Nightmare Alley (2021)

Guillermo del Toro: Nightmare Alley (2021) starring Toni Collette (Zeena Krumbein), Bradley Cooper (Stan Carlisle), Rooney Mara (Molly Cahill, "Elektra the Electric Woman") and Cate Blanchett (psychoanalyst, Dr. Lilith Ritter).

Nightmare Alley / Nightmare Alley.
    US 2021. Searchlight Pictures Presents – A Double Dare You Production – A Guillermo del Toro Film. P: Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, Bradley Cooper.
    D: Guillermo del Toro. SC: Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan – based on the novel (1946) by William Lindsay Gresham. DP: Dan Laustsen – colour – 1,85:1 – source format: Arriraw 4.5K, 6.5K – master format: digital intermediate 4K – released in D-Cinema. PD: Tamara Deverell. Cost: Luis Sequeira. Makeup and hair: Sideshow Prosthetics. M: Nathan Johnson.
    Soundtrack selections: "Chattanooga Choo Choo" (Harry Warren, Mack Gordon, 1941), "Danza degli spiriti beati" from Orfeo ed Euridice by C. W. Gluck, lyrics Raniero de Calzabigi (1762), "Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, 1927).
    S: Nathan Robitaille. ED: Cameron McLaughlin. Casting: Robin D. Cook.
    C: Bradley Cooper (Stanton Carlisle), Cate Blanchett (Dr. Lilith Ritter), Toni Collette (Zeena Krumbein), Willem Dafoe (Clem Hoatley), Richard Jenkins (Ezra Grindle), Rooney Mara (Molly Cahill), Ron Perlman (Bruno), Mary Steenburgen (Felicia Kimball), David Strathairn (Pete Krumbein), Paul Anderson (the geek).
    Filming: 16 Sep – 11 Dec 2020.
    Loc: Buffalo, New York – Hamilton, Ontario – Toronto, Ontario.
    150 min
    Alternative black and white version: Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light, also in 35 mm.
    US premiere: 1 Dec 2021.
    Finnish premiere in selected cities (but not in Helsinki): 28 Jan 2022, distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Finland with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Timo Porri / Hannele Vahtera.
    Corona precaution: 50 max capacity, hand hygiene, face masks.
    Viewed at Finnkino Strand 3, Iso Kristiina, Lappeenranta, 28 Jan 2022.

Synopsis from the production notes: "When charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena (Toni Collette) and her has-been mentalist husband Pete (David Strathairn) at a traveling carnival, he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly acquired knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York Society. With the virtuous Molly (Rooney Mara) loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con a dangerous tycoon (Richard Jenkins) with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist (Cate Blanchett) who might be his most formidable opponent yet."

AA: The greatest strength of Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Nightmare Alley is its excellent cast.

Like Tyrone Power in the 1947 Nightmare Alley adaptation, Bradley Cooper in the leading role of Stan Carlisle has such a pleasant surface that he can fool even the most hardened potential victims. "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

It is the women who run the show. The co-screenwriter Kim Morgan is perhaps to thank for the strength and complexity of those roles, and Guillermo del Toro for the direction of the actresses in their performances.

Zeena (Toni Collette) is the tough clairvoyant. Even she is bluffed by Stan who learns all the tricks from her and her alcoholic husband Pete (David Strathairn). Zeena is a sex tiger, unfulfilled as a woman with Pete whom she deeply loves. With Stan, pheromones and appetites match instantly and perfectly.

The psychoanalyst, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) is Stan's most formidable adversary. Between them, it is a battle of wits and even a cosmo-psychological fight comparable with Dracula vs. Van Helsing stories. But here both adversaries are evil. In this movie we learn that Lilith Ritter is also deeply wounded, even literally, with a dark secret related to Ezra Grindle.

Stan Carlisle is caught in the spell of evil, but he has a serene phase during which he tours together with his good guardian spirit Molly (Rooney Mara). Molly brings out his best potential, and greatness is within Stan's reach, but there is a tragic flaw in his character. As interpreted by Rooney Mara with subtle conviction, Molly, Elektra, “the lady who can absorb any amount of voltage”, conveys the sole force of light in a world of darkness.

Richard Jenkins plays Ezra Grindle, the richest man in town, as a mythic figure comparable with Croesus, Scrooge and Citizen Kane. In this film adaption, he is also a sadistic abuser of women, to whose victims also Lilith Ritter belongs. A lost soul, he lives in a purgatory, eager to believe in Stan's mentalist hallucinations.

The approach is consistently tuned to wavelengths of legend and fairy-tale. This is the first film of Guillermo del Toro that does not belong to the cinefantastic, but it is not far from the territory. "Every time I make a movie, I always say that the worst monster is a human", del Toro confesses in an interview with Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian. In Nightmare Alley, the monster is Stan Carlisle. In del Toro's film there is a framing story in which he lets his father freeze to death before burning him and his home. Stan is so absolutely a force of evil that it is hard to relate to him.

Visually and narratively the film is divided into two worlds: the countryside where the carnival circuit flourishes among the common people, and the city where a jet set audience is mesmerized by Stanton Carlisle's elite act. "Between two evils I always pick the one I never tried before", said Mae West. Stan Carlisle picks both.

I have been impressed by del Toro's work since Mimic and Blade II. Since then, he has become one of the most successful directors in the world. I also sense that he may have become a prisoner of his success, chained to blockbuster budgets. Nightmare Alley is needlessly prolonged.

Last summer I participated in Gerald Peary's Facebook chain on film noir, a phenomenon notoriously difficult to define. The discussion inspired in me a deeper revelation and insight about the trend. For me, the Golden Age of film noir started in 1941 and lasted around ten years. While film noir has formidable predecessors and successors, genuine film noir for me can be defined from the viewpoint of a philosophy of history. As distinct from previous crime fiction, film noir reveals a world view of cosmic agony and metaphysical evil in a reflection of what happened during WWII.

To that key corpus of film noir belongs also the original Nightmare Alley (1947), created by the unexpected team of actor Tyrone Power, producer George Jessel, director Edmund Goulding and screenwriter Jules Furthman. In their pioneering book-length study of film noir, Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton found a surrealistic, an oneiric quality a hallmark of the phenomenon. This connection is signalled already in the very title Nightmare Alley, which might be great even for a book about film noir – and both film adaptations are dream plays.

The new Nightmare Alley is very striking, but there is no such compelling drive and sense of urgency as in the original film. The surface is impressive, but I find the inner core wanting.

FROM THE PRODUCTION NOTES:
FROM THE PRODUCTION NOTES:

" NIGHTMARE ALLEY, BASED ON THE FATALISTIC NOVEL BY
WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM (1909-1962)
FACT SHEET

•    William Lindsay Gresham is an American Novelist and non-fiction author born on August 20, 1909. He is particularly well-regarded among readers of noir. His work consists of: Nightmare Alley (1946), Limbo Tower (1949), Monster Midway: An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny (1954), Houdini: The Man Who Walked Through Walls (1959), and The Book of Strength: Body Building the Safe, Correct Way (1961)
•    Originally from Maryland, he moved to New York with his family and became fascinated with Coney Island.
•    In 1926, he graduated from Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn. After high school he drifted from job to job and volunteered in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. This is where he befriended a sideshow employee, Joseph Daniel “Doc” Halliday who inspired a lot of his work from their long conversations.
•    He returned to the United States in 1939 and suffered from a tortured mind from a troubling time in a tuberculosis ward and a first attempted suicide.
•    In 1942, Gresham married the poet Joy Davidman and had two sons. Their marriage eventually ended in divorce in 1954.
•    Gresham was an alcoholic which developed a desire in Spiritualism from going to alcoholic anonymous after his divorce.
•    Nightmare Alley was published in 1946 and spent most of his time writing the novel in Hotel Carter, Manhattan. It was later adapted into a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power.
•    In 1962, Gresham was diagnosed with cancer and started to lose his vision in one eye. He eventually took his own life in the same hotel he spent writing Nightmare Alley years prior. "