Nightmare Alley
A visually stunning odyssey of a troubled man that lacks substance
It was always going to be an arduous task for Guillermo del Toro to follow up 2017’s The Shape of Water, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, and was arguably his finest outing since Pan’s Labyrinth. However, with his latest film, a remake of the 1947 noir Nightmare Alley, del Toro moves into unfamiliar territory as it’s his first feature to not contain supernatural elements, yet still makes a smooth transition, aided in part by his aesthetically pleasing and visually stunning style.
We open on Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) as he disposes of a body under the floorboards of a rural house, which sits alone in a field — reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven — then torches the property to the ground. Running from his past, Stanton stumbles upon a travelling circus and is able to gain employment, albeit on a temporary basis until he is convinced to stay on as they travel to the next town.
He bonds with various members of the carnival including Clem (Willem Dafoe), who runs a geek show in which an imprisoned man eats live chickens for the crowds, Molly (Rooney Mara) with whom he builds a relationship and assists in developing her act, as well as Zeena (Toni Collette), a clairvoyant who runs a mind reading act with her alcoholic husband, Pete (David Strathairn).
Upon discovering that Pete was previously a mentalist and knows all the tricks of the trade, Stanton becomes obsessed and attempts to be mentored by Pete, who is unwilling to teach him due to the strength of the powers. This results in Stanton’s darker side reappearing and triggers a series of events that lead to Stanton and Molly leaving the circus.
It is the shift from the big top to the art deco splendour of 1940’s Buffalo in which the problems of Nightmare Alley are laid bare. An issue I found was that the characters I had become so invested in suddenly vanished, we got no more Clem and only a minor scene featuring Zeena and Bruno (Ron Perlman). Similarly, Molly is never fully utilised to her full potential — even if she features more than in Golding’s 1947 adaptation — while Stanton is simply not an interesting or compelling enough character to justify following his arc for nearly 150 minutes.
One of the greatest film noir’s of all-time is Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. What makes it such a strong film is the precision in pacing, with everything unfolding with clockwork precision. This seems to be del Toro’s main pitfall as the pacing of Nightmare Alley is all over the place. With this lack of pace, we never get tension build up in an apt way and fails to build on any momentum at key points.
However, regardless of this, there are many highlights of Nightmare Alley, including the performances from Willem Dafoe and Toni Collette, yet nothing matches Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Lillian Ritter, in which she full embraces the Barbara Stanwyck-esque femme fatale in all its glory.
Once again, del Toro delights in his visual style and precision to period detail but Nightmare Alley rings hollow under further and closer inspection.
