Screening & Live Event
The Gambler

Part of The Caan Film Festival
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 members@movingimage.us with any questions regarding online reservations.)

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.