An old carnival mind-reader launches into his spiel: gazing into his "crystal ball" (a liquor bottle) he sees rolling green hills, a barefoot boy running through the grass, a dog at his side... "Yes, yes!" his listener eagerly confirms, at which the mentalist reveals it's just a stock reading: "Every boy has a dog," he laughs scornfully. Nightmare Alley is about the weaknesses of the human mind, the need for emotional comfort and assurance that leads people to trust tarot cards and psychics, not to mention religion and psychoanalysis. It's about how these weaknesses can be exploited and about the high costfor the exploiter.
Nightmare Alley opens at a seedy carnival offering a strongman, scantily clad girls, a mind-reader, and the "geek," a grotesque and pitiful freak who bites the heads off live chickens for shock entertainment. The carnival is gorgeously filmed, from the sweaty crowds and banners to the foggy, deserted midway late at night. Circulating among the crowds is a new carny-worker, Stanton Carlisle, a gum-chewing hunk in a t-shirt watching the old hands at work. He's particularly intrigued by a verbal code that Zeena, the mentalist, once used in a highly successful mind-reading act, before her partner Pete became a hopeless drunk. Stan is obviously unscrupulous, ambitious, and ready to use his wiles on Zeena, but we don't see his true nature until a scene in which he saves the carnival by bluffing a sheriff (who has come to shut the place down) with a display of his "second sight." His face shining like a choir boy's, he spouts vague, sentimental mumbo-jumbo, manipulating and feeding off the man's emotions until he's putty in Stan's handsand Stan loves every minute of it, reveling in his power, the primal joy of fooling a chump.
We learn that Stan was raised in an orphanage, where the combination of mistreatment and bible verses instilled a deep cynicism about faith and morality. In reform school he learned to get out of trouble by feigning spiritual conversion. Handsome, glib, charming, intelligent and shameless, Stan holds all the cards. He's lucky, too: Pete dies after Stan, who wants to get him drunk to pick his brains, inadvertently gives him wood alcohol instead of moonshine. (No one, including Stan, is ever sure if it was really an accident.) Stan teams up with Zeena and learns the code, then cheats on her with beautiful young Molly, and when they're forced to marry by Molly's enraged former boyfriend, he takes the opportunity to blow the carnival for a high-class nightclub act. Still unsatisfied, Stan drifts into spiritualism, bilking wealthy clients in exchange for contacting their dead loved ones. He finally goes too far, talking his wife into impersonating the ghost of one man's dead sweetheart; and he meets his match in Dr. Lilith Ritter, an icy psychiatrist who conspires with Stan only to cheat him. Since Stan's identity is built on his ability to cheat and feel superior to others, when someone else does the same to him, he falls apart. Stan's crack-up and rapid descent into alcoholic degradation happen a little too fast, but they've been foreshadowed from the beginning. Stan has always had a morbid fascination with the geek, and with Pete's disintegration: they speak to a hollowness at the heart of him, the lack of any love or faith. This one vulnerability in his otherwise hard-boiled character is what allows the audience to care about him, to see him as tragic and not merely a heel who gets what he deserves. The obviously tacked-on "happy" ending is laughable; the love of a good woman won't save this guy.
Matinée idol Tyrone Power, freed from the limitations of swashbuckling, is perfect as Stanton Carlisle, an homme fatale who blatantly exploits his good looks and sex appeal, even making a declaration of love to his wife (maybe honestly, maybe not) to get her to participate in a despicable scheme. It's hard even for the viewer, who sees how callous and selfish Stan is, to resist his oily brilliance and amorality. Power was eager to play this complex and unsympathetic role, and he does it justice, at the end of the movie undergoing a more thorough de-glamorization than any classic Hollywood beauty. Joan Blondell, no longer the bright-eyed cutie of the early '30s, is superb as Zeena: blowsy, aging but still attractive, she's a sharp yet good-hearted woman who sees through Stan, even if she can't fight her yen for him. Colleen Gray looks lovely and acts adequately in the ingenue role of Stan's ever faithful wife Molly, and Helen Walker is chilling as Dr. Ritter, the only person smarter and more ruthless than Stan. Her eyes shine with joy as she reveals what a fool she's made of Stan and cruelly mocks his mental weakness.
Nightmare Alley may be the most inky-black entry in the noir canon. There are no guns, robberies, arrests, or beatings, only the torments of the mind. As Pete says of booze, "The only thing this will help you forget is how to forget." Memory is the waking nightmare.
Nightmare Alley opens at a seedy carnival offering a strongman, scantily clad girls, a mind-reader, and the "geek," a grotesque and pitiful freak who bites the heads off live chickens for shock entertainment. The carnival is gorgeously filmed, from the sweaty crowds and banners to the foggy, deserted midway late at night. Circulating among the crowds is a new carny-worker, Stanton Carlisle, a gum-chewing hunk in a t-shirt watching the old hands at work. He's particularly intrigued by a verbal code that Zeena, the mentalist, once used in a highly successful mind-reading act, before her partner Pete became a hopeless drunk. Stan is obviously unscrupulous, ambitious, and ready to use his wiles on Zeena, but we don't see his true nature until a scene in which he saves the carnival by bluffing a sheriff (who has come to shut the place down) with a display of his "second sight." His face shining like a choir boy's, he spouts vague, sentimental mumbo-jumbo, manipulating and feeding off the man's emotions until he's putty in Stan's handsand Stan loves every minute of it, reveling in his power, the primal joy of fooling a chump.
We learn that Stan was raised in an orphanage, where the combination of mistreatment and bible verses instilled a deep cynicism about faith and morality. In reform school he learned to get out of trouble by feigning spiritual conversion. Handsome, glib, charming, intelligent and shameless, Stan holds all the cards. He's lucky, too: Pete dies after Stan, who wants to get him drunk to pick his brains, inadvertently gives him wood alcohol instead of moonshine. (No one, including Stan, is ever sure if it was really an accident.) Stan teams up with Zeena and learns the code, then cheats on her with beautiful young Molly, and when they're forced to marry by Molly's enraged former boyfriend, he takes the opportunity to blow the carnival for a high-class nightclub act. Still unsatisfied, Stan drifts into spiritualism, bilking wealthy clients in exchange for contacting their dead loved ones. He finally goes too far, talking his wife into impersonating the ghost of one man's dead sweetheart; and he meets his match in Dr. Lilith Ritter, an icy psychiatrist who conspires with Stan only to cheat him. Since Stan's identity is built on his ability to cheat and feel superior to others, when someone else does the same to him, he falls apart. Stan's crack-up and rapid descent into alcoholic degradation happen a little too fast, but they've been foreshadowed from the beginning. Stan has always had a morbid fascination with the geek, and with Pete's disintegration: they speak to a hollowness at the heart of him, the lack of any love or faith. This one vulnerability in his otherwise hard-boiled character is what allows the audience to care about him, to see him as tragic and not merely a heel who gets what he deserves. The obviously tacked-on "happy" ending is laughable; the love of a good woman won't save this guy.
Matinée idol Tyrone Power, freed from the limitations of swashbuckling, is perfect as Stanton Carlisle, an homme fatale who blatantly exploits his good looks and sex appeal, even making a declaration of love to his wife (maybe honestly, maybe not) to get her to participate in a despicable scheme. It's hard even for the viewer, who sees how callous and selfish Stan is, to resist his oily brilliance and amorality. Power was eager to play this complex and unsympathetic role, and he does it justice, at the end of the movie undergoing a more thorough de-glamorization than any classic Hollywood beauty. Joan Blondell, no longer the bright-eyed cutie of the early '30s, is superb as Zeena: blowsy, aging but still attractive, she's a sharp yet good-hearted woman who sees through Stan, even if she can't fight her yen for him. Colleen Gray looks lovely and acts adequately in the ingenue role of Stan's ever faithful wife Molly, and Helen Walker is chilling as Dr. Ritter, the only person smarter and more ruthless than Stan. Her eyes shine with joy as she reveals what a fool she's made of Stan and cruelly mocks his mental weakness.
Nightmare Alley may be the most inky-black entry in the noir canon. There are no guns, robberies, arrests, or beatings, only the torments of the mind. As Pete says of booze, "The only thing this will help you forget is how to forget." Memory is the waking nightmare.