Nightmare Alley (2022)

Guillermo del Toro returns after his Oscar winning triumph The Shape Of Water (2017) with a remake of the 1947 Edmund Goulding film of the same name. Goulding’s film was released only a year after its source material, a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, and in recent interviews del Toro has stated that he believed there was enough to go on to produce a different take on the story. Bradley Cooper takes the lead role as Stanton Carlisle, joining a traveling circus after we see him torching what seems to be his family home in the opening sequence. He falls for Molly, who is heavily protected by del Toro regular Ron Pearlman, but eventually leaves with her to pursue his own career as a mind reader. It’s a film of two halves; the opening hour or so is very strong, as we spend time in the carnival learning the ropes as Stanton does, and are treated to some terrific performances from carnival owner Willem Dafoe, as well as Toni Collette and David Strathaim. There are shades of Tod Browning’s 1932 controversial cult classic Freaks, a film that doubtless would not get a slot on terrestrial TV in this day and age, despite being an important and very interesting document. Nightmare Alley shifts focus in the second half as we follow Stanton and Molly having made it in New York, earning plenty of money performing live mind reading shows. They meet Cate Blanchett’s Lileth, a very shady character who Stanton befriends and joins forces with to sell his soul to perform invented mind reading to take advantage of Ezra Grindle (a terrific Richard Jenkins) a member of the New York elite, with a seemingly equally as checkered past as Carlisle. Nightmare Alley isn’t del Toro’s best (for my money it still remains, controversially, The Devil’s Backbone [2001]) but it’s still a wonderfully immersive journey into del Toro’s world of 1940’s New York. The colour palette of the film suggests shades of early neo-noir; I was reminded of Detour (1945) and strangely enough Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) towards the end. The performances across the board are fantastic, Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett especially. It’s great to see a del Toro film gracing our screens again, and Nightmare Alley for me probably sits alongside something like Crimson Peak (2015) in his output, a film that I feel I enjoyed more than most. More than anything Nightmare Alley proves what an incredible film maker del Toro is, as if we needed reminding. 7.6/10