Del Toro deft with the darkness of carny noir remake

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This article was published 18/12/2021 (1719 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The 1947 movie Nightmare Alley was film noir as pure and caustic as grain alcohol. So when director Guillermo Del Toro announced he would be doing his own version of William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 novel, some confusion could be expected. Del Toro is primarily known as a horror director with a penchant for lush Gothic production values, evident in his last film, The Shape of Water, which reconfigured The Creature from the Black Lagoon as a darkly beautiful inter-species romance.

Noir doesn’t easily lend itself to Del Toro’s world: The genre is bleak and brutal, yes, but also to the point. Del Toro’s gift is for heavy, intricate atmosphere, gorgeously utilized in the haunted romance Crimson Peak, but also evident in his playful/poetic approach to superhero movies (Hellboy, Blade II) and even in the realm of the kaiju blockbuster (Pacific Rim).

Damned if Del Toro doesn’t make it work though. His vision of Nightmare Alley, conceived with his wife and co-screenwriter Kim Morgan (Guy Maddin’s ex, by the way) is a therapeutic wallow in a mud bath of danger and depravity. It’s heavy and dirty, yes, but decidedly invigorating.

Bradley Cooper takes on the role of downfall-destined anti-hero Stanton Carlisle, whom we see in the movie’s first shot dragging a swaddled corpse into a hole in the middle of a ramshackle old house, which he will soon set ablaze.

Notwithstanding the tiny valise he carries, Stanton is a man with some serious baggage. He drifts his way into a carnival, where he is hired on by the magnificently sleazy carny Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe), who knows a fugitive when he sees one: “Folk here don’t make no never-mind about who you are or what you done.”

Clem introduces Stanton — and us — to the bottom of the carnival food chain: the geek, an alcoholic/addict who sleeps in a cage and bites the heads off live chickens for the entertainment of the wholesome rural folk. Duly wised up, Stanton slowly works his way up the carnival ladder, hooking up with sympathetic fortune teller Zeena (Toni Collette) and learning the tricks of the mentalist trade courtesy of her drunken sot husband Pete (David Strathairn), who warns Stanton of the ethical pitfalls attending to the business of fleecing rubes of their quarters. (He warns Stanton about “the shut-eye” in particular.)

Aiming even higher, Stanton looks to win the heart of Molly (Rooney Mara), the star of an electrified woman show. In the relationship that ensues, ahem, sparks fly.

Before long, Stanton and Molly establish a mentalist show in the big city (the film was shot in a wintry Toronto) where Stanton has honed his gift for reading his marks.

Same carnival, bigger stakes. Stanton’s show places him in the orbit of high society psychotherapist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). Game recognizes game, and the two decide to pool their resources to fleece richer marks, including the sinister industrialist Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), a psychopathic millionaire eager to assuage his guilt over the death of a long-lost love.

If the resulting adventure proceeds in languorous fashion over a two-and-a-half hour running time, a contrast to the lean-mean dictates of noir, it’s easy to forgive. The production is gorgeous. And Del Toro is a director who deeply loves character actors, so the movie is stocked with some of the best: Dafoe is a dark delight in the scene where Clem shares trade secrets on how to create a geek. Del Toro good-luck-charm Ron Perlman makes his presence felt as carnival strongman Bruno. And Jenkins is downright startling as the vicious Ezra, especially coming after the sweetly benign character he played in The Shape of Water.

Cooper adroitly acquits himself well enough as Stanton, adding a tragic dimension to Tyrone Power’s more snaky portrayal. Blanchett likewise adds interesting complexity to her femme fatale character while maintaining her core malice: Hell hath no fury like Cate Blanchett humiliated.

As for Rooney Mara, the actress who once played the icy Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, proves to be the heart of this movie. As the danger increases, it is her, not Stanton, for whom we feel the most fear.

We don’t need a tarot-reading scene to know that Stanton is a lost cause. In that aspect, at least, Nightmare Alley stays true to its noir antecedents.

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