Nightmare Alley (1947)

Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding, 1947) With Guillermo del Toro's remake in theaters, I thought it was a good idea to look at the original, notable because it's a film noir, the film that Tyrone Power thought was his best, and that it was withdrawn from circulation and unavailable for a long time—it was considered too dark and did not do well at the box office. But, it was revived after Power's death in 1958, and gained a reputation, enough to become a part of The Criterion Collection.

 

It was also produced by George Jessel. "That" George Jessel.

 

"Stan" Carlisle (Power) has a question. He's working for a traveling carnival as a "boob-catcher" and he's fascinated by the "geek," the freak show that attracts the most and lowest of the customers. "I don't understand how someone can get so low?" he asks Zeena (Joan Blondell) the fortune-teller and she has nothing to offer but "It can happen."

Stan can't imagine. He's on an upward spiral from a religious reform school to being on his own as an adult and barking for Mademoiselle Zeena, with her alcoholic husband Pete (Ian Keith) reduced to scrawling hidden answers on a chalkboard (when he's sober). He and Zeena used to be a great mind-reading act with a fool-proof code, but when Zeena started two-timing behind his back, Pete retreated to the bottle and never pulled himself out. A mind-reader is a terrible thing to waste.

Now, Stan is her partner in two-timing and wants that secret code and even offers to buy it from her, but Pete and Zeena aren't selling, seeing the code as being their nest egg once Pete can find it in him to sober up. And Stan is upping the ante by flirting with Molly (Colleen Gray), who is being minded by Bruno (Mike Mazurki) the carney's strong-man, able to see that she's attracted to the barker but too weak to do anything about it. The things that make or break a carnival are the attractions and right now, the most interesting things are going on behind the curtain. And sparks are flying back there.

Stan wants that code, staying as close to Pete as he can to pick up any secrets, but it back-fires on him. Unable to score any hootch from the carnival's Big Boss, he inveigles Stan to share his just acquired bottle of moonshine, which Stan has hidden away. Unfortunately, where Stan hid it was also the place the camp kept their wood alcohol and when he retrieves the stashed bottle, he picks up the wrong kind. Pete dies, and Stan fills the void by learning the code—taught to him by Zeena and Molly—to be her signaler in a new mentalist act that kills, and the success goes a bit to his head, using his secret knowledge and ability to "read" people to deflect the local sheriff from shutting the place down.

But, he's warned. Zeena also reads Tarot—or, as Blondell pronounces it "tarrot"—and the cards warn that Stan will come to a bad end, spelled out by the "hanged man" card which indicates sacrifice. Stan dismisses her worries as superstition, although she swears by the cards' abilities to predict fate. Nothing can prevent him from taking his new skills and trying to make a better life for himself, this time with Molly in tow, by developing a mentalist act among a higher-class clientele. A rube is a rube, and he prefers the ones with larger wallets.

Where Nightmare Alley gets interesting is when Stan and Molly's act becomes a success, and he soon becomes enticed by big offers with big pay-outs by the rich and powerful. By this time, completely cynical, he comes under the sway of Dr. Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker), a psychiatrist specializing in neuroses of the rich and, using her inside knowledge, runs a couple of long cons on a couple society big-wigs and hoping to parlay their donations into a church racket. To Stan, it's all the same racket, whether it's mentalism, psychiatry or religion—just different ways to separate people from their money—but Molly warns him that he's playing with fire, especially when he's pretending to become a spiritualist with a direct line to God. If only he had the power to predict the future...

Nightmare Alley is a cracker-jack little story that sits quite well in the film-noir category—despite the trappings of the mystic, that's all they are, trappings. But, the whole idea of the world populated by sheep for the right wolf to come along only to realize that fate is a hunter makes the movie as dark as pitch. And that's what appealed to Tyrone Power. Director Goulding had worked with him the year before, making The Razor's Edge, and one can see why, after years of matinee idol roles and swashbucklers, he wanted to test his image by playing an out-and-out bad guy. And it works. Stan Carlisle is charming, and Powers doesn't really have to change his acting style from the "star-quality" he was used to in order to play a con artist. The confidence of the star sells the connivance of the character without having to resort to villainous looks. Carlisle is a man who thinks he can get away with anything; he just hasn't realized his mental powers are not as good as he thinks they are.

Power, who loved flying, bought his own plane the same year as Nightmare Alley. He christened it "The Geek."