Selected by the Sound Branch.

35mm print! David Lynch’s astonishing, surreal debut, the film that J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum call a “nightmare sitcom of the urban soul,” has been a perennial of the midnight movie circuit for more than four decades and is one of the filmmaker’s most enduringly disturbing works. The film began the partnership between Lynch and two of his most notable collaborators—cinematographer Frederick Elmes (Blue Velvet) and Alan Splet (recipient of a Special Achievement Award for The Black Stallion’s sound editing), whose industrial soundscapes contribute to the film’s darkly haunting power.

The Branch Selects program is made possible in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology.

Academy Museum film programming is generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.