Film noir as a genre focuses on the darker side of life—hard-boiled detectives, gangsters, corruption. Often it may involve a certain amount of moral ambivalence or an antihero. Noir films can offer an excellent entrance to discussion of moral questions and insights into the decisions we make.

Rialto Pictures is reissuing a series of classic British noir films on restored 35mm prints. The films will be playing in art houses and museums around the country. For information on where they will play see Rialto's website. I was able to screen two of these films at a screening at Los Angeles's Nu-Art theater, an older single-screen venue that is just perfect for this kind of film.

Brighton Rock, written by Graham Greene and based on his own novel, focuses on a band of small-time hoods. After killing a rival, Pinkie, the young head of the mob, notices that there is a loose end—Rose, a waitress who may have seen one of the hoods in a restaurant. An entertainer is being something of an amateur detective in trying to solve the rival's death. Pinkie is also dealing with a rival mob that is taking over the town. As things begin to close in on him, Pinkie becomes more desperate and more dangerous. He courts Rose, seeking to marry her because a wife can't testify against her husband.

Greene's books often have a spiritual side to them and this film clearly reflects that. Catholic faith comes up at several points. Both Pinkie and Rose are Catholics. Pinkie will only marry Rose civilly because it would mean something else if he were to let a priest marry them. Rose goes to church before they are to be married so she can "be in a state of grace before I marry you," although wonders if confession will ever be enough. In the final scene, Rose rejects the idea of absolution in her life, but a nun speaks of "the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God." The end of the film can be seen as nothing less than a gift of God's grace in Rose's pain.

It Always Rains on Sunday has a much different feel. There is an escaped prisoner, but more than anything else, this film is a slice of life in a working-class neighborhood in post-war England. The story revolves around the Sandigate family one Sunday. We discover that years ago, when the missus worked at the local pub, she knew and loved Tommy Swann, who escaped from prison the night before. When he shows up, she harbors him without her family knowing. Meanwhile we see the family going about their Sunday activities. One daughter is trying to connect with a married man. Her little brother, seeing them in an embrace, blackmails the man for a free harmonica. There is a sideplot about three no- so-bright crooks who are trying to fence a gross of roller skates. All these various stories have been woven to make a larger story.

While Tommy Swann and Rose Sandigate may seem like the central characters, they only represent the obvious noir aspects of the film. Here is a criminal and the woman who has loved him all these years and is willing to risk all that she has to save him. But the side stories all have their own noir elements. There is a sense that just about everything we see going on in this typical Sunday carries the kind of moral questioning that noir does so well. We see a lure toward immorality. We see people who don't care that what they are doing is wrong or harmful. Even as we watch, we may smile a bit as these acts are done with a sense of humor. Those little unthinking acts are a contrast to the larger act of compassion and love (illegal though it is) that Rose has decided to do to help Tommy. It is a way of telling us that the issues noir deals with aren't just stories of gangsters and detectives, but the same issues that we skate over each day.

Other films that Rialto is including in its Brit Noir series are: The Third Man (1949, directed by Carol Reed), perhaps the high point of British noir. It is a spy thriller, also based on a Graham Greene novel, starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten; Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell) about a man who kills women and films their deaths; and The Fallen Idol (1948, Carol Reed), again written by Graham Greene, in which a butler is suspected of his wife's death, the only witness being an eight-year-old boy.