A Guillermo del Toro movie set at a traveling sideshow in the 1940s sounds like the perfect formula for one of the filmmaker's signature fantasias, but there's nothing supernatural happening in del Toro's Nightmare Alley. Based on the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, Nightmare Alley is del Toro's take on film noir, following in the footsteps of the 1947 adaptation directed by Edmund Goulding. Del Toro has said he was first drawn to the story by the novel, but his Nightmare Alley is clearly informed by both Goulding's film and the larger noir tradition, and then fused with del Toro's flair for lush, colorful visuals.
There's a bit of tension between the stark noir story and del Toro's eye for beauty, but it's largely productive tension, enhancing rather than detracting from the story. That's especially true in the first half, which takes place at a carnival run by veteran huckster Clem Hoately (Willem Dafoe). Clem takes pity on troubled drifter Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), offering him a job on the crew. Stan soon becomes an integral part of the carnival, working with mentalist Zeena Krumbein (Toni Collette) as her crowd liaison, and wooing young performer Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara).
Stan is more of a calculating hustler than he first appears, and he ingratiates himself with Zeena and her husband, Pete (David Strathairn), learning the complicated secret code that they developed for their successful former nightclub act. Later, Stan leaves the carnival, taking Molly with him and setting himself up as a master mentalist. What at first comes off as genuine curiosity and wonder about performing starts to reveal itself as greed and narcissism, as Stan uses his newfound mentalism prowess to sell himself as a genuine medium.
The genius of Goulding's film was in presenting Stan (played by Tyrone Power) as a familiar square-jawed all-American hero, only to slowly uncover the deep rot in his soul. Cooper's Stan is clearly rotten from the start, in an opening scene that shows him burning down his own house as he stoically walks away from it. The audience knows to be wary of Stan from the beginning, even as Molly and the other carnies take him at face value, and it's not until he teams up with unscrupulous psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) in the movie's second half that he truly meets his match.
Cooper possesses the same kind of classical Hollywood charm as Tyrone Power, and he effectively balances Stan's demons with his obvious charisma. Blanchett proves a perfect match for him, and del Toro wisely expands Lilith's role in his version, giving Blanchett more screen time to dig into the part of the gorgeous, ruthless femme fatale. Consequently, Mara is a bit overshadowed as the kind-hearted dreamer taken in by Stan's wiles.
Freed of the constraints of the 1940s production code, del Toro can be more explicit about the story's nastier elements, especially as Stan and Lilith try to pull a con on dangerous gangster Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins). At the same time, he allows for a bit more depth and sympathy for Stan, without ever excusing his destructive behavior.
Del Toro makes the grotesque world of the carnival immersive and intriguing, and he does the same with the harsher urban noir setting of the second half. Del Toro's co-writer (and wife) Kim Morgan is a film historian who's written extensively about noir, and she provides the perfect foundation for del Toro's world-building. That world more closely resembles a 1940s movie than it does the actual 1940s, and in that sense Nightmare Alley fits in perfectly with del Toro's other fantastical visions. ♦
NIGHTMARE ALLEY
