Nightmare Alley ***** (no 41)

 

by Allan Fish

(USA 1947 112m) DVD1/2

The Hanged Man

p  George Jessel  d  Edmund Goulding  w  Jules Furthman  novel  William Lindsay Gresham  ph  Lee Garmes  ed  Barbara McLean  m  Cyril Mockridge  art  Lyle Wheeler, J.Russell Spencer  cos  Bonnie Cashin

Tyrone Power (Stanton Carlisle), Coleen Gray (Molly), Joan Blondell (Zeena), Helen Walker (Lilith Ritter), Taylor Holmes (Ezra Grindle), Mike Mazurki (Bruno), Ian Keith (Pete), Julia Dean (Mrs Peabody), James Flavin (Clem Hoatley), Roy Roberts (McGraw),

Nightmare Alley is one of the weirdest and most wonderful films made in Hollywood in the forties; a fascinating Model T-Ford black curio which TCF didn’t at first want to bankroll.  Tyrone Power had been one of their biggest matinee idols since the mid thirties and, upon his return from the war, with now hardened features, he wanted to play darker roles.  His first venture was as the enigmatic protagonist of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, but TCF only agreed to make Alley if he did one for them, too.  So he made Captain from Castile, they let him do Alley and gave him Razor’s director Edmund Goulding.  But when it was complete they didn’t properly back the film, released it on a double bill and Power was devastated.  Certainly their lack of support cost him what would have been his only Oscar nomination and the film survives now as a forgotten classic.  Like another unappreciated masterpiece, Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, it shows the underbelly of the American dream, which didn’t go down well in the forties.

            Stanton Carlisle works as a carny barker and assistant to a faded mentalist act, Madame Zeena.  Her partner is the once big time but now heavy drinking Pete.  After learning that they used to have a special code in their act which could make them a fortune, Stanton sets his sights on learning it.  Zeena plans to sell it to put Pete through a cure for his alcoholism, but when Pete dies after mistakenly drinking wood alcohol, he seizes his chance to get Zeena to teach him the code.

            And so it begins.  Actually the film begins with Stanton fascinated by the carny freak show known as ‘The Geek’.  Little does he know that, by the end of the movie, one quick rise and even swifter plummet later, he’s destined to be a Geek himself, the lowest of the low.  When asked by Roy Roberts’ McGraw whether he’s up to it, the drunken Stanton (Power looking by then as if he’s ready to howl at the moon or be ready for the watering hole in 2001) can only cynically retort “mister, I was made for it!”

            The film itself has much of the real tawdry darkness of Gresham’s novel removed to comply with the Breen Office and some of its subtleties are sadly missed.  However, it counterbalances this by stressing and revelling in the seediness of the surroundings.  None of the characters are particularly likeable, with the possible exception of the young wife.  She ultimately is the one who will bring him down by refusing to go through with his fraudulent scamming and spooking of big shot Ezra Grindle.  Stanton meanwhile has been taken over by those who tell him he’s brilliant.  He begins to believe his own press, using the most underhand of ways to emotionally blackmail his wife into helping him with his schemes.  “Should I let the man’s soul be lost forever“, he tells her, “…or should I stake my own to save it…or yours…” 

            Much praise must go to Power for his hungry central performance, but there are rich-pickings amongst the supports; Blondell as the cheap but good hearted Zeena who’s “about as reliable as a two dollar cornet“, Gray as his adoring wife, Mazurki as a typically dim strong man, Walker as the deliriously nasty psychologist and, last but not least, Taylor Holmes as the unfortunate Grindle.  Credit must also go to Lee Garmes for his wonderfully atmospheric noir photography, exquisitely matching his sleazy subject, Cyril Mockridge’s spot on score and Furthman’s typically rich script.  Not to mention Goulding, whose best film this is by a country mile, who takes us on a trip to hell.  We echo Stanton’s sentiment about the Geek early on, “I don’t understand how anybody could get so low.”  In spite of a slightly hurried last act, by the end we understand all too well.