SATURDAY EVENING MAY 6

ODD MAN OUT  7:00

James Mason took a giant step into international stardom as Johnny McQueen, just-released IRA leader who has a harrowing "dark night of the soul" after a heist goes wrong and he is severely wounded. Carol Reed eschews any cheap Christ-like comparisons for Johnny, opting for his own simmering exploration of Jean-Paul Sartre's famous dictum that "Hell…is other people." Sublime, grotesque, and above all darkly gleaming in the desolate glory of its nocturnal photography, courtesy of the great Robert Krasker (THE THIRD MAN, BRIEF ENCOUNTER, SENSO). With: James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, William Hartnell, F. J. McCormick, Fay Compton, Denis O'Dea, Robert Beatty, Dan O'herlihy, Katheen Ryan

UK (1947, 116min)  Director: Carol Reed. Screenplay: F. L. Green, R. C. Sherriff. From the novel by F. L. Green. Photography: Robert Krasker. Music: William Allwyn

THE NOOSE / PETLA  9:15

Think THE LOST WEEKEND on steroids. Kuba Kowalski (a haunted Gustaw Holoubek) is as much a victim of his blown-out society than he is a self-loathing poseur, however—and displaced rage is what fuels despair and desolation here, as opposed to THE LOST WEEKEND's weak-kneed Don Burnham (Ray Milland). In the words of Anastasia Lin: "A devastatingly choreographed pas-de-deux of psychological strangulation"—and we watch as the metaphorical noose tightens around Kuba as he dives deeper and deeper into hallucinatory intoxication. Director Has follows Carol Reed in depicting a world that all too often closes ranks on those it is ostensibly claiming to support. With: Gustaw Holoubek, Aleksandra Slaska, Teresa Szmigielowna, Tadeusz Fijewski, Stansislaw Milski, Wladyslaw Dwoyno, Igor Przengrodzki

POLAND (1958, 96 min) Director: Wojchiech Has. Screenplay: Marek Hiasko. From a story by Wojchiech Has & Marek Hiasko. Photography: Mieczyslaw Jahoda. Music: Tadeusz Baird