Given the darkness of the times, I wonder if Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian were conscious of having picked a fairly dark selection of movies for the next installment of the perennially invaluable Buffalo Film Seminars. The series opens this Tuesday with Gold Diggers of 1933, the classic musical whose still-astonishing Busby Berkeley production numbers provide an ironic counterpoint to the palpable Depression setting. There’s no Fred and Ginger elegance in this, a musical that would only have been made at Warner Brothers, the studio that specialized in gangster thrillers and gritty social dramas. This session of the Seminar is not wholly lacking in comic fare—Tootsie on March 25, Billy Wilder’s Witness for the Prosecution on February 12. But it is clearly dominated by films that hold a dark candle to the American experience, from Wilder’s ultimate exercise in cynicism Ace in the Hole (Feb. 5) to Clint Eastwood’s western elegy Unforgiven (April 15.) It looks like a fascinating season.

Tuesday, January 15. Every Tuesday at 7pm (except March 11) through April 22.

The Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main Street

(855-3022, buffalofilmseminars.com). $8.50 regular,

$6 62 & over, $6.50 students.