Nightmare Alley

Nightmare Alley

1947. USA. Directed by Edmund Goulding. Screenplay by Jules Furthman, based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham. With Tyrone Power, Joan Blondell, Coleen Gray. Alexander Payne (Nebraska, The Descendants, Sideways) has chosen Nightmare Alley for his Carte Blanche selection, calling it “a jaw-dropping Greek tragedy with what is arguably Tyrone Power's finest performance. It would make a great double-bill with Freaks. God bless Zanuck for green-lighting this baby.” Shaking off his prewar matinee-idol image, Power plays Stanton Carlisle, a small-time carnie with big-time plans. He schemes his way to society celebrity as a charlatan spiritualist known as “The Great Stanton,” fleecing the rich and the gullible, but meets his sordid fate when he teams up with the even more cunning femme fatale Dr. Lilith Ritter (Helen Walker). Nightmare Alley is one of the bleakest of noirs, adapted from Gresham’s even more deliriously tormented novel. Preserved print courtesy Twentieth Century Fox. 100 min.