Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley (2021) traces the rise and fall of a carnival con man, and it is the only del Toro film with nothing supernatural in it. Stan joins a travelling carnival. There he learns how a mind reading act works: coded words, an agreement with a partner, reading the room. He takes the trick and leaves, selling the same show to wealthy people in the city at a far higher price. The real subject is one carnival word: geek. It is the job given to the man who has fallen so far he can do nothing else. The film shows it in the first minutes and then lets you forget. It is the second adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham's novel; the first was made in 1947 with Tyrone Power. Every del Toro film has a monster. This one has none, and the absence is the point: people manufacture the monster themselves. The shoot was halted by the pandemic and finished months later. A black and white version was released afterwards, and the film is better in it. Cate Blanchett's psychologist is the most dangerous figure in it. It lost money. It runs 150 minutes. Good for: noir, period drama, and del Toro. Less good for: the first half is very slow and the ending is genuinely dark.