Nightmare Alley (1947)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nightmare Alley (1947) – E. Goulding

After watching Guillermo del Toro’s remake earlier this year, I decided to revisit Edmund Goulding’s original 1947 version for Noirvember. The surprising thing is just how quickly the film moves and how many ellipses there are in the plot relative to the newer version (which spells out everything rather emphatically). In some ways I feel a bit tainted by del Toro’s version which intruded on this viewing by unnecessarily filling in the gaps (although having read William Lindsay Gresham’s novel probably does the same)! Tyrone Power tried to change his swashbuckling image by portraying Stanton Carlisle who is only looking out for number one. We meet him after he is already working at the carnival, helping Zeena (Joan Blondell) with her mind-reading act and covering for her drunk husband, Pete. Soon, circumstances allow Stan to take over the act, with Bruno the strong man’s partner Molly (Colleen Gray) in tow, using the special code that allows them to communicate from the audience even as Stan is blindfolded. They move their show to fancy nightclubs and attract a much wealthier clientele, including psychiatrist Lillian Ritter (Helen Walker). When Stan discovers that Ritter has been keeping records of her rich patients’ personal secrets, he hatches another plan to bilk them out of their money as a spiritualist. But this being film noir, Carlisle’s hubris eventually brings him down. But how low can he go? The plot takes us full circle back to the carnival. And here things differ again from the remake which was able to end in a much darker spot then the original (which was forced to tack on an unlikely but hollow “happy” ending).  If looked at as a parable about human ambition, or the American dream even, Nightmare Alley is very bleak indeed, positing a world where there are suckers and those who don’t give them an even break. But if everyone is trying to rip everyone else off, it’s only a matter of time before even the swindlers find themselves down and out again.