First, the hell with spoilers, since anyone who reads this knows the story, or may already have seen the Del Toro film. There never would have been a 1947 Nightmare Alley if Tyrone Power was perfectly content in continuing to be 20th Century’s reigning piece of swashbuckling beefcake. However, Power came from a theatrical family and wanted to expand his acting talents by playing against type. We can thank Fox’s production head, Darryl Zanuck, who finally acquiesced to Power’s request to portray the rise and fall of that loathsome jerk Stan Carlisle. Zanuck took a financial hit on a film that he quickly shelved after minimal screenings. 1947’s Nightmare Alley was a film made for another audience, another generation.
After years in obscurity , it surfaced in the 1970s while I was binge watching as many film noirs as I could find. The perverse darkness of the film over shadowed most noirs I had seen up to that time. Even the Production Code inspired “happy” ending tastes bitter in believing that the love of a good woman is somehow going to salvage a thoroughly degraded wretch. 1970s Hollywood would have been the perfect time to re-make the film where the misanthropy of Gresham’s novel and it’s under cutting of the American success story had plenty of creative talent to do it justice. I had just seen CHINATOWN and I envisioned Dr. Ritter being played by Dunaway, and Nicholson playing Stan Carlisle all directed by Polanski or Scorsese (although Marty’s boyhood Catholicism and the notion of sin and redemption might not have made him the perfect one to direct).
It took just about 45 years and a visionary artist like Guillermo Del Toro to bring us the long awaited re-make.I viewed it yesterday after 10 coming attractions appeared ( yeah, 10, count them 10, grrrr) in the comfort (too comfy) of a 75 seat suburban multi-plex screening room bathed in Fabreze or some disinfectant (ha, they knew I was coming). When the film finally appeared it took me about 10 minutes to disabuse myself of trying to compare the 1947 version with Del Toro’s vision. They are two separate movies with the same plot. Wipe 1947 out of your mind. I will leave the over done psychological motivation of the characters to the IMDB reviewers who are frustrated film critics. If the characters have some hidden depths you can’t intuit it so much from the film, just go read Gresham’s novel.
I thought the performances were all spot on, but I’ll leave it to the professional reviewers to elaborate. I saw one review that called Brad Cooper’s Stanton Carlisle a jerk. That’s putting it mildly. Stan here is a vicious killer, subtly poisoning old Pete with wood alcohol, beating Ezra Grindle to a bloody (and probably a dead pulp), and using Grindle’s bodyguard as a speed bump. All this to get his way. The production design, art direction and cinematography are without equal for a story that covers a three year period from 1939-1941. Lilith Ritter’s Art Deco office is appointed in such a way that every guy would want it for his man cave. With the creative freedom that film’s have had for decades, Del Toro is able to use his unique eye to flesh out a world of sordidness and degradation that director Edmund Goulding could have never accomplished in 1947. The carnival milieu has a particular sawdust and tinsel grittiness that sticks in the mind, whereas I can’t say that for the 1947 version. Del Toro is an avid movie lover of horror and noir, and you can see a number of scenes where he pays homage to films of the far past. When Stan and Lilith tussle (after she has called him a “a little man”) and he’s ready to strangle her, it harkens back to the scene with Tom Neal and Ann Savage in DETOUR. Also, after Stan has reached the nadir of his alcoholism we see him walking down the midway of the carnival where he is going to turn himself into a geek (“Mister, I was born for it”), and on his right side as he is walking there is an actor dressed up as Koo Koo the Bird Girl from Browning’s FREAKS.
I haven’t been in a theater for a bit over 2 years, both due to Covid and the lack of films that would motivate me enough to get out of my easy chair at home. One of the main criticisms of the film is that it’s too long. Perhaps 10-15 minutes could have been pared from 150 minutes to , say, 135. However, it’s length helps with the character development and gives us an additional few minutes to wallow in the impeccable production design and camera work. Those who are bored by it perhaps are the same people who think using Twitter is the best way to communicate. With Del Toro’s tome, I’d gladly go out again to see it on the big screen, but one hopes that in a matter of months it will be available for streaming, because it more than met my expectations.