Desert Fury

Last summer, for the first time ever, we screened a colour film in a Pacific Cinémathèque Film Noir season. We’re breaking with monochrome tradition again this year to serve up Desert Fury, a ripe, racy Technicolor noir from 1947. The film is set in a small Nevada gambling town, where Paula (Lizabeth Scott) rebellious daughter of gambling-house proprietress Fritzi (The Maltese Falcon’s Mary Astor), take up with shady racketeer Eddie (John Hodiak), who may be a former flame of her mom’s. Joining Fritzi is trying to douse the relationship are local lawman Tom (Burt Lancaster), who caries a torch for Paula, and Eddie’s sidekick Johnny (Wendell Corey), who may carry a torch for Eddie — and, in another break with noir tradition, seems to be the film’s homme fatal. “Lizabeth Scott in Technicolor glory — swirls of yellow hair, emerald eyes, fire-engine red lips — is truly something to behold, but she’s only one of the over-the-top treats in this very strange crime drama . . . Desert Fury is absolutely saturated — incredibly lush colours, fast and furious dialogue dripping with innuendo, double entendres, dark secrets, outraged face-slappings, overwrought Miklos Rozsa violins. This is Hollywood at its most gloriously berserk” (American Cinematheque). Colour, 35mm. 96 mins.