Nightmare Alley

Plot synopsis:
Stanton Carlisle watches the geek show at a Ten-in-One where he has recently begun working. He later asks the carnival's talker Clem Hoately where geeks come from. Clem explains that geeks are "made": a sideshow owner finds an alcoholic bum and offers him a temporary job with a steady supply of liquor. Initially, the bum is only asked to pretend to be a geek, using a razor blade to slice chickens' necks and then faking the drinking of the blood. After a few weeks, the owner threatens to end the job and replace the bum with a "real" geek, and the fear of sobering up terrifies the bum into actually biting the chickens. Thus, a geek is made.
Stan performs sleight of hand tricks in the sideshow but studies under the carnival's mentalist Zeena to learn a refined "code" act, where performers memorize verbal cues that allow them to appear psychic by accurately answering written audience questions. Stan also begins to pick up Zeena's talent for cold reading. He eventually leaves the carnival with beautiful and naïve electric girl. Molly Cahill to perform a team code act.
Their act becomes very successful, but Stan grows bored and transforms himself into Reverend Carlisle, an upstanding Spiritualist preacher offering séance sessions with the help of his medium (Molly, appearing as "Miss Cahill" to obfuscate their relationship). Stan gains a devoted following, but the stress of leading a false life leads him to seek the help of psychologist named Lilith Ritter, who seduces and then begins controlling him. Stan pleads constantly for them to go away together, and Lilith eventually agrees, suggesting the Rev. Carlisle swindle a rich man for the getaway money. They settle on Ezra Grindle, a ruthless auto tycoon with a skeptical interest in the occult. Stan manages to convince Grindle of his powers, and the businessman becomes a devoted spiritualist.
Stan keeps Grindle hooked by promising to reunite him with his deceased college sweetheart Dorrie, who died in a botched back-alley abortion Grindle convinced her to seek. A reluctant Molly plays "Dorrie" in a series of sessions but eventually breaks character, destroying the illusion, and Grindle vows revenge for Stan's lies. Stan tells Molly to go back to carnival life. At Lillith's suggestion he decides to go into hiding with Grindle's money but discovers that Lillith has stolen it. When he confronts her, she threatens to have him committed to a mental institution, and he narrowly escapes. He flees and resorts to performing as a mentalist at increasingly shoddy venues, barely evading the men Grindle continually sends after him. Eventually he becomes a hobo, staying afloat by giving Tarot readings and selling horoscopes. He descends into alcoholism and depression.
His life in shambles, Stan finds a carnival owner and asks to join the sideshow as a palm reader. The owner gives Stan some whiskey but refuses his proposal, saying the show is full. But as Stan begins to drunkenly stumble out, the owner changes his tune and invites Stan back in with a job offer: "Of course, it's only temporary – just until we get a real geek."

Tags: insanity, romantic, murder

Review:
Power, Blondell, Gray, Helen Walker, and the marvelous Ian Keith turn in great performances in a gritty film somewhat ahead of its time for its unrelenting toughness, its hard view of alcoholism, a look inside the world of mentalists and carnival life, and its theme of the supernatural.
Nightmare Alley is a remarkable film- it hardly blinks in showing a cynical, scheming "preacher" doing his thing.Given the norms of Hollywood at the time, or almost at any time,it does give you a lot to consider.Tyrone Power is brilliant, and the movie is actually quite close to the powerful (hard to find!) novel.In the best tradition of a movie that examines the dark side of society in an effectively muckraking way, it is a rare gem.
This is the Carnivals that once traveled from town to town where for a couple of hours the tedious routine of hard working people of the small towns and farms across the land could be shattered as a result of having their minds stretched by bizarre sideshows and their pockets emptied with fixed games of chance favoring the establishment.By 1947 Tyrone Power, once considered one of the handsomest young men in the picture business, had established himself as one of Hollywood's leading stars.
Boasting an excellent script(Jules Furthman) and direction (Edmund Goulding)it also showcases actors Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker to great advantage.
This riveting melodrama of corruption and ambition deals Stan(Tyrone Power) who along with phony fortune-teller named Zeena(Joan Blondell) and her drunk husband Pete(Ian Hunter) working the crowd to read mind.
This is a magnificent noir drama of greed packs excellent performances specially by starring role Tyrone Power.Casting is frankly outstanding, giving extraordinaries acting, as Joan Blondell as the tarots expert, the alcoholic Ian Hunter, the robust Mike Mazurski, gorgeous Colleen Gray and the mean psychiatrist Helen Walker, among them.
Still he was never as unredeemingly evil as in Nightmare Alley on screen until his last completed film, Witness For The Prosecution.Power is working in a small time carnival where Joan Blondell and Ian Keith have a mind reading act with a good code between them that allows Keith to pull some really strange and good answers out of left field.
Now Nightmare Alley is considered a cinema classic and box office bust that it was, it remained a personal favorite among Tyrone Power's films.Though Darryl Zanuck preferred to forget the experience..
Directed by the English stage-director Edmund Goulding in 1947 on the Twentieth-Century Fox lot, this stylish B&W film, under-rated in its time, bravely sets out to tell the story of a totally disagreeable character --a carnival con-man turned spiritualist who eventually gets his comeuppance.
The classic noir look --the deep shadows, the carnival atmosphere, the night scenes-- are helped enormously by the lighting and compositions of the great cinematographer Lee Garmes and the unusual casting: Helen Walker is particularly effective as the psychologist; the patrician Taylor Holmes as the rich man who is conned; and Joan Blondell, the lovable heroine of so many a Warner Bros.
A tense film-noir melodrama that typically hovers between A-film status with Tyrone Power, a major star, some top-writers and an A-list director, but it has a very B-movie feel to it, mostly because of the film's unusual characterizations, the setting with the sideshow-artists and its subsequent reluctant release by 20th-century Fox. Due to these related rights issues the film was long unseen, and quickly assumed cult-status that lasted for a long time, but since its DVD-release, this film came out of obscurity and was generally received as a very fine and unusual noir-classic.Tyrone Power is very impressive as Stanton Carlisle, a sideshow hustler who gets a menial job with a cheap carnival and becomes fascinated with a mind-reading act performed by Pete and Zeena (Ian Keith and Joan Blondell).
The ambitious Stanton "Stan" Carlisle (Tyrone Power) works in a sideshow as carny and assistant of the mentalist Zeena Krumbein (Joan Blondell), who is married with the alcoholic Pete (Ian Keith).
But his ambition brings him back to the life in the sideshow."Nightmare Alley" is an impressive and disturbing film-noir, with one of the best performances of Tyrone Power.
There is no doubt that the material is disturbing, and such a role would never have been envisaged as going to Power, but he must have fought Fox very hard to get the very different and provocative main part.He is supported well by Coleen Gray, and particularly Joan Blondell - the rest of the cast shows what the "Carnies" life can be like.
For much of the film, Tyrone Power plays a fake evangelist of sorts, really more of a mind-reader but putting a slight religious twist on the routine.To the movie's credit, Colleen Gray's character lectures him big-time about getting in trouble with God for what he is doing, which you wouldn't hear in today's movies.The most interesting character in the film, to me, was the psychiatrist-turned- crook "Lillith Ritter," played by Helen Walker.
Both Gray (Kiss of Death/Kansas City Confidential) and Blondell (Cry Havoc) earn their money as polar opposites jostling for Stanton's attentions, and Ian Keith gives a heart tugging performance as alcoholic Pete Krumbein, a critical character that spins the protagonist into a vortex of smug charlatanism-cum-self loathing.Now available on DVD with a lovely transfer, this is worthy of a delve for the film noir dwellers.
Even the soundtrack at times seem to foreshadow a very grim and frightening revelation of human nature.Tyrone Power as a cynical carnival con-man, at first learns the code from Zeena (well-portrayed by Joan Blondell, who is married to an ill- fated alcoholic.).
He soon finds his talent can garner a lucrative career as "mentalist", (a term used in the early days for psychic seers/fortune tellers).Where the story takes its most cynical turn is upon his acquaintance with Dr. Ritter, a psychologist who tape records her patients, and she joins forces with Power in fraud with higher stakes, wealthy clients, and shameless manipulation, all in the name of psychic healing.Interesting that Freudian psychoanalysis was reaching its popularity during this time period, I am intrigued to learn more about the director, Edmund Goulding and his own, very real suicide.
It's the second time I've seen "Nightmare Alley" and I still consider it Goulding's best of all his movies I've ever seen.Tyrone Power gives perhaps his greatest performance ever.As great when he plays a handsome miracle worker as when he portrays a human wreck.The screenplay is absorbing from start to finish .The geek scenes might seem pointless at the beginning of the movie but just wait and see...Magic (fake magic) walks hand in hand with religion :the sequence when Power tells the marshal's fortune is the key to the film:the crook knows the Bible and how to use it to good effects ,he read it in a reform school.The whole film is wrapped in an atmosphere of mystery: from the secret code-which fools us the audience - to the tarots Zeena reads and which often mean death ,from the psychologist's recordings -which predate lots of movie by decades ("Conversation" "Sliver" )to this extraordinary scene in Grindle's garden ( it looks like a cathedral!) which is given a supernatural treatment whereas ,we ,the audience ,do know that all is phoney!
When Stanton realizes that he reigns over people 's minds,he does believe he is more than a magician : he is a miracle worker,a minister,not far from God himself.It's no surprising he teams up with a psychologist .Who can deny that today the shrink has replaced the priest for many people ?For that too ,"nightmare alley" was years ahead of its time.The psychologist is Stanton's perfect partner:she knows his weaknesses she uses "what we call "total recall" -well before Verhoeven-" to dominate him,he who wanted to rule the world of minds.We do not really know whether the police cars arrive with their sirens wailing or if she suggests it or if it's in Stanton's mind.God preserve us from a remake of this masterful film noir!.
Displaying mental gymnastics is one thing but when it falls into a code of conduct which ignores these basic human ethics and descends into self-serving action alone, it can very well spell disaster.I was surprised by the strong performance of Joan Blondell as I'd seen her in so many films that were pleasantly entertaining, but here it was realism and unpretentious emotion.Helen Walker seems familiar as a femme fatale; not sure if she'd ever played a good girl part in films but here she's in character and very effective too.I've only seen this film once so will have to take it in a few more times to really appreciate the entire story.
Made before lifestyle, illness and depression aged him before his time, Nightmare Alley will change the mind of anyone who thought Tyrone Power was, at best, a competent pretty boy - a lightweight.This is an excellent film noir, based upon the book by William Lindsay Gresham, detailing the rise and fall of Stanton Carlisle (Power) - from Carny barker to prominent "mentalist" to sideshow geek.
Made as a B rated film, it was directed by the great Edmund Goulding and written by Jules Furthman from a novel by William Lindsay Gresham.It's a dark story revolving around a seedy carnival troupe, much like FREAKS, that has that gorgeous Tyrone Power as a carnival barker that turns into The Great Stanton, an elegant mind-reader.
Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray and Helen Walker provide strong supporting performances.This is classic film noir that runs the full arc from a Carnival setting to the wood paneled walls of a corrupt psychiatrist's private suite.
Edmund Goulding, (who directed Power in "The Razor's Edge" the previous year), has a lot to work with and makes the most of it.Sadly, this film is not currently available for viewing due to some squabble over film rights between the producer's heirs and Fox. Hopefully it will be aired somewhere (the Fox Movie Channel?) or hit VHS and DVD in the near future, so more film afficionados can appreciate this rare gem of high budget film noir.Note: some viewers feel that the film's ending is flawed (e.g.
Watching the rise of Power's character from simply Stan, a carnival roustabout in love with a nice girl, to the Great Stanton, a master of manipulation with his phony mind reading act, is a joy to a classic movie buff's eyes and ears.
Blondell, Walker and Colleen Gray as the women he uses and abuses all give solid restrained performances, not a weak link among them, while Ian Keith as Blondell's alchoholic husband Pete is riveting in every moment of his minor role.Visually as strong as any noir of its day Nightmare Alley's cop out ending does a disservice to its audience and Power's performance, that nevertheless is an incredible one in spite of it..
And yet its depiction of naked ambition, ruthlessness, lust and greed ticks all the black boxes making this a real rollercoaster of a movie.Directed by Edmund Goulding of all people ( "Grand Hotel", "Dark Victory"), this is a fast moving, ever-changing movie which shows Power's Stanton, a lowly carny just one ring above the crazed freak in the show that the public come to see, called a geek in an earlier use of the well-known modern word, but who uses his silver tongue and good looks to step on people, starting with Joan Blundell's established and popular mind-reader, by stealing her act, accidentally widowing her, running away with the show strong-man's pretty young assistant and making it big on the Chicago dinner party circuit as a charismatic but charlatan fortune teller.But even this isn't enough for Stan as he taps into spiritualism as a get-rich-quick way to con the elderly and susceptible rich of high society into parting with their wealth for shared "sightings" of past loved ones.
However along the way he's crossed an equally ambitious and duplicitous young female lawyer who plays the biter bit with him and in so doing knocks down his whole house of cards existence as we see him reduced to the lowest rung imaginable which indeed was set up in the film's opening scenes.Power is remarkable, cast against type as the slick but heartless go-getter but there's worthy support everywhere in the cast from Blundell's blowsy but gullible swami, Coleen Gray as Power's devoted but in the end religious and honourable young lover, later his wife, Taylor Holmes as the old city gent he looks to take for a packet and especially Helen Walker as the ice-cool lawyer who gives her prey enough rope with which to step into the noose.Sure, the story's far fetched in the extreme with some hard-to-believe narrative jumps along the way but it's so convincingly played and indeed directed that you willingly go all the way with Power on his spectacular rise and fall.This carnival entertainment takes all the best rides in the show and serves them up in a compulsive, bleak manner that will have you queuing up back at the start to see it again..
However, that is one of Nightmare Alley's many charms, and it certainly contains enough elements of film noir to fall into that category, including perhaps one of the coldest femme fatales in noir history.The incredibly charming Tyrone Power starts off as a simple carnival barker before hitting it big as a mentalist in a fancy club and then as something of an evangelist in the headlines.
Coleen Gray's character, Molly, gives a powerful and memorable speech on the matter.Another highlight of the movie is Helen Walker, who's character, Lilith Ritter, is perhaps one of the coldest and most calculating femme fatales in film noir history.
This dark, rather cynical 70-year old film, tells you how much of it is done, from cold readings to more sophisticated acts using complex codes.Carnival conman Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) rises from a sideshow barker to a high-class psychic, before falling to the lowest level of all - a sideshow geek.
Although there is a ray of hope, there is the stronger possibility that the relationship between Stan and his wife Molly (Colleen Gray) will reflect the doomed relationship we see at the beginning between Zeena (Joan Blondell) and her husband.Tyrone Power was a remarkable presence on the screen; the camera loved the guy.
Because he rose too high." It's a heart-rending story, and no one could have made it more convincing than Tyrone Power, an actor too good-looking for his own good, which was evident from the very start of his career, and somehow he manages to put his own tragedy into this film, which he himself considered his best.At the same time it's a scary parable of Hollywood and how it works, how it's all built on dreams and make-believe, and how little it takes to make it all crumble.
The other supporting performances are uneven, and Coleen Gray, who plays the smitten Molly, is especially unconvincing; however, Helen Walker well plays a key role as an ambiguous psychologist, who wears mannish attire and is the only female not duped by Stan.Perhaps the message of director Edmund Goulding's noirish film with a pulp fiction title is the danger inherent in trying to reach too high.
Stan's greed and ambition lead to the cruel deception of people suffering emotional loss, and he ventures into the quasi-religious to achieve his ends.Cinematographer Lee Garmes lensed the film with rich black-and-white imagery; abstract shadows highlight several scenes, and Garmes captures Tyrone Power at the peak of his legendary movie star appeal.
The film is a star vehicle for Tyrone Power, who does a good job with the role of Stan, and, after a mediocre start, captures and retains viewers' interest for most of its running time..
Edmund Goulding directed this melodrama that stars Tyrone power as Stan Carlisle, an ambitious carnival worker who is determined to learn the code used by Zeena(played by Joan Blondell) and her alcoholic husband Pete.
The lesser known Helen Walker and Coleen Gray are not only radiant screen presences, but both turn in fine performances which contribute much to the success of the film, in supporting Tyrone Power in the lead.While Power's looks are what are generally considered his greatest assets, "Nightmare Alley" allows him a rare opportunity to show what a terrific actor he was, (or could have been.) He seems to relish the occasion in every step of the way in the charting of the rise and fall of Stanton Carlisle.
A dull, disappointing film that starts out as an intriguing noir and turns into a bloodless drama.Tyrone Power plays a member of a tawdry, traveling carnival who capitalizes on his accidental murder of a member of a mentalist act by taking the man's place and learning his tricks.
Grim and harsh, the story evolves into something of a morality tale, as a noir anti-hero named Stan (Tyrone Power), employed in a carnival, uses tricks of the carnival trade to manipulate his way to fame and fortune, with the help of a mind reader named Zeena (Joan Blondell).
The central character's elevation from being a charismatic opportunist in a carnival to being a sophisticated nightclub mentalist is fascinating to watch but his inability to recognise his own limitations leads inevitably to the movie's most tragic and uncomfortable scenes.Stan Carlisle (Tyrone Power) is a drifter who joins the carnival and quickly becomes interested in the mind reading act performed by Zeena Krumbein (Joan Blondell).
***SPOILERS*** Matinée idol and devilishly handsome Tryone Power as mind reader Stan Carlisle sheds his mostly good guy image in this very disturbing film noir flick where he ends up being what he's so much afraid off becoming all during the film a "Geek" or "Wild Man of Borneo" type in a carnival.Stan gets very friendly with mentalist Zenna, Joan Blondel, whom he works with and finds out that she and her alcoholic husband Pete, Ian Keith, had this secret word code that they used in their mind reading act.