The Dryden will screen Le mura di Malapaga (The Walls of Malapaga, René Clément, Italy/France 1949, 89 min., 35mm, Italian, French w/subtitles) as part of the Academy Awards at 90 series.

René Clément, the leading post—World War II and pre—Nouvelle Vague French filmmaker, most famous for his 1952 classic Forbidden Games, made an international name for himself with this peculiar and highly original mixture of two seemingly incomparable genres: neorealist drama and film noir. Jean Gabin, the biggest French star of the time, plays a criminal on the run across Europe who finds shelter in Italian Genoa, where he falls in love with a local woman. Recipient of the honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1950, The Walls of Malapaga is one of those films once respected as prime examples of high-quality French cinema, only to be then quickly (and perhaps unfairly) almost completely forgotten in favor of a much louder, younger generation of French filmmakers.

[source: George Eastman Museum, 2018-Mar-5]