Nightmare Alley – 4K

Nightmare Alley
2021 – 1.85:1 – 150 Min.
Criterion – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara
Written by Guillermo del Toro, Kim Morgan
Directed by Guillermo del Toro

Guillermo del Toro makes a living finding the humanity in monsters and the monsters in men. A boy who grew up identifying with Universal horrors, del Toro would build a sanctuary for those creatures and a hundred more in “Bleak House,” an encyclopedic museum of the macabre that the director describes as a “religious place.” Until more compassionate attitudes took hold, the so-called freaks and geeks of the world were traditionally found in the circus (carnival barker turned filmmaker Tod Browning has his own shrine in Bleak House) and it was probably inevitable that del Toro, in many ways the most child-like of directors, would gravitate towards the big top sooner or later.

Not surprisingly the story he choose to tell was not James Otis’s Toby Tyler but William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley, a pitch black cautionary tale set in showbiz purgatory; the carnival sideshow. Gresham got his inspiration from a carny worker named Joseph “Doc” Halliday, a seafarer Gresham knew during the Spanish Civil War where the politically adventurous Gresham served as a medic. The writer kept those circus stories tucked in his pocket and used them as fodder for his 1946 novel, a pulp page turner with tragic autobiographical undercurrents (the writer endured battles with alcoholism and nervous breakdowns). Gresham would write another book about about the circus in 1953, Monster Midway: An Uninhibited Look at the Glittering World of the Carny, but his legacy remains Nightmare Alley.

“Is he man or is he beast? You will see him living in his natural habitat among the most venomous reptiles that the world provides.” A warts and all portrait of greed, self-abasement and shame, Nightmare Alley was an unlikely bestseller—but it bristled with the same qualities of a Cecil B. DeMille production, a melange of sin, sex, and divine retribution (irony doesn’t begin to describe the protagonist’s downfall). Gresham’s circus is so visually compelling, with a blood and thunder atmosphere full of wickedness and wrath of God consequences, that it echoes a different kind of tent show; the church revival.

The book begged to be filmed and Tyrone Power, feeling typecast at Fox, leapt at the chance. Darryl Zanuck purchased the rights and signed Edmund Goulding, dependable studio director for Grand Hotel and The Dawn Patrol, and hired Jules Furthman (The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not) to write the screenplay. The movie enhanced the profiles of a trio of expert actresses, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray, and Helen Walker, while Furthman’s screenplay was surprisingly faithful to the book’s sleazy milieu. James Agee: “This kind of wit and meanness is so rare in the movies today that I had the added special pleasure of thinking, ‘oh no they won’t have the guts to do that” but they do…”

Even with approving reviews, the movie flopped. But the film remained close to the heart of movie mavens, and for decades has held steady on the repertory circuit. Del Toro’s villains have rarely been ambiguous, the fascist cop of Pan’s Labyrinth and the Nazi-curious soldier of The Shape of Water, but now he had found his perfect anti-hero: “Is he man or is he beast?” Nightmare Alley, though it contains no supernatural elements, seemed custom-made for this extremely lapsed Catholic—Del Toro invites us into Gresham’s world of mentalism and murder in an almost cautious manner, holding his Tarot cards close to his vest. It’s deft and classically assured filmmaking—at times almost too controlled, particularly in such a savage three ring circus. But there will be blood.

Bradley Cooper is Stan Carlisle (“Stanton” when he ascends from the sideshow to the supper clubs), first seen laconically departing the fiery aftermath of a murder as if he were leaving the barber shop. Laying low and looking for work he lucks into a job at a carnival, the “Ten-in-One” show; Willem Dafoe is Clem, a proprietor willing to turn a blind eye to Carlisle’s possibly shady past, and Rooney Mara is Molly, who wows the rubes with a fringed showgirl costume and a literally electrified performance (her sexy wardrobe will come under fire from a holier than thou sheriff looking for trouble).

Molly is a soft-spoken but self-contained girl next door whose silence suggests a femme fatale in the making. But it’s Cate Blanchett who plays that role, she’s Lilith Ritter, a gorgeous fashionista/psychoanalyst in charge of Stan’s fate (“Lilith,” the quintessential she-demon of the Talmud, is a heavy-handed but perhaps irresistible moniker draped over her shoulders by Gresham.) Blanchett appears to be channeling any one of a dozen man-killers from 40s noirs but on purely cosmetic terms, her most pertinent role model might be from the 70s; the unknowable (until it’s too late) Evelyn Mulwray played by Faye Dunaway. The screenplay by Del Toro and Kim Morgan follows the trajectory of both the novel and Goulding’s movie to a T, but in some respects this particular nightmare is a tribute to Chinatown.

Superbly photographed by Dan Laustsen, Nightmare Alley is the latest of a rare breed, the color noir (Laustsen shot the film in 65mm digital). The rich golden sunset hues, and deep mahogany of moneyed mansions found in del Toro and Polanski’s noirs are essential to their vision; the storybook colors suggest the past while putting the horror firmly on contemporary ground. But del Toro decided yet another version of his film might deepen the meaning, so, with the help of Laustsen, they produced a black and white version of the film—a kind of reverse colorization. Whether it’s a revelatory transformation or an unremarkable diversion is up to the viewer—regardless, del Toro fans get to have their cake and eat it too. Criterion has included both versions on their new release and both have a severely beautiful surface, particularly in its 4K incarnation. The monochrome version, Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light, is the new 159-minute, black-and-white extended director’s cut, its transfer supervised by del Toro and he contributes a new commentary.

Other supplements include a documentary on the film’s performances, costume, and production design plus a newly filmed conversation between del Toro and Bradley Cooper and a new chat between del Toro and co-screenwriter Morgan. The cherry on top of the package is a fine new essay by self-described “Crime Lady” Sarah Weinman, an expert on crime-fiction and true-crime.