A Thousand Decisions in the Dark: A Film Series with David Thomson

1/18/07 to 2/22/07

By the late fifties, classical Hollywood was in ruins-both as a business and as a way of telling stories. Illustrious critic David Thomson returns to PFA to discuss how the movies responded to the breakdown, screening films-Vertigo, Touch of Evil, Rio Bravo, and Bonnie and Clyde, among others-that defy conventions of genre, stardom, and the happy ending. But these movies don't just illustrate a thesis-they're also great fun. Come and join the conversation.

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  • Touch of Evil, January 18

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Past Films

  • Touch of Evil

    Thursday, January 18 19:30
    Introduced by David Thomson. Charlton Heston is a Mexican cop (!) grappling with Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, and corruption in Welles's ultimate California border noir. “As visually thrilling as it is sin-soaked.”-N.Y. Times
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  • Vertigo

    Thursday, January 25 19:30
    Introduced by David Thomson. Detective Jimmy Stewart combs the Bay Area looking for the secret behind Kim Novak's beauty in Hitchcock's sinister ode to voyeurism, death, and amorous fixation. “Perhaps the finest film starring San Francisco.”-S.F. Chronicle
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  • Some Like It Hot

    Thursday, February 1 19:30
    Introduced by David Thomson. Marilyn Monroe shines in Wilder's outrageous cross-dressing comedy, selected by the American Film Institute as the funniest movie ever made.
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  • Rio Bravo

    Thursday, February 8 19:30
    Introduced by David Thomson. Sheriff John Wayne must keep a killer jailed, but needs help from local drunkard Dean Martin, baby-faced Ricky Nelson, and dance-hall girl Angie Dickinson in Howard Hawks's loose-limbed Western.
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  • Pierrot le Fou

    Thursday, February 15 19:30
    Introduced by David Thomson. Godard is a brilliantly jaundiced tourist in the stylistic universe that is Hollywood. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina play "the last romantic couple," and Sam Fuller puts in an iconic appearance.
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  • Bonnie and Clyde

    Thursday, February 22 19:30
    Introduced by David Thomson. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway make a beautiful, deadly Bonnie and Clyde in Arthur Penn's infamous '60s revisionist gangster flick, which in 1967 made the cover of Time as "The New Cinema: Violence . . . Sex . . . Art."
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