Eddie Muller, the Prince of Noir

Muller was an obvious choice to be involved in the Festival's plan to show a selection of films noirs.  He's a writer and self-styled "cultural archaeologist" who lives in San Francisco and has become a world expert on Hollywood noir films.

He is founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation, which aims to preserve, restore and publicise such films, which have often disappeared, or been forgotten or damaged, and help make them popular again.  The Foundation has staged an annual Noir City festival in San Francisco since 2003.

Muller's father was a sports journalist and from an early age Muller was familiar with newsrooms and boxing rings.  He used these experiences in 2002 to write a novel called "The Distance," which won the "best first novel" prize the following year from the Private Eye Writers of America association.  One of its characters, Billy Nichols, was based on his father.  Nichols surfaced again in "Shadow Boxer," which he wrote in 2003.

At the sixth Noir City festival in February 2009, novelist James Ellroy called him "The Czar of Noir."

See Muller's website

Eddie Muller

© DR / Coll. Institut Lumière