Forgotten today, novelist William Lindsay Gresham actually worked among the carnival freaks before writing Nightmare Alley, which begins SAM’s fall noir series. This 1947 adaptation is fairly faithful to the book’s cynical tone, though it softens the ending to a note of hope that Gresham never found in his own life. Tyrone Power’s unprincipled grifter learns the code for a mind-reading act from old carny pro Joan Blondell, which he then makes a profitable sensation among the swells at Chicago nightclubs, aided by his cute new wife (Coleen Gray). The third woman in his life is a shrink (Helen Walker) who questions Power’s supposed gifts. If the sex has been edited out of this movie, it relishes the grimy connivance of carny folk (not so different from their Hollywood cousins). Power’s goal, which inevitably destroys him, is to get a line of suckers to pay to see his act. And if he can’t have that, he’ll settle for “a bottle a day and dry place to sleep.” BRIAN MILLER

Thu., Oct. 21, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., Oct. 28, 7:30 p.m.; Thu., Nov. 4, 7:30 p.m., 2010