When FilmInFocus’ Peter Bowen interviewed crime author George Pelecanos last year about why Washington, D.C., was a noir city, he replied: “Well, we have a legendary crime problem, so yeah. But really noir isn’t about crime; it is about internal psychosis, claustrophobia. Noir can be in any city; it is really about what is going on inside the people.” Apparently, there is indeed a darkness inside the people of the city’s capital as the success last year of the inaugural Noir City DC film festival was such a success that the event is returning this year. Organized by the Film Noir Foundation and housed at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, Noir City DC 2009 collects together an intoxicating selection of stone-cold classics of the genre, and throws in a good handful of lesser-known gems for audiences to discover. Likely films like Ace in the Hole, The Big Combo, Gun Crazy, The Killers and Out of the Past will be familiar to a lot of movie aficionados, yet also well worth checking out are hard-boiled movies such as Slightly Scarlet – an adaptation of noir legend James M. Cain's Love's Lovely Counterfeit (and a rare color noir) – and the racy Night Editor, about the wife of a cop who gets sexually excited by witnessing a murder.