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(Nightmare Alley • FSK 162021 ‧ Crime/Thriller ‧ 2h 20m • Showtimes London, Fri 21 Jan ▪ Sat 22 Jan • Sun 23 Jan • Mon 24 Jan • Tue 25 Jan Wed 26 Jan • Thu 27 Jan •
Picturehouse Central, 600 m·Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 12:30 • 15:45 • 19:00
Regent Street Cinema, 1,6 km·307 Regent Street, LONDON W1B 2HW, United Kingdom, 20:15
The Cinema in the Arches, 3,1 km·Battersea, Arches Lane, LONDON SW11 8AB, United Kingdom, 13:40 • 16:00 • 20:50
Vue Cinemas, 3,4 km·Islingto, 36 Parkfield Street, LONDON N1 0PS, United Kingdom, 19:30
Everyman Screen on the Green, 3,7 km·Islington, 83 Upper Street, LONDON N1 0NP, United Kingdom, 19:00
The Gate Picturehouse, 4,9 km·87 Notting Hill Gate, LONDON W11 3JZ, United Kingdom, 20:20)
"Nightmare Alley"
When charismatic but down-on-his-luck Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) endears himself to clairvoyant Zeena Krumbein (Toni Collette) and her has-been mentalist husband Pete (David Strathairn) at a traveling carnival, he crafts a golden ticket to success, using this newly acquired knowledge to grift the wealthy elite of 1940s New York Society. With the virtuous Molly Cahill (Rooney Mara) loyally by his side, Stanton plots to con Ezra Grindle (Richard Jenkins), a dangerous tycoon, with the aid of a mysterious psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) who might be his most formidable opponent yet.
"Nightmare Alley" journeys into the most arrestingly dark, sweeping and realistic world; the cinematic world of film noir. The film moves from the inner circle of a 1930s traveling carnival, a realm of shocks and wonders, to the halls of wealth and power where seduction and treachery reside. At it's core lies a man who sells his soul to the art of the con. Stanton Carlisle begins as a literal nobody, a man who has ditched a scarred past, and is so desperate to separate himself from his origins that he decides to join a passing carnival and become a member of a world unto itself. Here, no questions are asked, and no one cares who you were before, as long as you pitch in right now. Stanton’s rise through the ranks of the carnival troupe continues onto the higher echelons of American society all against the background of the great depression in America. The carnival is an incredibly close-knit, hermetic society. It’s a place where people keep their secrets, and many are escaping a life of crime or a past they've to leave behind. And yet, they form a strong society. It’s almost like a microcosm of the world. Everybody’s there to swindle everybody. But at the same time, they know they need each other, and they protect one another. The carnival geeks are usually opium junkies or alcoholics deprived of their fix, willing to do anything to avoid withdrawal. In the carnival hierarchy, the geek is the lowest in their societal pecking order, reviled and pitied even by carnies. Pulled from dark alleys in the dead of night, the geek is everything Stanton fears about himself.
He's a man who's given all the elements to change his life. He has people who believe in him, who love him and trust him. Yet his drive and his own hubris are so strong that they turn him away from that. It's the story of a man hoisted onto his own karma. This is Stanton Carlisle, a drifting hustler who transforms himself into a dazzling showman and manipulator so masterful he comes to believe he can outwit fate. Once he learns how profitable delusion and deception can be, Stanton never turns back. Within "Nightmare Alley", there are seething layers of corruption, vice, lust, betrayal, and cosmic absurdity that build as Stanton learns to cynically prey on the human need to believe in something outside themselves and our world. The film avoids the trademark visual aspects of noir, keeping the story speeding forwards, as Stanton’s life becomes a harrowing circle. He's now a broken man who has learned to lie to get the reactions he wants from people. As Stanton’s skills increase and he becomes a consummate performer, the carnival world gives way to a city realm far shinier and glitzier on the surface but seething with anxieties underneath. Stanton is a character of devastating darkness. He's a mercurial character, who transforms according to circumstances. As Stanton makes his delirious rise, the film tracks a reckless 'American Dream' running off the rails.
But in that darkness, there are three beacons of truth in three different women he meets, Zeena, Molly, and Lilith. Stanton’s first real relationship when he arrives at the carnival is with Zeena. Zeena knows the ropes better than anyone. Married to her once brilliant and loveable co-star, now a pathetic alcoholic, she gravitates to Stanton but senses he's, like the tarot card of the hanged man he draws from her deck, headed on a difficult path. She’s the type of person who’s constantly wanting to heal and help and fix. Zeena is someone who changes the tires on her truck. She’s a total competent. You’ve got to keep it. The savvy mentalist Zeena relishes the physical passion she finds with Stanton and opens his worldview on how to operate in America. The disarming ingénue Molly falls hard for his deceptive, aspirational optimism. If Stanton has any moral compass, it exists for his paramour, Molly wins Stanton’s attention early on with her warmth and hopefulness. It's she who believes he has greatness in him, enough to take a chance on him and leave behind the community she loves. She tries very hard to keep Stan on the right track. Once Stanton and Molly leave for the bright lights of Buffalo, where they strike it rich as a swanky nightclub act, the film and ambiance do a 180. A sleek Art Deco aesthetic reflecting the hot new trends of the late 30s prevails in the second part of the film.
Dr. Lilith Ritter is a sharp-as-nails psychoanalyst who sizes up Stanton quickly as a broken psyche beneath his suave act, but also as a very dangerous man she has the game to outmaneuver and take down for good. Stanton and Lilith’s clash is epic. Lilith has her own dark past that she’s trying to avenge and she’s very smart. Lilith is also someone who’s interested in both the practical and mystical sides of psychoanalysis, so that’s part of why Stanton intrigues her. She’s trying to work out what makes him tick as she’s a bit of a shaman herself. Their entire relationship takes place in her office, so we thought about that set as being not just a physical space but a psychological space. The carny who changes Stanton’s life the most is Zeena’s husband, Pete, a fading star who drowns his self-recriminations in the bottle. Once Pete was the creator of a hit mind-reading act, based on an ingenious code he created, that wowed high-paying audiences. Now isolated and guilt-ridden, Pete is momentarily buoyed by the thought of taking Stanton under his wing and oblivious to his wife’s relationship with him. He approaches him with a naïve, paternalistic pride. Even though Pete warns Stanton to never abuse the act in ways that might take advantage of the audience, or a spook show, that’s exactly what Stanton does. Pete has the melancholy of a guy who once owned the stage but fell victim to alcohol and lost it.
The carnival’s manager, Clem Hoately (William Dafoe) is also it's bombastic barker, an old school carny with an intimidating gruffness, but willingness to give anyone his or her one chance. He has a bit of a conman in him, too, and he wants to make a dollar. But there's a sweet side to Clem as well, where he feels responsible for his carnival family. A guy like Clem has been around, he's probably done time, he’s had to scrape to get by, and he knows what that’s like, so he’s willing to help Stanton. Clem gives Stanton refuge, but he also demonstrates the depths of his own darkness in his harsh treatment of the carnival’s geek. Unmissable with his two-tone, heeled boots and crimson-and-gold barker’s jacket, Clem is one of the carnival’s most multihued characters, and one of it's most unpredictable. When Stanton and Molly relocate to Buffalo as both war and boom times sweep the nation, Stanton sets his sights on a very lofty goal. He aims to gain the trust of the town’s wealthiest industrial magnate, Ezra Grindle, a man haunted by loss and willing to go to any lengths for answers. Despite his riches, Grindle is blind to all that he possesses. He’s fixated instead on his fear that he caused the death of a woman he loved. Bruno (Ron Perlman) is a noble person who acts like a father figure to Molly and tries to protect her from Stanton. He’s complex and full of love for her but is incapable of outwitting Stanton. Each helps Stanton harness his skills, yet they each watch him choose the most insidious path at every fork in the road.
The film is based on William Lindsay Gresham’s novel published in 1946 about a charismatic huckster consumed by uncontrolled ambition. The adaptation is set in 1939, just as the nation had barely recovered from one 'World War' and entered another, and as the country faced stark divisions. This time is in many ways the birth of modern America. In an era before television, the traveling carnival is the epitome of live, local entertainment for the masses. The visitors transformed one muddy, small-town field after another promising to mystify, provoke and make a hard life a little more magical. As much as they offered alluring fairy tales to audiences, beneath the paint, tinsel, and outrageous claims, they could be exploitive and dehumanizing to their performers. But they're also alternate communities for people who would otherwise be on the margins. Naturally drawn to the macabre and profoundly human world of carnival sideshows, Gresham’s novel as autobiographical and wants to explore the murky lines between illusion and reality, desperation and control, success, and tragedy. With sharper edges than any movie, the film is a true hardboiled tale of crime, betrayal, and scathing comeuppance. It's a tale about the dark side of American capitalism.
Indeed, in it's visceral realism, the film takes on the urgency of a moral fable; a of fate’s bill coming due, structured to end with a bang. When an audience is invested in the story of a person’s rise, their greatest fear is the fall and that fall can be very emotionally strong, "Nightmare Alley" is about fear, about greed, and it’s about manipulation. The look of the film is, per usual, meticulously composed to set an inescapable mood. It has all the dark underpinnings of what seems to be a very polite society. The world of the carnival might have some trickery and deceit, but it has the beating heart of a true community. It's the high society in this film that is far more threatening and terrifying.
