Le Charlatan

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. I found the movie all the more effective for the fact that while Tyrone Power is in a quite uncharacteristic role. It is obvious he is strongly committed to the film and delivers a chilling, scary, thought provoking performance. The glimpses of the brutality of contemporary circus/side show life are in themselves interesting and disquieting. It is a rare film and even rarer book, but really worth the time.

I first saw this film in the late 70's on a Toronto television program devoted to classic cinema. I was joined by friends who always got together on Saturday nights to watch the musicals, comedies, or classic performances offered that week. NIGHTMARE ALLEY came as a surprise. It was a raw, exposed nerve of a film. Instead of the Hollywood diction we had come to expect, this film expressed itself in 1940's carny colloquialisms. And nobody in the cast was soft - they were all hard knocks characters, almost down for the count, but still fighting. After about 15 minutes, nobody in front of that set moved until it was all over, except maybe to look sideways to see if anyone else could believe their eyes. This is a movie clawing your way to the top , and then paying the price for getting there. This is a movie about being careful what you wish for. It is a movie about odd fascinations with people who are actually messengers of your future in disguise. And ultimately, it is a movie about how futile is the love of a good woman if the man is destined for ruin. Needless to say, it was not standard Hollywood fare when made in the 40's, and it is still not standard fare today. It's message is somehow both shocking and familiar. Listen for the last words uttered, as though in offhand comment about our 'hero' by bystanders. Those words haunted me for over 20 years, until I was able to track down another showing of the film on TV (STILL not on VCR or DVD for heaven's sake!). And I remembered them correctly all that time - that's the impact they made. See this film. Surrender to it. It's that good.

It is totally amazing, nearly 60 years later, to realize the lengths that 20th Century Fox went to in order to keep Tyrone Power a handsome leading man rather than letting him show his stuff. It's no wonder Fox came to disgrace during the Cleopatra era. Pity it didn't happen earlier so Power had more opportunities to show his acting range.

Nightmare Alley was a favorite of mine from the time I was a teenager -a film Power fought to make and one that the studio never publicized and released as a B film. Spiteful bunch, considering the money he had made for them!

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. It is reminiscent of "Ace in the Hole" and some of the later, cynical Wilder films.

Power was one of those actors whose drop dead gorgeous appearance kept him from some excellent roles, thanks to his studio. SomeoneI knew saw him in a Broadway play and said it was like being alone in a room with him, he had such magnetism.

We have so few examples of his really great work - the recording of John Brown's Body is one, this film is another - it's great that it's now out on DVD and available to the public.

Nightmare Alley is forever known in Hollywood as the film in which Tyrone Power made a total break with his typecast image, playing a completely evil and ultimately weak individual. Post World War II, Power made it clear to Darryl Zanuck that he was looking to expand his range as an actor. Zanuck reluctantly allowed him to do this film. He usually indulged his favorite at the studio. Of course he also had a backup plan just in case Nightmare Alley was a bust.

Well critically it wasn't a bust, Power got deservedly rave reviews for his portrayal of small time hustler and carnival sharpie Stan Carlisle. Power had a variation on his previous roles, he was either a straight out hero as in The Mark Of Zorro, Lloyds Of London, or The Razor's Edge. More often he was a combination hero/heel as in Blood And Sand, The Black Swan or A Yank In The RAF most of all in Rose Of Washington Square, probably the closest part to Stan Carlisle he had played before. 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. Power would like to learn it and does after Keith dies when he gets into some wood alcohol. Power then teams with Blondell.

He's forced to marry innocent young Coleen Gray when circus strongman Mike Mazurki thinks he's ruined her reputation. But even with the inconvenience of a wife, Power has his eyes on bigger game. He gets a mind reading act going at a swank Chicago nightclub and then partners with Helen Walker who is a quack psychologist.

Ty Power was great in the role, no question about that, but 1947 must have been a great year for scheming women. Helen Walker never gets the credit she's due for her part. She's every bit as bad as Power and more than up to whatever games he's playing. Her part is very similar to Jane Greer's in Out Of The Past which also came out in 1947.

The critics loved Power in Nightmare Alley, but 20th Century Fox took a big loss from it because the public wouldn't accept Power in so evil a role. Darryl Zanuck absolutely knew this would happen so he hedged his bets a little by withholding from release Captain From Castile, a big budget spectacular where you'll Tyrone Power at his most noble and heroic on screen without a bit of heel shading. That came out within six weeks of Nightmare Alley and Power's fans were appeased.

Power's character was a man essentially out of his depth in going for the big con. But as an actor in Nightmare Alley he expanded his range beyond anything anyone ever expected from him. 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.

As other commentators have noted, once you've seen this film it haunts you. The creepy carnival milieu has rarely been better done (well, Tod Browning's "Freaks" of course) but seems more wholesome than the upscale world of nightclub mentalists and corrupt psychiatrists to which Tyrone Power ascends. Joan Blondell is carnally blowzy but she's almost upstaged by the ill-starred actress Helen Walker (the duplicitous wife in Impact) as that double-crossing shrink. No one soon forgets Power's slippery climb to the top followed by his horrifying fall. This film is a true, dark classic.