Filmmakers have long found sordid inspiration in the dead-end tales of pulp writer David Goodis. In films by Jacques Tourneur, François Truffaut, and many others, this series explores a noir universe peopled with tormented losers and doomed lowlifes, where Goodis's obsessions are written-or rewritten-on the screen.
Read full descriptionIntroduced by Elliot Lavine. Jean-Jacques Beineix evokes Goodis's murky and haunted world with sinister artifice. Starring Gérard Depardieu and Nastassia Kinski.
Nicholas Kazan in Person. Kazan and Steven Soderbergh directed two totally different TV takes on the same Goodis story.
Jean-Louis Trintignant and Robert Ryan in René Clément's study of pent-up rivalries in a claustrophobic gangland hideout.
Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, this French retooling of The Burglar shifts the action to Greece, with a famed car chase as centerpiece of the high-speed caper.
A boozehound author and his chilly wife go to the tropics to revive their marriage, but Haiti becomes a stand-in for hell.
Introduced by Eddie Muller. Jacques Tourneur's noir unravels fall guy Aldo Ray's paranoid past. With stunning outdoor cinematography by Burnett Guffey.
Introduced by Eddie Muller. A miasma of incestuous desire hangs over thief Dan Duryea and sister Jayne Mansfield in Goodis's pulpy plot.
Introduced by Mike White. A brand-new print of Truffaut's frolicsome yet faithful genre pastiche, starring a hangdog Charles Aznavour. Repeated on August 5.
Introduced by Barry Gifford. A prison escapee has plastic surgery and turns out to be Humphrey Bogart: Delmer Daves experiments with a subjective camera in this S.F.-set noir. With Lauren Bacall.
Introduction by Dan Hodges. Ann Sheridan is a wartime adulteress who pays the price when the troops come home in this dank drama.