Nightmare Alley – the old one and the new one (and a discussion about “carnival noir”)

A belated sequel to the film noir discussions I had with my online group a year ago. As some of you would know, Guillermo Del Toro’s new film Nightmare Alley is one of the best picture nominees at the Oscars this year. Based on a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham, it centres on a young drifter named Stanton who goes from being a carnival worker to swindling rich people as a mind-reading “spiritualist”. The story was first filmed in 1947, with Tyrone Power uncharacteristically cast in the lead – the film didn’t do too well when it came out, but it developed a cult following in later decades and is now viewed as a key work of that incredibly rich period for film noirs, the late 1940s. 

 

I watched both films earlier this week, and enjoyed them. (Note: Del Toro, though he’s a huge movie enthusiast himself, sees his version as a direct adaptation of the novel rather than a remake of the 1947 film. I haven’t read the book, but it’s easy to see that the new film could do more explicit things with the subject matter than a 1940s film could.) I thought it might be interesting to have a discussion not just about the two versions but also more generally about that sub-genre of American cinema, the dark carnival narrative set in a subterranean world populated by social outcastes or “geeks”. This could include films that are set entirely in carnivals or circuses or fairgrounds – like the 1932 classic Freaks – or films with important scenes in that dangerous-seeming environment: e.g. Orson Welles’s Lady from Shanghai or Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. 

 

(The carnival was a very important space in American pop culture of a certain period, definitely from the 1920s to the 1950s – in some books and films it has almost as transformative a function as the forest/aranyak has had over a much longer period in literature, ranging from the vanns of Indian mythology to Shakespeare’s Arden. And I think Stanton’s journey in Nightmare Alley is a fine example of the carnival as portal or distorting mirror.)

 

I have sent prints of the films to my online group, and hope to schedule a discussion for next week or next weekend. Anyone else who’s interested, let me know (mail me at jaiarjun@gmail.com) and I’ll send the films across.