A 1929 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer mystery film directed by Tod Browning. A writer is murdered in Calcutta, and the authorities turn to Madame Rosalie La Grange, a professional spiritualist medium, to help solve the case. During a darkened seance in which thirteen people join hands, a second killing takes place, and the medium's reconstruction of the circle exposes the murderer. The film treats the seance and the medium's craft as a real dramatic mechanism rather than mocking it as fraud.
Facts
Production
Release Year Subject Matter
Religious Subject MatterSpiritualism: the film's plot is built around a professional medium's seance, named as its subject in the AFI Catalog's own subject heading. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Depicts
The AFI Catalog's own subject-heading field for this 1929 mystery names Spiritualism and Mediums outright, and the story turns on a professional medium's seance, portrayed as genuinely effective within the film.
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