Two 'art' directors in Savant reviews tonight. The New Wave's rebel poster boy thumbs his nose at the mainstream establishment, and a blacklist victim makes good in England with a rough and tough gangster classic, circa 1960.

Criterion brings us a dazzling package with Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt, the kind of film that warms the expresso of the art crowd, while infuriating audiences expecting a 'normal' movie. Brigitte Bardot (and her P.B.), Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, and Fritz Lang star.

Joseph Losey's The Criminal is a powerful gangster drama with a bruiser-weight Stanley Baker as a crook who spends more time in jail than out, yet still smirks at society as if he has all the answers. This is a British actor-watchers dream ... there must be a dozen name male character actors in this thing, years before they became big.

No fancy news tonight. The real fans are at the Cinematheque, where Ray Harryhausen is debuting his recently completed fairy tale, The Tortoise and the Hare. I'm going to hit the sack ... it's my 14th hour in front of a keyboard. Might as well be a college student, like many of my readers ... Thanks, Glenn Erickson