Part of Lonely Places: Film Noir and the American Landscape
Sunday, November 15, 2015, 2:00 p.m.

Dir. Edmund Goulding. 1947, 110 mins. 35mm. With Tyrone Power, Coleen Gray. Capturing the sleazy allure of the carny through Lee Garmes’s atmospheric cinematography, Nightmare Alley follows a crooked psychic who rises from fairground swindles to classy nightclub acts and an unholy alliance with a manipulative psychoanalyst. With the precision and ruthlessness of a scalpel, Jules Furthman’s script dissects the mind-reading scam, in which trust and feigned empathy are just a means for bilking money out of suckers. Tyrone Power plumbs the depths of corruption and degradation as an homme fatale at once arrogant and perversely drawn to the lowest depths. The true noir landscape, this film reveals, is the human mind.

Tickets: $12 ($9 for senior citizens and students / free for members at the Film Lover level and above). Order tickets online. (Members may contact [email protected] with any questions regarding online reservations.)

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