Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley (which is a great title) is a film noir from Fox, released in 1947, and directed by Edmund Goulding. It's an uneven but often searing look at carnie life, as well a character who travels a fascinating arc.

The film opens at a carnival somewhere in the middle of the country. Tyrone Power is a barker who works with a mentalist act, played by Joan Blondell. Her partner, Ian Keith, is a broken-down alcoholic. Power urges her to teach him a code that she used in vaudeville which could get them out of the carnival circuit. He achieves this when he accidentally gives Keith pure alcohol to drink, poisoning him to death.

Power eventually marries a pretty young acrobat, Coleen Gray, and they become a successful nightclub act using Blondell's code. Power has a never-ending ambition, though, and when he meets an unscrupulous psychoanalyst (Helen Walker) they team up in a phony spiritualist act to bilk some rich people out of a lot of money. Since this is noir, though, Walker is not on the up and up, and Power ends up on a path that leads him back to the carnival.

This a very bleak picture, with a softened ending of partial redemption that was demanded by the studio. Despite that, the plot harshly punishes Power for his ambition, especially when it dares cross over into a quasi-religious area. Growing up in an orphanage, religion was pounded into Power, and he knows how to use his gift for gab to finagle others. In many ways, he's a forerunner to the Jimmy Swaggart-style preacher of more modern times.

The film's visual style is very noir--lots of dark shadows. The acting is also very good, especially Power, who wanted to make this film (it was based on a hit novel) to change his image. Blondell is excellent as a performer who has seen her better days, and Gray is also good as the only innocent character in the film. Walker practically simmers as the femme fatale who hoodwinks Power. It is interesting that the film seems to equate psychoanalysis with humbuggery like mind-reading and Tarot cards.

What keeps the film from being a classic is the inconsistency of tone and the tendency for the script to go off on tangents, especially regarding religion. It's hard to know whether the intention is to warn those who would dare to take God name's in vain (Power mentions this specifically) or if the film is taking a cynical view of religion in general. I suspect the former, but the film would have better served to cover this in a tighter manner.

There are some brilliant scenes, though. When Power, knocked off his high horse, is with a camp of hobos and repeats a speech made to him by Keith, I got chills. This film is well worth seeing.