Bradley Cooper may not be the first choice to play a role in a film noir of the latter day. His smile is charming and warm, which makes it unlikely that he will ever be a good actor in dark noir films. However, in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare AlleyCooper is a chic remake of the 1947 noir. Cooper wears large suits and flat-brim fedoras, as well as other period accessories. He’s a conman who loses to fate.
Stanton Carlisle’s character is devious and a carnival barker. He dreams of doing even greater things. From the very beginning, we can see Stan running from the terrible crime that he committed. Trudging down a backwoods road, he comes upon a traveling carnival filled with human oddities, among them a “snake man,” an “electric girl,” and a geek—the carnival specialist hired to do repulsive things like bite the heads off live chickens. How could anyone go so low? Stan wonders. Stan will soon discover the truth. Soon, he discovers the bizarre carnival midway is called “Nightmare Alley” by its residents.
Dan Laustsen was the film’s director. He also shot Oscar-nominated del Toro’s Oscar-winning movie. Water ShapeThis is a picture of a woman who finds a new, noir-like tone outside in soft falling snow. In its concern with texture—gleaming deco walls and polished marble hallways—the picture is in some sense about the moody pleasures of noir itself: that vaguely defined cinematic and literary genre that is still sending out tendrils of moral rot some 80 years after its heyday. With his rendition of an original scene, Del Toro shows that a lot has been accomplished in this time. The carnival geek of 1947 was initially not visible. He was instead kept below the lip on the stage and a litter of chickens was then dropped into the pit. Horror fanboy Del Toro has no interest in such restraint—he gives us the full-feathered rip-and-dribble experience.
While there are some memorably horrific moments throughout the film it doesn’t become a horror classic. Most of its most frightening scenes are caused by the unsavory motives of its unscrupulous characters. This includes Cate Blanchett’s Dr. Lilith Ritter who is a con artist psychologist, into which Carlisle has fallen, as well Richard Jenkins’s Ezra Grindle. Ritter treats nutcases. Rooney Mara’s Molly Cahill (the melancholy, electric girl), Toni Collette, David Strathairn and Toni Collette, who are husband and wife mentalists, offer to teach Carlisle their tricks. It looks for a time that Stan and Molly, assisted by Dr. Ritter’s dubious advice, might be able to escape the world of hatred and distrust in which they are trapped. Noir fans will be pleased to know that such a revelation is not possible.