Announcing For the Love of Film (Noir)

It’s been a good year chez Self-Styled Siren, and Thanksgiving week finds me with many fine things to contemplate. Ask me the best part of 2010, however, and I won’t hesitate for so much as a single frame. It was so spectacular that every time I think about it, I lapse into first person. It was For the Love of Film, the blogathon I co-hosted with the indefatigable Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films. It’s a wonderful thing to write about old movies week in and week out, and have people swing by to share the obsession. It is, I have to say, even better to see 81 bloggers come together to write about preservation, and watch reader after reader open their wallets and give money to the cause.

I have had no prouder, happier moment in my five years of running this site than when the National Film Preservation Foundation announced the grand total of $30,000 in donations and matching funds and unveiled the silent shorts that will live on thanks to the people who wrote and gave. I know Marilyn, whose birthday request for preservation donations sparked the idea, and whose energy drove the project, feels the same way. So does Greg Ferrara, who donated the graphics and created a commercial. So, in fact, does every person who wrote a post or threw in some dough.

The 2010 blogathon ended Feb. 21, and by oh, say, 9 am EST on Feb. 22 Marilyn and I knew we’d have to do it again. And so it has come to pass. Today we unveil For the Love of Film (Noir), a blogathon to benefit the Film Noir Foundation.

The first blogathon focused on the earliest days of film, where the preservation issues are often the most pressing, but other films from other eras are in grave danger as well. For the second blogathon, Marilyn and I decided to focus on another part of film history. Led by its president, Eddie Muller, the Film Noir Foundation works to preserve the films that form one of cinema’s most creative and deeply loved genres. The FNF has worked to preserve noirs not only from the U.S., but from many other countries as well.

We'll be doing this for Valentine's Day week again, Feb. 14-21, 2011. I’m going to let Marilyn deliver the best news:

Last year, we didn’t know what films we would be helping to restore, but this year, we do! In 1950, a searing drama was released called The Sound of Fury, aka Try and Get Me. The film recounts the same story Fritz Lang told in Fury (1936) and was directed by Cy Endfield, who would run afoul of the Hollywood blacklist. Its star, Lloyd Bridges, never had a better role, and Eddie told me that when Jeff and Beau Bridges finally saw the film, they were blown away by his performance. A nitrate print of the film will be restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, using a reference print from Martin Scorsese’s personal collection to guide them and fill in any blanks. Paramount Pictures has agreed to help fund the restoration, but FNF is going to have to come up with significant funds to get the job done. That’s where we come in.

The Siren loves this genre, but you knew that, because you do too. Breathes there the cinephile with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, “Tonight by golly, I’m gonna watch a noir”? And Marilyn, Eddie, Greg and I are hoping this near-universal taste translates into high participation.

Meanwhile, as the holidays approach, think about sharing the loot with the FNF before the tax year ends. Nothing wrong with getting a jump on things--the more money they get, the more noir we have to savor.

There are an awful lot of potential topics connected to noir--the photography, the dialogue, the themes, the social history, the influences that shaped it and the influence it wields today, and on and on--take your pick, buddy. Our Facebook page, For the Love of Film , will be continuously updated with suggestions, discussions and news. (And yes, there will be raffle prizes again this year, and who knows what other twists in the plot.) Over at the For the Love of Film blog, Cinema Styles’ Greg has posted banners you can use on your own blog and Facebook page. There’s more than just Joan, although you realize of course that the Siren can’t look at a Bennett and not itch to post her picture.

Like the detective said, it's the stuff that dreams are made of.

***

And so you may be thinking, “Hey Siren, I could have sworn I spent last week asking you to write about approximately three hundred different movies of varying degrees of popularity, obscurity and eccentricity. What’s up with that, lady?” Well, the drawing was done by the Siren’s husband, the films are selected and the Siren is rustling up copies. It’s just that contemplating film noir set her to thinking about Out of the Past and now the Siren has gone all cold and hard and Jane Greer, figuring if she couldn’t be all bad she’d come close.

No, seriously, today is about the blogathon. Tomorrow is Requests Day.

Meanwhile, Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule has written up his own request assignment, La Fin du Jour, and a cracking good job he’s done, too. Please mosey over and have a look.