The theme of this year’s Noir City series at SIFF Cinema is “newspaper noir”, perfectly fitting when you consider what’s going on with the Times and the P-I of late.

The week-long celebration of movies that focus on the darker side of life includes 14 films set in the old media world of newspapers, radio and print publishing. Screenings for all seven nights are double features and this year SIFF has worked up a program that reflects the way movies were shown in 1940s theaters, pairing the feature film each night with a B-movie of the era, a shorter movie purposely made to fill that second slot.

The series begins on Friday, February 13, with Deadline USA and Scandal Sheet. In Deadline USA, the fictional New York Day is a newspaper that’s just about to be sold to its main competitor and Humphrey Bogart is a veteran Day reporter who decides to go out in style by taking on the city’s biggest gangster, racing against time to nail him for murder before the presses slam to a stop. Released in 1952, Deadline USA predicts the future of the real newspaper industry with startling accuracy. Scandal Sheet tells the twisted tale of a tabloid editor who murders his wife and then assigns a hungry young reporter to “find the killer”.

Saturday’s double bill is The Unsuspected, in which Claude Raines plays a popular radio personality who uses his murder mystery show to flush out the killer of a young woman and solve the tricky question of why his niece can’t remember the man who claims to be her husband. It’s paired with Desperate, in which a newlywed couple flees from both the police and a gang of robbers leds by ruthless Raymond Burr.

Sunday sees Ace in the Hole, a film that critics of the time called “the most bitter, cynical, mean-spirited movie ever made” in which rotten reporter Kirk Douglas purposely interferes to drag out the misery of a trapped miner in the hopes of exploiting the tragedy to boost his own sagging ratings. Second billed Cry of the Hunted sees a Los Angeles cop tracking a killer through the Lousiana swamp while battling the partner who hates him.

The editor of a “true crime” magazine makes news himself when he gets framed for murder in The Big Clock Monday night, with a Strange Triangle of an embezzler husband and the wife who will stop at nothing, not even ruining the life of an innocent man, to keep him from trouble.

Tuesday’s two are Chicago Deadline with noir-mainstay Alan Ladd as a reporter obsessed by the life and death of woman found dead in a Chicago brothel and Johnny Stool Pigeon one of the first Hollywood films to focus on drug smuggling.

While the City Sleeps, Wednesday, stars Vincent Price as the creepy heir to a media conglomerate who challenges his top reporters to crack the story of a serial killer. Also showing: Shakedown with Howard Duff as a member of the paparazzi in 1950 San Francisco who supplements his journalism salary with a dangerous sideline in blackmail.

The series concludes Thursday, Feburary 19, with Ray Milland as a politician who sells his soul to the devil, literally, in Alias Nick Beale teamed with Night Editor in which a cop is charged with the duty of investigating the murder he witnessed while canoodling with his married lover.

Noir City is hosted by noted noir expert Eddie Mueller who will be on hand to introduce the films.