Noir Nights With Josh Fadem
Circle Cinema
April 15, 2024
Considering what he does for a living, it’s no surprise that actor and comedian Josh Fadem (Better Call Saul, Twin Peaks, Reservation Dogs) is fascinated by film history. During COVID lockdowns, like many of us, Fadem passed the time watching movies, drawn especially to the Criterion Channel’s film noir series and the TCM app’s “Noir Alley” nights. (“Noir Alley” is hosted by Eddie Muller, author of the essential Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir.) Fadem’s period of late-night isolation eventually led to one of Tulsa’s most beloved new community gatherings: Noir Nights at Circle Cinema.
Fadem calls film noir “an expressionistic document of its time.” Noir features a signature visual palette and expressive, emotional performances that mark its early twentieth century genesis, but Fadem hopes contemporary audiences will also recognize the form’s modern ideas. In his deep engagement with noir during the pandemic, Fadem noticed themes and techniques, such as melodrama and the intricacies of tension and mood, that he knew would be interesting to a live audience in Tulsa given our city’s unique architecture, cinematic landscapes and histories of violence.
Once the world began opening back up to public gatherings, Fadem found himself back home in Tulsa, where he now splits his time with Oklahoma City. His first Noir Night screening was in March of last year, and it soon became a mainstay on Circle Cinema’s calendar. (A parallel series also now runs at OKC’s Rodeo Cinema.) Fadem regularly chooses films that are a surprise to attendees until the screening begins.
I went to April’s Noir Night with my 78-year-old mother, who has attended nearly every screening since the series kickoff. We raced over to the theater after shepherding my kiddo back and forth to swim practice, and I really should have planned better. We arrived with about ten minutes to showtime, and nearly every seat was taken. Word to the wise: the theater manager mentioned that ticketholders begin arriving an hour early for the best seats.
Fadem begins Noir Nights with a few lighthearted words of welcome followed by a short video introduction to the evening’s selection, in which he provides notes about the director, actors, key scenes, settings, etc. (delivered with a dose of hilarity). This video seems key to the audience experience, and Fadem says he’s not exactly sure why, since he could just as easily share this same information in live remarks.
I see this exact scenario play out over and over in my own film and literature classes at OSU, where I use “flipped classroom” techniques to deliver lectures online even in my fully face-to-face classes. Videos allow viewers a heightened awareness and experience of curation. Maps, film stills, reference citations, and jokes that (almost!) always hit set our intention and enthusiasm for what is to come and teach us how to “see” in new ways. Though Fadem isn’t officially a teacher (he does lead workshops in town), I can’t help but notice the way he brings a teacher’s passion to the experience: wanting us to discover the excitement of this material together, hoping we’ll connect some cinematic dots for ourselves, visibly gratified when we’re figuring it out.
The April selection, shown in 35 mm, was An Act of Violence (1949), directed by Fred Zinneman. Van Heflin (native of Walters, Oklahoma, and a graduate of OU), plays Frank Enley, a husband and father who is relentlessly pursued by his former army best friend, Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan). An incident while they were imprisoned in a Nazi camp leads Joe on a quest for revenge, and along the way, the women in these men’s lives—Enley’s wife Edith (Janet Leigh), Parkson’s girlfriend Ann (Phyllis Sturges), and a prostitute named Pat (Mary Astor)—do their due diligence to mirror and vocalize the moral conflicts of the two men. The expected gender tropes are there, but the film captures well the complexity and ambiguity of our choices and how we live with them.
On why she comes to Noir Nights every month, my mother says, “I enjoy the suspense and universality of the themes. The enthusiasm of the audience is also fun.” Fadem’s curation of Noir Nights is in some sense an antidote to the very themes—isolation, loneliness, severed relationships—so prominent in these films. How fortunate we are to enjoy these forays into darkness with Josh Fadem as our guide.
Outside the noir zone, you can catch Fadem’s “low stakes” comedy shows with Evan Hughes on the first Thursday of every month at Chimera. He has more themed movie nights in the works.
The Pickup's reviews are published with support from The Online Journalism Project.
