Described by The Washington Post as "perhaps our best writer on the movies," Guest Programmer David Thomson has taught film studies at Dartmouth College and served as a regular contributor to The New York Times, Film Comment and Movieline. Thomson, born in London and now a resident of San Franciso, also has written a number of books including the highly respected New Biographical Dictionary of Film and biographies of David O. Selznick and Orson Welles.

Thomson tells host Robert Osborne that, for him, the "first test" of a film is its director. For his programming picks, he deliberately chose lesser-known works of four important filmmakers so that many viewers would come to the movies "fresh."

Fred Zinnemann's stark drama Act of Violence (1949) is a "film of atmosphere," and a surprising one because it shows a "happy studio" - MGM-exploring darker territory after World War II. Otto Preminger's thriller Angel Face (1953) finds the director in a "wonderfully accomplished" phase of his career and, as a bonus, stars Thomson favorite Jean Simmons as a beautiful femme fatale.

Stanley Kubrick's crime drama The Killing (1956) has a "very set formula," but the director does such "wonderful, crazy, personal things with it" that he became the hot new filmmaker at that time. Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955), "a comic-book version of Citizen Kane," found the troubled genius working "under terribly difficult circumstances" but provides a fascinating "portrait of the man and things that interested him."

by Roger Fristoe