Education USA

Noir City

The American Perspective: unsere virtuellen Praktikanten erzählen von sich und ihrem Campus

Film Noir poster

The Noir City film festival is held every year at the beautiful Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The event showcases atmospheric murder mysteries made in the 1930s, ‘40s, and 50’s, with a special focus on movies filmed in San Francisco itself. With a large
group of friends from Berkeley, I attended the crowded opening night for a double feature of Dark Passage and The House on Telegraph Hill. Many of the people attending
had dressed up as a character from a classic film, in trench coats, fedoras, and vintage dresses. To be honest, I was not expecting to like either of the films that were playing, since I normally don’t watch movies from that time period, but to my surprise, both of them were incredible. Dark Passage, a tale of an innocent man who escapes from prison, had great scenes at famous SF landmarks, like the Golden Gate Bridge and crooked Lombard Street, but The House on Telegraph Hill was my favorite. It was the story of a woman who takes on the identity of her dead best friend in order to inherit her home and fortune, but finds herself at the center of a murder plot. My friends and I had an amazing time at Noir City. Both the movies had fantastic actors and scripts, but I especially connected with them because of how the city itself is represented. SF is portrayed as a place where you can always make a fresh start, no matter how dark your past. Even though the San Francisco  represented in the films at Noir City isn’t real, it still is a place where anything could happen.