7:30 p.m., Thursdays, January 18 through February 22 at the PFA Theater

Pacific Film Archive is delighted to welcome author and film critic David Thomson for six evenings of screenings and discussion in January and February. He will share his vast knowledge of cinema and his often witty insights into film history with the PFA audiences in what he envisions as a series of conversations.

The Atlantic Monthly called Thomson the "greatest living film critic and historian" and the San Francisco Chronicle named him"the best writer about the movies." Thomson, who was born in London and lives in San Francisco, is renowned as the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film; the recently published biography Nicole Kidman; Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick; Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles; Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes and the novels Suspects and Silver Light. He contributes film commentary and criticism to The New York Times, Film Comment, Movieline, The New Republic, The Independent (U.K.), and Salon.

We are delighted to welcome Thomson to PFA with a selection of films that illuminate his ideas about how the movies changed in the late fifties when, as he notes: ". . . classical Hollywood was in ruins-both as a business and as a way of telling stories. And so a group of films appeared-without any organizing principle-in which it was evident that such old codes as genre, suspense, comedy, happy ending, and stardom were being abandoned. . ." These films are also great fun, chosen by Thomson "because our shared knowledge of the movies will help generate a freer conversation."

Touch of Evil (1958), directed by and starring Orson Welles, will be shown on January 18, followed on January 25 by Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), starring James Stewart and Kim Novak. Programs in February will present Some Like It Hot (1959), directed by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon on February 1 and, on February 8, Howard Hawks's 1959 Western Rio Bravo, starring John Wayne, Dean Martin, and Angie Dickinson. The series also includes two influential films from the mid-1960s that exemplify how the movies had changed by then: Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965) and Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.

Films will be shown at the PFA Theater, 2575 Bancroft Way near Bowditch Street, on the southern edge of the UC Berkeley campus. General admission is $8, and tickets can be purchased from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (except from December 24 through January 2) at the Berkeley Art Museum, by calling our charge-by-phone line (510.642.5249), or evenings at the PFA Theater beginning January 11.

Program notes, written by David Thomson, follow.