Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
‘See how easy it is to hook ‘em’
With Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley in cinemas at the time of recording,
it’s a good time to look back the 1947 film based on the same novel by William Lindsay Gresham,
following the career of carnival mentalist Stanton Carlisle, played in this version by Tyrone Power.
‘I like it. All of it’
Carlisle loves the world of the carnival, but right from the start there is a dark side to that love,
‘See those yokels, gives you a sorta superior feeling. As if you were in the know and they were on the outside looking in.’
and when chance allows him to step into the shoes of mind reader Zeena’s stooge,
‘What have I here?’
he rises to the challenge and then rises beyond it.
The film had a larger than usual budget for what is essentially a film noir,
reflected both in its stars – Joan Blondell plays Zeena –
and in the ten acre carnival set built on the Fox backlot.
Director Edmnd Goulding, writer Jules Furthman and cameraman Lee Garmes were all industry veterans
with careers that went back to the silent era but though Nightmare Alley is the product of old Hollywood craftsmen
it is a distinctly unhollywood film, even for a noir it is unromantic, unheroic and deeply cynical,
‘Wasn’t that Pete’s card’ ‘Now it’s yours’
as Carlisle takes his harmless chicanery to the next level,
‘I see it’s a girl, a lovely girl of 16’
duping the wealthy Addie Peabody, played by Curse of the Cat People’s Julia Dean,
and even using his sideshow skills to win over his increasingly skeptical wife.
‘Simple, honest little people who believe in me. They say I’m giving them hope’
In many ways – despite some clever twists – it’s a by the numbers story
and Carlisle’s trajectory is unlikely to surprise anyone.
‘How much did he give you?’ ‘150 grand’
But it’s brilliantly made and is played to the hilt,
Power giving a career best performance in a role he had hoped would break his type-casting as a romantic swashbuckler,
‘Don’t forget to err is human, to forgive divine’
convincing in every moment as the charismatic chancer is brought down by the ravages of fate.
#police siern#
‘I don’t hear anything’
he’s matched by the three actresses he plays opposite, Blondell, Collen Gray as his wife Molly
and particularly Helen Walker, who own’s the film’s most memorable scene.
‘Do I make myself clear? You must regard it all as a nightmare’
If there were any justice the film would have made Walker a star
and proved Power a more versatile actor than anyone could have suspected,
but it flopped at the box office, partly because audiences would not accept the matinee idol as an immoral conman.
‘Our motives are so pure, so unselfish.’
I don’t want to waste time comparing this to Del Toro’s version but what I will say is that both are worth watching.
You just have to decide which to see first, because there are moments they share that you can only really experience once.
‘Takes one to catch one.’
A re-release in 1956, not long before Power’s death,
gave Nightmare Alley a second chance, and it has since been recognised as a classic,
charting the dark side of the American dream.
And it’s on YouTube.
Thanks for watching. Tyrone Power is fantastic here, what other actors have proved themselves better than the roles that made them famous?
Let us know in the comments below.