Presented by the Music Box and the Film Noir Foundation, this week-long festival features 35-millimeter prints of film noir classics and rarities, showing as double features at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604. Noir scholars Alan K. Rode and Foster Hirsch will introduce films and lead discussions. Tickets are $10 per film or $12 for double features; festival passes, good for all films, are $50 at the theater box office or $40 in advance at brownpapertickets.com.
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Nightmare Alley This dark and determinedly sleazy 1947 film comes as quite a surprise from its director—Edmund Goulding, whose specialty through the 30s, in films like Grand Hotel and The Old Maid, was his inveterate tastefulness (although, come to think of it, the sleaze of Nightmare Alley has a suspicious gloss). Tyrone Power stars as a sideshow barker who successfully promotes himself as a mind reader, only to have his ruthlessness catch up with him in a finale that still seems shockingly draconian, particularly where a matinee idol like Power is concerned. A fascinating anomaly. With Colleen Gray and Joan Blondell; the screenplay, adapted from William Lindsay Gresham’s novel, is by Howard Hawks’s frequent collaborator Jules Furthman. 111 min. See Cliff Doerksen’s in-depth review. —Dave Kehr 2 and 6:15 PM
He Ran all the Way Shortly before he was driven into exile by the Hollywood blacklist, the talented and neglected John Berry made this 1951 film, the last of John Garfield, who died of a heart attack at 39 (many believe because of pressures related to his own blacklisting). It’s a fitting and powerful testament to the actor’s poignancy and power as a working-class punk. Here he plays a hoodlum fleeing a bungled robbery, falling for a young woman (Shelley Winters), and desperately holding her family hostage while oscillating wildly between mistrust and a desire to be part of this family circle. Enhanced by an effective script (adapted by Guy Endore and Hugh Butler from a Sam Ross novel), superb cinematography by James Wong Howe, and a keen sense of working-class manners, this is a highly affecting thriller that draws us relentlessly into its plangent moral tensions; with Wallace Ford, Selena Royale, Gladys George, and Norman Lloyd. 77 min. —Jonathan Rosenbaum 5:45 and 9:30 PM
Nightmare Alley See Saturday. 5 and 9 PM
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