San Francisco Public Library

Nightmare alley, Twentieth Century Fox presents ; screenplay by Jules Furthman ; produced by George Jessel ; directed by Edmund Goulding

eng

videorecording

Rating: Not rated

Nightmare alley

videorecording

1243629860

Twentieth Century Fox presents ; screenplay by Jules Furthman ; produced by George Jessel ; directed by Edmund Goulding

111

Criterion collection, 1078

"Darkness lurks behind the bright lights of a traveling carnival in one of the most haunting and perverse film noirs of the 1940s. Adapted from the scandalous best seller by William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley gave Tyrone Power a chance to subvert his matinee-idol image with a ruthless performance as Stanton Carlisle, a small-time carny whose unctuous charm propels him to fame as a charlatan spiritualist, but whose unchecked ambition leads him down a path of moral degradation and self-destruction. Although its strange, sordid atmosphere shocked contemporary audiences, this long-difficult-to-see reflection of postwar angst has now taken its place as one of the defining noirs of its era--a fatalistic downward slide into existential oblivion"--Container

live action