Nightmare Alley

Tyrone Power stars as Stanton Carlisle, the handsome homme fatale of Edmund Goulding’s dark and twisted Nightmare Alley, a phantasmagoria of desperation, addiction, manslaughter, and exploitation. Based on the novel that introduced Americans to the perverse notion of carnival geeks, or drug addicts who eat live chickens on stage in exchange for a fix, Nightmare Alley is both non-categorical and a perfect specimen of film noir. A traveling carnival barker and con man who dreams of making it big (the stage helps him “feel superior to the yokels out there”), Carlisle sees his golden opportunity in his co-worker Mademoiselle Zeena’s (Joan Blondell) verbal code which allows two people to communicate secretly before a crowd. Once he’s learned the techniques well enough from Zeena, he purloins not only the code but pretty stage girl Molly (Coleen Gray) from her strong man of a boyfriend, Bruno (Mike Mazurki); Carlisle and Molly get married and leave the carnival to begin a new con shaking down the high-end clubs of Chicago with their fraudulent fortune telling act. Needless to say, Carlisle and his greed are bound to fly too close to the sun. Cinematographer Lee Garmes employs mesmerizing shadow technique to present carnie life as oppressive and claustrophobic, a world where Christianity duels with the occult for control of the souls of men. “You’re going against God,” Molly warns Carlisle when he boasts of the “spiritual comfort” he offers his victims. Featuring one of the bleakest endings in all of noir, one thing is clear: Nightmare Alley leads to nothing good.