Down By Law

Director: Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch, Jim Jarmusch

1986 / 107min / 35mm

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a radio DJ (Tom Waits), a small-time pimp (John Lurie), and an oblivious Italian (Roberto Benigni) meet in a New Orleans prison, and wind up on the lam in the bayou, the entire adventure shot in majestic monochrome by Müller, whose keen eye for the images of America’s grubby underbelly finds plenty of faded beauty to appreciate in the Big Easy and its surrounding bayous. The joke-like set-up will evolve into a laconic comic caper, a study in male standoffishness and self-isolation that finally epitomizes the Benigni character’s broken-English credo: “It’s a sad and beautiful world.”