April 4  |  Buy Tickets

In the pantheon of American crime writers—those masters of noir whose powerful vernacular style and dark and subversive themes transformed American culture and writing—David Goodis was a unique figure. Born in Philadelphia, he brought a jazzy, expressionist style and an almost hallucinatory intensity to his spare, passionate, uncompromising novels of mean streets and doomed people. Though little acknowledged during his lifetime, he has long enjoyed an international cult following, and his works have been adapted for the screen by directors including Sam Fuller (Street of No Return), Jean-Jacques Beineix (Moon in the Gutter), Jacques Tourneur (Nightfall) and, most famously, François Truffaut (Shoot the Piano Player). On the occasion of the Library of America’s new Goodis anthology, comprising five novels from the peak of his career, we are pleased to present two classic, rarely-screened film noirs based on Goodis’s work.