Night­mare Alley

Film noir is cinema’s cru­cible of high cyn­i­cism. Its anti-heroes trav­el down plot arcs that plunge them into lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive dark­ness, and trag­ic char­ac­ters often end up swing­ing from the noose of hubris. Guiller­mo del Toro​’s sen­si­bil­i­ty of twist­ed fairy tales seems a per­fect fit for the genre beloved of the clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood era, where his height­ened aes­thet­ic and dark moral­i­ty can reach new heights.

His new film, Night­mare Alley, appeals to his eye’s best instincts. The first half is filled with dusty-jew­el tones, vaude­vil­lian ghoul­ish­ness and Ter­rence Mal­ick-esque land­scapes. The sec­ond half offers up art deco grandeur, care­ful­ly man­i­cured gar­dens and spec­tac­u­lar gore. It’s a feast of a film, with archi­tec­tur­al pre­ci­sion and lush tex­ture in every shot. But some of his visu­al metaphors can be a lit­tle heavy-hand­ed, as the dual­i­ties spelled out in mir­ror and shad­ow often hold for a beat too long, which becomes increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ing in a film which takes its own sweet time.

Adapt­ed from William Lind­say Gre­sham nov­el with co-writer Kim Mor­gan, Night­mare Alley fol­lows a famil­iar rise and fall of Stan­ton Carlise (Bradley Coop­er) a dash­ing tran­sient who starts the film torch­ing his rur­al shack and set­ting out with just a bag and a radio. He comes across a car­ni­val run by Clem Hoat­ley (Willem Dafoe) and finds work and com­mu­ni­ty with per­form­ing psy­chic cou­ple Zeena and Pete (Toni Colette and David Straithairn), elec­tric­i­ty-wield­ing Mol­ly (a painful­ly bland Rooney Mara) and an assort­ment of styl­ish if thin­ly drawn ​“carnies”.

Learn­ing men­tal­ism skills from an ail­ing Pete, he sets out on a path to great­ness, but fails to heed a pletho­ra of warn­ings. Del Toro seems to view the source mate­r­i­al as a sacred text and places heavy inten­si­ty on Stanton’s rise-and-fall jour­ney, evok­ing every­thing from Oedi­pus to Faust. And the film, set in the late 1930s and ear­ly ​’40s makes won­der­ful use of its peri­od set­ting, beyond the exquis­ite cos­tum­ing there is a feel­ing of liv­ing through a cursed time in his­to­ry. Where the scars of World War One are still raw as Amer­i­ca plunges head­long into anoth­er con­flict. Where moral puri­tanism abounds, but so does unmit­i­gat­ed sadism.

Bradley Coop­er has the time­less bone struc­tures that feels plucked from Edward Goulding’s 1947 adap­ta­tion, but his Stan­ton is more brit­tle than the one played by Tyrone Pow­er. Where the book and orig­i­nal film see Stan­ton slow­ly suc­cumb to his worst instincts, Coop­er has more dis­tinct breaks, but his attempt to drum up some chem­istry with Mara sad­ly fall short. Mara’s Mol­ly is giv­en more screen time than in the pre­vi­ous film but does lit­tle with it beyond look­ing on in wide-eyed hor­ror in a series of hand­some­ly acces­sorised outfits.

Far more impres­sive is Cooper’s chem­istry with the seduc­tive, manip­u­la­tive psy­chol­o­gist Dr Rit­ter played with peer­less poise by Cate Blanchett. The moment Blanchett enters the frame she seems to set it alight. With each slow move­ment of a limb or vel­vety-voiced sen­tence, she com­mands inten­si­ty that per­fect­ly suits del Toro’s rich sen­si­bil­i­ty. His use of shad­ow across her face is both expres­sive and breath-tak­ing, and its impact doesn’t dimin­ish even as many of the scenes in between her appear­ances some­times over­stay their welcome.

While it would be hard to argue that none of this film’s two hours, 20 minute run­time could be trimmed, its final min­utes are well worth the wait, with Coop­er sell­ing the intense dark­ness with every­thing he’s got. The heavy sign­post­ing that grates in the film’s sec­ond act is for­giv­en and the pitch-black con­clu­sion rivals Chi­na­town in its film noir cru­el­ty. Even with its lay­ers of ele­gant arti­fice, it is Night­mare Alley’s dark heart that proves its great­est strength.