Starting yesterday,

Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley is hosting a month long film noir retrospective to celebrate David Goodis. Life with Goodis is about as dark and bleak as it gets. Years ago I went on a roman noir tear, and read Goodis, among others. There’s something mildly addictive about good noir. It might have something to do with confirming the inevitable fact that life is not fair: No bowls of cherries here. Or it might be that readers (and film viewers) feel better knowing their own lives of quiet desperation aren’t even half as bad as the nightmare the noir hero suffers through: schadenfreude. Just a theory ...

Streets of No Return: The Dark Cinema of David Goodis August 1, 2008 - August 23, 2008