Synopsis
He was all things to all men … but only one thing to all women!
Stanton Carlisle joins a seedy carnival, working with "Mademoiselle Zeena" and her alcoholic husband, Pete.
1947 Directed by Edmund Goulding
Stanton Carlisle joins a seedy carnival, working with "Mademoiselle Zeena" and her alcoholic husband, Pete.
Tyrone Power Helen Walker Coleen Gray Joan Blondell Taylor Holmes Mike Mazurki Ian Keith Roy Roberts Florence Auer Bonnie Bannon George Beranger Oliver Blake June Bolyn Chet Brandenburg James Burke George Chandler Harry Cheshire Edward Clark Clancy Cooper George Davis Julia Dean Sayre Dearing James Flavin Nina Gilbert Henry Hall Robert Karnes Kenner G. Kemp Max Linder George Lloyd Show All…
Le charlatan, O Beco das Ilusões Perdidas, De Straat der Verloren Zielen, El callejón de las almas perdidas, Der Scharlatan, La fiera delle illusioni, Ο Αγύρτης, O Beco das Almas Perdidas, 玉面情魔, Алея кошмарів, Аллея кошмаров, Kâbus Sokağı, A sarlatán, 악몽의 골목, Mardrömsgränden, El Callejon de las Almas Perdidas
Definitely in the running for one of the most unique noirs of its time, Nightmare Alley is a classic ‘be careful what you wish for’ story—the tale of a master manipulator and his rise to fame from Carnival Barker opportunist to high end nightclub mentalist and just what happens when you reach to high. Super dark even for a noir, and cynical to a fault while also providing incredibly interesting observations on alcoholism, psychology, and religion—this is an obscure masterpiece with an electric Tyrone Power sizzling up the screen as the selfish sociopath conman well versed in the art of exploiting others.
Double crosses, carnival atmos, the gooseflesh inducing visuals of the fountain scene, tarot cards… there’s just so much to love here.
Monolithic Noir in my book—an all timer.
“Mister, I was made for it.”
A nasty piece of work. I love watching pretty boys use their beauty as a weapon only to go to rot. Too many modern actors seem to treat their beauty as an affliction rather than a useful blade. Lurid, revelatory, potent.
The greatest fallibility of man is his capacity for forgiveness in Edmund Goulding’s “Nightmare Alley.”
With a star turn by Tyrone Power in a role so dark that it could be a black hole, “Alley” was a flop on release for transforming Hollywood’s favorite swashbuckler into an irredeemable spiritualist con man.
At least, he -should- be irredeemable.
“Alley” remains fixed in the canon of essential noirs for dabbling in a different sort of grimness. Power’s scheming sociopath has no actual supernatural powers, but still seems to shimmy out of every quagmire through riding the waves of the infinite kindness of strangers.
It makes Power’s slimy mentalist Sam Carlisle a different sort of protagonist in his genre; all the more surprising…
riveting and nasty, lush and lurid. movie is about what happens with most comedians. loved this!
Nightmare Alley is a great cautionary tale on the danger of humanly vice in a greedy world. This adaptation successfully brings out the brilliance of the source material, thanks to its simplistic style and a highly impressive ensemble. Guillermo del Toro surely has some huge shoes to fill with this one.
An entertaining cat-and-mouse game, Nightmare Alley microscopically details a con-man's rise to the top and its consequences. Tyrone Power had enough charms and acting chops to execute such a charismatic character perfectly, while Helen Walker's portrait of an equally calculating psychiatrist deserves every bit of the praise also.
The only critique for me maybe lies in its absurd ending, which to some degree is unfortunately the sign of the time. Otherwise Nightmare Alley is an engrossing noir classic and storytelling at its finest. Highly recommended.
Finally, I have taken out a thorn that I had been carrying inside for years: I always wanted to acquire a copy of Nightmare Alley made by Masters of Cinema but it was difficult, I could never find it online and sometime later I found out it was OOP, however this year I was lucky to know that Criterion would include it in their collection so I bought this restored version in 4K.
Something I love about this film is that despite being a full-fledged Noir film with the same ingredients that many have this one makes use of a resource that makes it different from others and I mean the use of the theme of the fun-fair in which…
It's a fine line between doing foreshadowing right and being too obvious about it, and I feel like this film stepped just a fraction of a toe over to the too obvious side. It's a brutal experience to watch this collapse happening, but knowing with a certainty because of a line earlier in the film exactly where it's gonna go made it less a sense of doom and more an anxious experience. Just get it over with. Just turn him into what he could not turn away from.
"Buddy, you're sure a good mind reader!"
For me anyway, Tyrone Power's Great Stanton is one of the very best characters in all of noir, a sociopath who's trying to fight his own lack of conscience as one might try to walk off a sprained ankle, and never quite making it. Like all true born manipulators, his best asset is his ability to lie to himself, a character trait that is subtly, brilliantly conveyed here (just why DID he buy that bottle, anyway??).
Also chilling in its portrayal of alcoholism, a subject that was often played for laughs in movies of this period, but is the stuff of (sorry) nightmares here.
The title does not represent this movie very well. Don’t get me wrong, the movie is actually quite interesting and it took me on a journey I definitely wasn’t expecting…but it shouldn’t be called Nightmare Alley.
This needs to be renamed…
From Chic to Geek.
This is another much lauded film with which I didn't connect, but there are nevertheless things about it that I respect and by which I'm intrigued, particularly the locating of Stanton Carlisle's (Tyrone Power) rise and fall in the context of three women.
In cinema, we typically see these relationships from the other side: we watch the women, working to position their men to succeed, so that they, too, can rise, something society won't allow them to do on their own. With Stan, though, we see the man who benefits from the intelligence, skills, and sex appeal of the women who attach themselves to him.
And so he uses Zeena (Joan Blondell) for her code, and to teach him the…