Nightmare Alley is like two parts Noir, one part Twilight Zone and one part Freaks. Tyrone Power is great and a real bastard. At an earlier point in the film i said to my girlfriend, "wouldnt it be great if this ended up happening to him"....and it did! I loved the way it turned out for his character. Greed, itll get ya everytime!
Good movie, with an especially good performance by Tyrone Power. He plays a magician/mentalist in a circus sideshow. One of his fellow performers dies due to a careless, although unintentional, act by Power, a death foretold in a tarot card reading by Joan Blondell. Power leaves the circus and starts his own mind-reading act with his new wife Coleen Gray. During a show he meets a mysterious lady psychiatrist who makes a deal with him. Telling anymore would ruin it, so I'll just say this -- you can't run away from fate.
The mutant baby of Freaks and Double Indemnity. A pitch black noir for fans of the series Carnivale. This film revels in its dark and twisty tale and slimy characters.
Absolutely incredible film - and it really is Tyrone Power's greatest performance. Unfortunately, the film was too ahead of its time and Zanuck hated it and withdrew it from distribution and gave it no publicity. I'm introducing it on January 8, a new print of it, at the Dryden Theater in Rochester, New York.
a highly underrated film noir flick starring tyrone power who is usually the typecasted swashbuckler....a story around the circus and the art of con. power plays a drifter who seeks a job in the circus and acquires the trickery of conning art supervised by the senior con woman played by joan blondell. he escapes after accidently sparking off one drunk member's death....he elopes with another female performer who has a crush upon him, soliciting her as his co-schemer(and his marital spouse) as the upcoming fraud. then he recruits a female psychiatrist as his extended crew to enlarge the scale of his racket and evolve his status of fame....then he flops into the gutter due to one trivial failure of conscience. eventually he gets doublecrossed by the psychiatrist then becomes a degenerated drunk drifter without any perspective....retracks back in the primitive spot he begins...even worse, he transforms into an authentic geek which means beast-alike man without no intelligence.
this flick amplifies the noirish cynicism to the sublime extremity, simmering with errosive irony: he observes the geek when he just joins the crew then utters "how could anyone get so low?"...also he disbelieves the old flame of bondell's used to be a master of con...at last, he sinks into the deepest low with double-level bastardization.
power is notably a gorgeously striking man, and it's alluringly convincing to cast him as the womanizer, the taker who extract profits from female affinity, and he's made by women's benevolence but also ruined by the misdeed and the malice of women. just as the latin saying "what nourishes me destroyes me"...eventually his male beauty is despoiled of then devastatingly wasted that stimulates some shock effect to the audience, particularly when you recall the devilishly seductive expression on his face when he whispers love to his wife's ear then coaxes her tenderly into compromising to his next con, then you look into the carved uglified face later, then hearing him growling like human beast geek, what a shock....even he's still redeemed by love at last that doesn't dissolve a bit of its sour taste since it also parallels another sorrowful love story of bondell's character in the beginning.
this movie proves the potential depth of tyrone power as an actor, and he's much more talented than most people assume. "nightmare alley" is the proof that he could be the noirish anti-hero as well...just as "witness for the prosecution" shows that he can be a evil villain... but his conspicuous male beauty is so pleasant to the eye that you just could not help but infatuated that overshadows the recognition of his talent. is that a blissful bless or a ill-fated curse?
LOUEZ CE FILM OU ACHETEZ LE!!!! C'est un vieux "film noir" mais c'est excellent. Ce film m'a enormement marqué quand je l'ai ecouté cette semaine et il se ramasse automatique dans mon top 5. Je crois que c'est LE FILM ou je me suis le plus reconnu dans le personnage principal dans toute ma vie!
one of my favourite films of the forties, tyrone power's performance is incredible, with an original plot and a brilliant twist. should rank as one of the great rags to riches and back again stories, alongside films such as citizen kane. th british dvd release, courtesy of eureka video is suitably wonderful
I missed the last 15 minutes but what I saw was very good, great addition to the noir genre. I guessed alot of the plot though and from asking people who saw it right the way through; it turns out I infact guessed the final major plot twist within the firs 10 minutes of the movie.
MCT:June 12, 2008
MCT:March 30, 2008
MCT:January 13, 2008
