Nightmare Alley

A film that begins at a travelling carnival. Stan works there. His job is light; he helps with the set-up, steers the crowd, and watches the acts. There is one part of the carnival he does not look at. A man is kept in a cage and given live chickens, and the audience pays for it; how the man got into that state is explained. Zeena and Pete perform a mind-reading act. They have a code; the order of the words gives the answer, and the act works perfectly. Pete drinks. One night he drinks from the wrong bottle and dies. Stan learns the code. He leaves the carnival with Molly. They perform in clubs in the city and the business grows. Then a psychologist appears. Lilith keeps recordings of her wealthy patients' sessions and Stan goes into partnership with her. From there the film becomes a story of fraud. Speaking with the dead, a garden, a night and a woman in disguise. What the narrative is interested in is not the act but the fall: the question asked at the start is answered at the end; how a man ends up in that cage. Molly's line is the moral axis. At a certain point she refuses to go on. Tyrone Power wanted this part himself. He had been playing heroes until then and the studio was reluctant about the project; after it opened it was given little support. The carnival is depicted in detail. The tents, the queues, the backstage and the running order are built realistically. The source is William Lindsay Gresham's novel and the book's ending was changed for the film. Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker are in the cast. Edmund Goulding directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes film noir and dark American narratives. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a sympathetic character; the central figure is self-serving throughout and the film does not pity him at the end.