Nightmare Alley

Guillermo del Toro’s latest descent into darkness is an accomplished, meticulously calibrated affair which is also unremittingly turgid.

Game over? Rooney Mara and Bradley Cooper

Guillermo del Toro has displayed a life-long fascination with ghosts, ghouls and monsters. Here, though, the ghosts that materialise are of a more fabricated nature, products borne more from optimism than fear. The worlds of Svengali and Madame Arcati have long enriched the novels and plays of Victoriana and, indeed, of the patrons of music halls and travelling carnivals. More recently, entertainers and mentalists like Derren Brown and Penn & Teller have exposed the chicanery behind such psychological manipulation. In fact, ‘Teller’ is given a ‘thank you’ during the closing credits. The arena of the medium is certainly an intriguing one and there are good mediums and the phoney.

Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, adapted from William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel (previously filmed in 1947), is as masterful as the routine of Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper), being a handsome, majestic shaggy dog epic, part character study and part homage to the film noir of the 1940s. But for a good chunk of the film, Carlisle is a blank slate, an outsider drawn as much by the bright lights and gaudy gimcrackery of a second-rate carnival as he is by the prospect of food and an honest wage. But honesty is the last thing paraded in this seamy fairground, as Carlisle quickly finds out. However, he has his own dark past and soon inveigles his way into the trust of his new colleagues, tweaking their acts and hitting on the women in the camp.

For Stanton Carlisle to truly come alive, one needed an actor with real charisma and a sparkle in his eye, someone we might forgive and root for in spite of his dishonest ways. The trouble with Nightmare Alley is that Bradley Cooper remains a blank slate, as if permanently distracted by the fedora on his head. He is meant to be a lady-killer, a dashing grand manipulator, but compared to today’s stellar magicians he has only his technique to win round an audience. The true star of the film is del Toro himself, who ladles on the atmosphere with aplomb, as one might expect from the director of Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and The Shape of Water (2017). And his and Kim Morgan's screenplay provides some neat insights into the modus operandi of the charlatan medium, stripping each and every audience member of their scepticism. Things get a little more interesting with the arrival of Cate Blanchett’s psychologist Lilith Ritter, who attempts to play Carlisle at his own game. Even so, the characters here never feel anything more than pawns in del Toro’s elaborate set piece, fairground attractions in a display of grandiose spectacle. It’s an artistic vision of troubled times – of a world on the brink of a second world war – but it’s also an often turgid, overblown pageant of self-indulgence that needed a zippier, lighter touch to justify its considerable running time.

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen, David Strathairn, Holt McCallany, Peter MacNeill, Mark Povinelli, Jim Beaver, Tim Blake Nelson, Clifton Collins Jr, Paul Anderson, Lara Jean Chorostecki, Stephen McHattie. 

Dir Guillermo del Toro, Pro J. Miles Dale, Guillermo del Toro and Bradley Cooper, Screenplay Guillermo del Toro and Kim Morgan, Ph Dan Laustsen, Pro Des Tamara Deverell, Ed Cam McLauchlin, Music Nathan Johnson, Costumes Luis Sequeira, Sound Nathan Robitaille, Dialect coaches Tim Monich and Carla Meyer. 

Searchlight Pictures/TSG Entertainment/Double Dare You Productions-Walt Disney.
150 mins. USA/Mexico. 2021. UK Rel: 21 January 2022. US Rel: 17 December 2021. Cert. 15.