Screening & Live Event
The Gambler
Sunday, June 4, 2017, 7:00 p.m.
Museum of the Moving Image – Redstone Theater
With James Toback in person
Dir. Karel Reisz. 1974. 111 mins. 35mm. With James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton, Morris Carnovsky. In a magnetic, psychologically rich performance, James Caan plays Axel Freed, a college literature professor who teaches Dostoyevsky by day and echoes the author's anti-heroic the Gambler by night. James Toback's wise and unpredictable script posits a man who gambles not to win, but to lose, purposefully and anxiously squandering opportunities and privileges won by his immigrant family. It is a fascinating, unconventionally thrilling 1970s portrait of a man deliberately behaving with his worst interests in mind. In his four-star Chicago Sun-Times review, Roger Ebert wrote, "The Gambler, which begins as a portrait of Axel Freed’s personality, develops into the story of his world, and then pays off as a thriller. We become so absolutely contained by Axel’s problems and dangers that they seem like our own."
Tickets: $15 (Free for members at the Film Lover and MoMI Kids Premium levels and above). Order tickets online. (Members may contact [email protected]Ticket purchase includes Museum admission (see gallery hours). View the Museum’s ticketing policy here. For more information on membership and to join online, visit our membership page.
