doubt haven't been seen in the Bay Area for over half a century, if ever."

Dennis Harvey on 48Hills.org

More Foreign Noir at the Roxie

"These films are time machines capturing ways of being no longer possible that, at the moment of filming, were the most ordinary and taken for granted. This privileged view of the Past, the trick of the camera to make you believe you're watching real people walk through cobblestone streets and sit at cafe tables 60 years distant, is perhaps the best possible mental vacation you can buy for the price of a ticket."

Erin Blackwell on The Bay Area Reporter

Don Malcolm Discusses the Shocking Abundance of Long-Lost Foreign Film Noir

"The U.S.-centric view of noir has been entrenched for 60 years, but it really is a serious historical inaccuracy.... Clearly noir became an international cinematic language in the years following World War II....It's fascinating to see how this converges and diverges as a result of how the filmmakers have confronted a different experience."

Owen Field interviews Don Malcolm on EatDrinkFilms.com

“Dark and handsome, Robert Hossein was a leading man with a slightly sad countenance and soft eyes, like a faintly more exotic Liam Neeson.... His value in French cinema is sure to be reappraised in decades to come. Certainly after Saturday he'll have a lot of new San Francisco fans, most of whom probably had no idea who he was beforehand. ...One marathon day... will feature four more of Hossein's directing efforts from the early 1960s, plus one of the many films around that time (1959's white-slavery thriller The Road to Shame) he merely starred in....

The "it" they had a name for is, of course, film noir, whose Hollywood-heyday titles of the 1940s and 1950s weren't given any particular handle at home (beyond a generic a like "thriller"). It was up to the French to eventually recognize the peculiar style, themes and occasional brilliance of movies whose home-turf critics, audiences, and even makers tended to think of as routine commercial product. ...[T]he French industry made plenty of its own post-WW2 crime melodramas, many owing a certain debt to Hollywood yet strongly stamped by a Gallic sensibility. Malcolm's series...includes a great many films that were little-seen outside Europe at the time, and which have yet to experience a major critical re-evaluation."

—Dennis Harvey, 48 Hills

"Unfortunately, by blowing up French cinema, Godard, Truffaut and the gang left quite a bit of wreckage behind. For the third straight year, programmer and film historian Don Malcolm is picking through the collateral damage to find truly great and forgotten movies and artists in his 15-film series at the Roxie Theater.....

"Robert Hossein, like his New Wave enemies, was also a filmmaker who flaunted narrative convention....Les scélérats exemplifies what this series is all about: An emotionally mature exploration of our deepest, darkest desires and fears."

—G. Allen Johnson, SF Gate

"MIDCENTURY ECLECTIC! has to be the most adventurously programmed (by Don Malcolm) repertory film series of the year, centerpieced by a screening of THE BAD SEED with star Patty McCormack in person at 6 p.m., Sunday, May 15.... Really, there's not a weak link in this intriguing journey into the fractured arthouse of the mid-20th century."
—G. Allen Johnson, SF Gate

"A total of twelve wildly original films will be shown, and not a sequel or a remake among them. 'When we did it there was nothing like it at the time,' McCormack said of The Bad Seed. 'It couldn't be redone today because we used the culture of that time.' McCormack's words could easily apply to the entire festival."
—David-Elijah Nahmod, SF Weekly

“It's 12 films in four days, and there's not a weak selection in the whole lineup...[The films are] sophisticated in the ways that they portray the dynamics of crime, marriage and adultery.... Bizarre in a brand new way.”

—Mick LaSalle, SF Chronicle/SF Gate, Racy, Daring Lineup for Roxie's French Film Noir Festival

"While many American films of the prime noir era focused principally on male-dominated criminal milieux and activities, the dozen features in "The French Had a Name For It 2" find that romance—or what passes for it—between the sexes can provide quite enough dark intrigue all by itself, with or without the genre's usual elements of guns, gangsters and cops."

—Dennis Harvey, EatDrinkFilms.com, L'amour Fou: Betrayal and Suspicion in French Film Noir

San Francisco's breakout festival of 2014--THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT, which revived twelve French noirs from 1946-1963 not seen in American theatres in at least half a century, took everyone by surprise and created a wave of interest in foreign noir that has galvanized repertory film programming across the United States ever since. Familiar faces—Brigitte Bardot, Jean Gabin, Simone Signoret, Lino Ventura—in unfamiliar but compelling (and often risqué) films proved to be beyond intoxicating last November. Now, Don Malcolm—with considerable moral support from Lavine—is at it again, bringing twelve more of these astonishing discoveries to the Roxie screen beginning Friday, November 6.

"Round Two will bring to our attention some amazing talents—Daniel Gélin, Ginette Leclerc, Françoise Arnoul, Viviane Romance—that we simply don't know over here. I predict that they will rock people's worlds!"

—Elliot Lavine

"Subtitled "Rare French Film Noir, 1948-1963," the much-anticipated series THE FRENCH HAD A NAME FOR IT explores the notion that the French not only gave a name to the dark-end-of-the-street melodramas but that they also made some of the best, most involving examples of the genre. Playing Friday night through Monday night at the American Cinematheque's Aero Theatre are eight rarely seen films with major stars like Brigitte Bardot, Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret in ways we've not seen them before."

—Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times, Critic's Pick

Meredith Brody, INDIEWIRE

"I can give no higher praise to A RARE NOIR IS GOOD TO FIND's programming...I intend to go to EVERY DOUBLE BILL, including the films I've already seen."

San Francisco Loves Its Noir: From NOIR CITY to the Roxie

G. Allen Johnson, SF Gate/San Francisco Chronicle

"What's most interesting about the series is the level of compassion for the human condition that pervades many of the films."

Roxie Theatre international noir series has undiscovered gems