Fata morgana

What better way is there to enjoy a nice early June weekend and experience Palm Springs and its environs than to take in one or more offerings of the desert town's annual Film Noir Festival? I've never attended but plan to take refuge from the heat and the light in an air-conditioned theater this Saturday, relishing the darkness of the venue and of the films' outrageous characters, shadowy photography, fatalistic themes and nasty goings-on.

It does seem strange to escape Los Angeles, perhaps the ultimate noir backdrop, for this purpose, but maybe that's the point. The fans of noir will track its films down wherever they surface, just as inevitable fate will find true noir protagonists wherever they may hide; it's the tail they can't shake. Idyllic settings, including Palm Springs, are transitory and deceptive, only lulling their denizens into fat complacency. The patient Devil claims the known world, or at least all of southern California, as His playground.