Roxie Theater: Love Is My Profession + The Snow Was Black

Best known for his Inspector Maigret policiers, the incredibly prolific Georges Simenon was more daring and perverse in his romans durs—nearly one hundred psychological novels that more directly exposed the dark underside of humanity. FRENCH 24 kicks off with two of his best…
Love Is My Profession / En cas de malheur

6:30 PM First, when a noted barrister (Jean Gabin) decides to defend a comely shoplifter (Brigitte Bardot), the stage is set for a scandalous May-December affair that upends the lawyer’s marriage and kindles a dangerously intense reaction from the girl’s estranged boyfriend. Director Claude-Autant Lara keeps the love story and its escalating impact in sharp focus as the story moves inexorably toward an incendiary conclusion. LOVE IS PROFESSION was a sensation when it was screened at FRENCH 1 in 2014—this might be your last chance to see it on a big screen for quite some time… (1958, dir. Claude Autant-Lara, 122m)
The Snow Was Black / La Neige était sale

8:55 PM It’s followed by the bleak tale of the doomed-from-birth Frank (Daniel Gélin in an icy, haunted performance), a young Frenchman drawn into a life of nihilistic debauchery by a series of macabre circumstances. Expatriate Argentine director Luis Saslavsky is unsparing in his presentation of a young man slowly turned monstrous by his strange upbringing. THE SNOW WAS BLACK was a favorite of Tom Luddy, the long-time mastermind of the Telluride Film Festival. (1954, dir. Luis Saslavsky, 110m)