As temperatures drop and fallen leaves remind us of the cycle of life and decay, October arrives and with it the return of Noir City D.C.: The Washington D.C. Film Noir Festival. As always, Eddie Muller and the Film Noir Foundation bring a smartly selected lineup of crime dramas to Silver Spring’s AFI Silver for the 21st annual film festival. This year’s theme is Darkness Has No Borders: 15 key programs pair classics of American and British film noir with non-English-language dramas that prove hard-boiled gangsters, tough dames, and the alienation that defines film noir isn’t a phenomenon unique to Tinseltown and the Brits.

The series includes such perennials as This Gun for Hire (paired with Le Samourai in memory of Alain Delon, who died earlier this year, on Oct. 11 and 14), but we’ve taken a look at some of the less frequently screened titles across three gritty and fascinating double bills.

Assault on the Pay Train and Armored Car Robbery

The most conventional of the pairings we’re previewing, these two films follow doomed characters in the aftermath of two big heists—one in Rio de Janeiro, the other in Los Angeles. Armored Car Robbery (directed by Richard Fleischer, 1950) tells a taut 67-minute crime story that bursts with action—taking viewers from L.A.’s legendary Wrigley Field to the old standby of crime dramas of any age, a strip club. If the structure is standard procedural, the character actors bring it all to sardonic seedy life. William Talman stars as Purvis, the heist’s ringleader, who—while barking instructions to key man Benny (Douglas Fowley)—happens to be having an affair with Benny’s wife, blond burlesque queen Yvonne LeDoux (Adele Jergens). Charles McGraw plays the veteran police lieutenant out for revenge after his partner is killed in the botched heist. Is the armored car a metaphor for the seemingly impenetrable shells we put up around ourselves, ultimately vulnerable to a couple of handguns and a pair of long gams? 

Based on the true story of a legendary Brazilian heist, Assault on the Pay Train (directed by Roberto Farias, 1962) is a far cry from the B-movie glamour of the L.A. heist. Tio (Eliezer Gomes) leads a gang of thieves from the slums of Rio on a train robbery so daring the local cops can’t believe Brazilian crooks were capable of it. Unlike Armored Car Robbery, there are no strip clubs in this scenario, just dire poverty, as Tio divvies up the $30 million pot among his co-conspirators—and with even more complications, his two wives. Naturally, there is no honor among thieves, and between flashy spending and a series of double crosses, it doesn’t end well.

These contrasting robberies provide the most direct contrast between American noir and its non-English counterpart; the most striking element being the appalling conditions in Rio’s favelas, where the film captures barefoot children happily playing in little more than mud.

Assault on the Pay Train and Armored Car Robbery screen in 35mm on Oct. 12 at 11:15 a.m. (with an introduction by Eddie Muller) and Oct. 17 at 3:45 p.m. $18.

Zero Focus and Across the Bridge

This pair of thrillers from Japan and England take very different looks at the nature of identity. The densely layered plot of Zero Focus (directed by Yoshitarô Nomura, 1961) fans out as newlywed Teiko (Yoshiko Kuga) tries to find out what happened to her husband, Kenichi (Kôji Nanbara), who disappeared on a business trip only a week after their wedding. The more she asks questions, the more she realizes she had no idea who Kenichi really was. The film’s structure is a little too complex, the mystery revealed in a series of alternating flashbacks. But what maintains the film’s sense of dread is the bleak wintry landscape of Kanazawa, the town where Kenichi lived his secret lives, along cold streets flanked by mounds of snow piles, all on an island surrounded by foreboding cliffs that lend an air of dreary romanticism to the prosaic story. 

Across the Bridge (directed by Ken Annakin, 1957) features the great Rod Steiger in a role that amplifies noir’s signature alienation. In this British adaptation of a Graham Greene novel, the American actor plays Carl, a German businessman who runs to Mexico to avoid embezzlement charges. Across the Bridge’s connection with Zero Focus lies along the banker’s escape route: on a train headed for the border, Carl kills a stranger to steal his passport, but then learns that the man he killed is wanted for murder in Mexico. Steiger finds humanity in what could have been a ridiculous role, and he finds a formidable co-lead in Dolores—his victim’s dog, whom Carl spends most of the movie trying to shoo away. This intrigue-heavy double bill isn’t seamless, but Across the Bridge is essential for noir and dog lovers.

Zero Focus and Across the Bridge screen on Oct. 19 at 3:30 p.m. (with an introduction by Foster Hirsch) and Oct. 23 at 3:15 p.m. $18.

Odd Man Out and Victims of Sin

These two must-see films seem to have little in common thematically, but both create a highly palpable sense of space. The camerawork immerses you so completely in the black-and-white grit of these ominous dark alleys that, by the time the tragedies end, you’ll feel like their neighborhoods are your own. Odd Man Out (directed by Carol Reed, 1947) stars James Mason as Johnny, an Irish Nationalist who reluctantly takes part in a payroll heist where he is mortally wounded. For much of the film, Johnny is bleeding to death, but Reed (who also directed 1949’s The Third Man), who shot exteriors in West Belfast, instills order into this chaos by methodically leading you down the cobblestone roads where Johnny and his friends wander in a fatalistic dance. When it starts snowing in the final act, it feels like a much darker parallel to It’s a Wonderful Life.

The Mexican production Victims of Sin (directed by Emilio Fernández, 1951) is even more of a revelation. Ninón Sevilla (a Mexican dancer born in Havana) stars as Violeta, a showgirl who rescues a baby from the trash and tries valiantly to keep the child from his wicked father, Rodolfo (Rodolfo Acosta, a frequent villain in American westerns). Set largely in Mexican nightclubs but bursting with Cuban music from acts such as Pérez Prado and Rita Montaner, this operatic crime drama features delirious imagery such as a black-draped Violeta crossing through busy traffic with her baby, and a Mariachi band walking in formation into the path of an oncoming train. How can a movie be both so brutal and so musical? This is a heartbreaker of a double bill, but if you see one pair in this series (that is, in addition to Le Samourai and This Gun for Hire), make it this one.

Odd Man Out and Victims of Sin screen on Oct. 12 at 7:30 p.m. (with an introduction by Eddie Muller) and Oct. 14 at 3:15 p.m. $18.

Noir City D.C.: The Washington D.C. Film Noir Festival opens on Oct. 11 and runs through the 24 at AFI Silver. silver.afi.com. $18–$200.