Nightmare alley / Twentieth Century Fox presents ; screenplay by Jules Furthman ; produced by George Jessel ; directed by Edmund Goulding.
Edition:
Blu-ray special edition.
Publisher:
The Criterion Collection,
Copyright Date:
2021
Description:
1 videodisc (approximately 111 min.) : sound, black and white ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 folded insert (12 unnumbered pages : color illustration ; 72 x 17 cm, folded to 17 x 12)
Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Taylor Holmes, Mike Mazurki, Ian Keith. Based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham. Originally released as a motion picture in 1947. Full screen (1.37:1). Special features: audio commentary from 2005 featuring film historians James Ursini and Alain Silver; new interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith; new interview with performer and historian Todd Robbins; interview from 2007 with actor Coleen Gray; audio excerpt of a 1971 interview with Henry King in which the filmmaker discusses actor Tyrone Power; trailer; [insert] essay by film writer and screenwriter Kim Morgan.
Summary:
"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.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.