Nightmare Alley (1947)

Directed by Edmund Goulding. Starring Tyrone Power, Coleen Gray, Helen Walker, Joan Blondell, Ian Keith, Mike Mazurki, Taylor Holmes, James Flavin, Roy Roberts.

Intriguing second-tier noir, as daring as it is despairing, set in a world of carnival folk and clairvoyant charlatans. After stumbling into a carnival grift that uses a secret “code” to fool patrons into believing a mentalist’s gifts, conman Power takes his sideshow swindle to the big city high-life, attracting the attention of an untrustworthy psychologist (Walker) and a moneybags skeptic (Holmes). Director Goulding doesn’t have the cancerous touch for noir’s cynical rot and stark shadowplay, but he and screenwriter Jules Furthman are natural storytellers, and they bait the hook early, reeling us in through every strange (and not always credible) twist of a shapeshifting narrative that introduces and drops major new components/characters at the drop of a moth-eaten hat. Power deserves a hefty measure of credit for getting the picture made in the first place, but he’s still miscast in the lead role; it may be one of his better performances, and he demonstrates a tortured, conflicted side that belied his matinee idol typecasting, but he’s still too stiff in the portrayal, retreating to conventional dramatic postures too often and overplaying his outbursts. As for the tacked-on message of hope that ruins the bitter full-circle irony that immediately preceded it, it’s as jarring and unwelcome as a splash of ice water…or a plug of wood alcohol. Skip out a couple minutes early, however, and it’s really something. Adapted from a William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. Remade in 2021.

75/100