From September 4 - 10, NOIR CITY: Chicago will present ‘Face the Music!’, a 19-film program of crime and mystery films featuring . . . musicians! From early examples of Hollywood noir like Blues in the Night (1941) to jazz-fueled sixties’ gems like All Night Long (1962) and A Man Called Adam (1966), the movies feature genuine musical legends like Elvis Presley, Sammy Davis Jr., Hoagy Carmichael, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, and Dexter Gordon performing alongside film noir favorites including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Ida Lupino, Dan Duryea, Linda Darnell, and Rita Hayworth.
Screenings on September 4 - 6 will be hosted by Eddie Muller, Film Noir Foundation founder and host of TCM's Noir Alley.
Screenings on September 7 - 10 will be hosted by FNF board member Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film.
Series Pricing
Series Pass - $150 GA / $120 Music Box Members (Grants admission into all screenings in NOIR CITY: CHICAGO 2025)
Individual Screenings - $15 GA / $14 Senior / $12 Music Box Members
Coming up in this Series
All Night Long
Opens September 10
All Night Long redresses William Shakespeare’s Othello for pulp audiences. Patrick McGoohan is an ambitious drummer who tries to coax a famous singer... Read more
Black Angel
Opens September 5
Kirk Bennett is sentenced to die for the murder of gorgeous actress Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling), but his wife (June Vincent) won’t give up tryin... Read more
Blues in the Night
Opens September 5
The first noir film to delve into the jazz world, Blues in the Night details the rise and inevitable fall of a St. Louis band. They land their big bre... Read more
The Crimson Canary
Opens September 10
The Crimson Canary boasts two things that make B-movies so much fun: a great premise and a short runtime. A trumpet player gets locked up after the le... Read more
Face the Music
Opens September 7
A forgotten gem that inspired the name of this year’s festival, Face the Music teases a romance between an American trumpet player and a London singer... Read more
Gilda
Opens September 7
Rita Hayworth created her Hollywood “Love Goddess” legend in this tailor-made romantic drama, which Eddie Muller has described as “more tango than mov... Read more
Hangover Square
Opens September 8
In this moody gaslight noir, Laird Cregar, one of the most memorable character actors of the forties, had his first—and final—starring role as the tal... Read more
Kansas City
Opens September 6
Jennifer Jason Leigh is a Jean Harlow obsessed housewife trying to free her loser husband from the clutches of a local gangster. She kidnaps the wife... Read more
King Creole
Opens September 6
Elvis Presley is the headstrong teen who can sing. Walter Matthau is the crime boss who wants to own him. The dance between these two makes up the cen... Read more
Love Me or Leave Me
Opens September 6
The tumultuous life of dancer-singer Ruth Etting (Doris Day, in a revelatory performance) gets a vivid retelling in this vivacious and vitriolic biop... Read more
A Man Called Adam
Opens September 10
Sammy Davis, Jr. like you’ve never seen him before! Sammy plays Adam, the cornetist whose prodigious talent is dwarfed only by his penchant for self-d... Read more
The Man I Love
Opens September 7
As flinty chanteuse Petey Brown, Ida Lupino is at the apex of her big-screen glamour, offering a radiantly romantic vision of the post-WWII American w... Read more
The Man with the Golden Arm
Opens September 4
Frank Sinatra is Frankie Machine, a hustler and recovering drug addict. Frankie decides to go straight and pursue his dream of becoming a musician, bu... Read more
Nocturne
Opens September 5
When Alfred Hitchcock protégé Joan Harrison landed at RKO in 1946, she pulled an abandoned script from deep in the archives to make her producing debu... Read more
Pete Kelly's Blues
Opens September 6
The lone Technicolor offering of the festival has Jack Webb as a Prohibition-era bandleader who refuses to bend the knee to a local bootlegger. The ac... Read more
Round Midnight
Opens September 9
Round Midnight is a devastating chronicle of addiction inspired by the lives of jazz legends Lester Young and Bud Powell. The film blends the struggle... Read more
Sweet Smell of Success
Opens September 4
A box-office disaster upon original release, Sweet Smell of Success is now considered one of best films of the 1950s—as well as the definitive cinemat... Read more
To Have and Have Not
Opens September 5
Humphrey Bogart is an aimless fisherman who gets drawn into the growing French Resistance in Martinique. Lauren Bacall is the American songbird who se... Read more
The Wrong Man
Opens September 8
The only film by The Master of Suspense based on a true story. Henry Fonda plays real-life jazz musician Emanuel Balestrero, a bass player at Manhatta... Read more