This month's guest programmer, the brilliant cartoonist Jules Feiffer, is renowned for his sophisticated, lightly subversive and often hilarious style. In addition to his Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoons, Feiffer also has penned plays [Little Murders] and screenplays [Carnal Knowledge] as well as children's books, novels and the 1020 memoir Backing into Forward. New this month is No Go Sleep!, a children's book illustrated by Feiffer with text by his daughter, Kate.

Feiffer selects a variety of films from the 1930s and '40s that seems to mirror his own mix of humor and mordant commentary. The Depression-era musical Gold Diggers of 1933 [1933], he tells TCM host Robert Osborne, "resonated with the times" because it is "high-spirited and optimistic and full of energy." He considers the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey [1936] the best of its genre, with a teaming of William Powell and Carole Lombard that is "simply magical."

The early film noir They Drive By Night [1940] is, Feiffer allows, "not a great movie by any means," with a second half that drifts into "ridiculous melodrama." But the first part of the film is "a very interesting and honest depiction of life on the road by these truck drivers," with dynamic performances from George Raft and Humphrey Bogart.

The crime thriller This Gun For Hire [1942] contains a star-making performance by Alan Ladd as a psychopathic killer that Feiffer finds more filled with emotion - "fear, anger, vengefulness" - than anything the actor would later attempt. "I remember when the movie came out" he says, "and all anybody talked about was Alan Ladd."

by Roger Fristoe