SILVER

New 4K Restoration
LE SAMOURAÏ
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, LE SAMOURAÏ is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture — with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology. DIR/SCR Jean-Pierre Melville; PROD Raymond Borderie, Eugène Lépicier. France, 1967, color, 105 min. In French with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Restored in 4K by Pathé and The Criterion Collection at L'Immagine Ritrovata from the 35mm original camera negative.

In Memoriam: Alain Delon (1935–2024)

Followed by:

THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942)
One of the seminal films in Hollywood's noir movement, this taut thriller made stars of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, who would become Paramount's biggest box-office duo of the 1940s. Ladd plays lone-wolf assassin Philip Raven, who enlists the aid of Lake's Ellen Graham in freeing himself from a frame-up by a secret cadre of "fifth columnists." John Seitz's camerawork presages the shadowy dread he'd bring to sunny Los Angeles in DOUBLE INDEMNITY. The film co-stars Robert Preston and Laird Cregar and features Lake's amazing costumes, courtesy of Edith Head. A must-see! (Note adapted from Film Noir Foundation.) DIR Frank Tuttle; SCR W.R. Burnett, Albert Maltz, from the novel by Graham Greene. U.S., 1942, b&w, 81 min. NOT RATED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942) also screens on Tue, Oct. 15. View details here.