Turner Classic Movies Film Festival's Nod to Noir

This year's 15th Annual Turner Classic Movies Film Festival's theme was Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film. Their slate of films over the weekend was a reflection of this theme, with a particular bend towards noir and she-done-him-wrong tales.

Opening night, April 18, saw cast members of Quentin Tarantino's crimeorama Pulp Fiction reunite for a screening of the classic, gritty crime flick. John Travolta, Sam Jackson, Uma Thurman, and Harvey Keitel took the stage before the screening for a Q&A led by Ben Mankiewicz. 

That same night, TCM's notable crime and justice films started screening, including In Cold Blood, based on Truman Capote's novel that was a magnum opus to violence, James Cagney's White Heat, and the premiere of Martin Scorsese and David Hinton's documentary Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger.

On April 19, multi-award-winning actress, director, and producer Jodie Foster was honored with a long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The actress has been entertaining us since the tender age of three and has continuously given us intelligent, thought-provoking performances. Jamie Lee Curtis hosted the ceremony and The Silence of the Lambs screened that afternoon. Her doe-eyed, yet flinty performance in this is one for the ages.

Screenings for that day included That's Entertainment, Lady Sings the Blues, and Rear Window. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with Steven Spielberg in attendance for a Q&A played in the TCL Chinese Theater in IMAX, and later that evening David Fincher also graced the festival with his presence for a screening of edge-of-your-seat thriller Se7en.

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Clint Eastwood starrer Dirty Harry screened early morning on Saturday, April 21. Actor Andrew Robinson, who plays the psychotic killer in the movie, was in attendance and spoke with TCM host Eddie Muller, the "czar of noir." He explained how he got the part, which was his first film role, and how it was difficult for him to get roles afterward because he was so believable as the killer. Other screenings where cast members showed up included Little Women and The Shawshank Redemption.

The festival closed out on April 21 with a screening of Spaceballs and had Mel Brooks chatting it up with Ben Mankiewicz prior to the film's showing. The weekend was a cavalcade of classic film noir, the cherry on top being Billy Wilder's slick and stylish Double Indemnity, starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck.

Much like last year, the film festival itself had an audience of primarily Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. The new TCM Classic Films Tour, however, seems to attract a wider demographic, including Gen Z cinephiles.

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During the festival, the fifth season for TCM's podcast The Plot Thickens, co-produced by Novel, was announced. Ben Mankiewicz will host this foray into Decoding John Ford, which premieres on June 6, 2024. John Ford was a bigger-than-life, volatile figure and according to Mankiewicz, "Not surprisingly given his stature, the stereotypes about Ford are incomplete." Previous podcasts can be found on Apple Podcasts.

Whether you're a film scholar, a filmmaker, or simply a film lover, TCM Film Festival is an annual cinephile haven not to be missed. 

In this 10-week course, we’ll take you through some of the master filmmakers and writers of the past—Alfred Hitchcock, William Goldman, George Lucas, Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, and more—and give you a peek behind the curtain of their work and how they crafted stories.