The Harvard Film Archive annual movie marathon returns with a series of fascinating films from around the globe that unfold in the forlorn and fittingly nocturnal world of high-stakes gambling. From the seedy Reno of Robert Altman’s California Split to the decadent Monte Carlo of Jacques Demy’s Bay of Angels, from underworld Tokyo (where gambling was, and still is, illegal) in Shinoda Masahiro’s Pale Flower to the glittering Cannes of Henri Verneuil’s Any Number Can Win, together these films vividly conjure up the strange floating world of the gambling den and the dark spells it can hold over those who are drawn to its games of chance, or destiny. The films share a melancholy, hard-hearted quality and a frequent turn to gambling as a metaphor for the human condition—an approach richly explored in Mike Hodges’ neo-noir classic Croupier and Pale Flower, two films set in sinister netherworlds and told from the perspective of brooding, existentially troubled anti-heroes. In the rarely screened crime classics Johnny O’Clock and Any Number Can Win the casino is transformed into a stage for gangsters to risk it all to take the house in the most daring gamble of them all. For the price of one ticket, you are invited to spend the night and early morning in the company of the lonely hearts and troubled souls who inhabit this series of shadowy, mesmerizing films.