I saw the new, Guillermo del Toro-directed version of this yesterday.
First, here are links to my discussions of:
- The 1946 novel on which it was based. Written – and this might interest you – by the first husband of Joy Davidman Gresham, who went on to become the wife of C.S.Lewis. A more extreme contrast in worldviews between William Gresham and C.S. Lewis is hard to imagine.
- The 1947 film version, starring Tyrone Power.
I had never seen or been interested in seeing a del Toro film before, so I had no expectations going in other than a vague sense of what he’s about.
The film was, in the end, a disappointment. The basic – very basic – story was intact, but there was just something, especially about the first 2/3, which didn’t click for me. If I had a better vocabulary and framework for discussing film I could probably pin it down. I could say it was “slow,” but that’s problematic because “slow” is not necessarily a bad thing. The best I can do is to say that it lacked intensity – and you can, indeed, be both slow and intense. It’s not that there were wasted or meaningless scenes or dialogue. It’s that there was something missing – a through line of emotion or story that led me to disengage. There’s one reason for this related to plot that I’ll get to in a moment.
The design and atmosphere is effective. The acting mostly very good, although I just don’t like Toni Collette and never really have – her presence never seems to fit, to me.
So, you’re wondering, what is Nightmare Alley actually about?
As I said in my other posts on this, Nightmare Alley is essentially about need – the need to be heard and seen, the need to be recognized, the need to matter – and the lengths people will go to to have that need met and the able, willing and smart exploiters of that need – whether they be carnies, mentalists, spiritualists, psychologists or magicians.
The next moment Lilith’s [a psychologist] hand was through his arm, pressing it, turning him across the avenue to the apartment house where she lived, where she worked her own special brand of magic, where she had her locked files full of stuff. Where she told people what they had to do during the next day when they wanted a drink, when they wanted to break something, when they wanted to kill themselves with sleeping tablets, when they wanted to bugger the parlor maid or whatever they wanted to do that they had become so afraid of doing that they would pay her twenty-five dollars an hour to tell them either why it was all right to do it or go on doing it or think about doing it or how they could stop doing it or stop wanting to do it or stop thinking about doing it or do something else that was almost as good or something which was bad but would make you feel better or just something to do to be able to do something.
Which film version is better? Well, the 1947 is hampered by restrictions of the period, because there’s rough stuff in the novel. I will say, though, that the film doesn’t go as strongly in that formerly restricted direction as it could have. I mean, with a few less expletives, it could have almost passed a PG-13 rating. There’s a strong dominatrix vibe to Lilith’s relationship with Stan in the novel that really doesn’t come through, even in the present film.
And, of course, the new version is rougher, and therefore more realistic in atmosphere and setting, and you don’t have the affected acting and self-presentation that you see, especially in female characters, of that period. But, you know, Tyrone Power is very good in the original, playing the role a bit differently than Bradley Cooper does.
The end is different, too, but in a good way – in the new version. I won’t reveal the end, because it’s a great twist/full circle kind of thing – classic – but just now that the new version is faithful to the book, while the 1947 version tacks on, by studio insistence, a glimmer of hope that…isn’t in the book.
One thing that puzzles me, though, is how both versions adjust Stan’s motivation. The 1947 version strips it completely and makes Stan an orphan from childhood and with no discernible motivation for going full-on conman. The new version incorporates a bit from the book – Stan’s mother had an affair with her “voice teacher” and Stan blames his father for weakness.
But the novel, while complex and dark, seems to me to be fairly clear about Stan’s motivations in a way that wiping out all or most of his backstory renders opaque. From my post:
The greatest omission is related to Stan’s background. Gresham makes a great deal of this – not surprising, considering his own interest in psychoanalysis. In the movie, Stan had been orphaned as a child, and in the novel, he most definitely is not, and his family life plays a huge role in making him the man he is today – in a thoroughly negative way. As I said earlier, in Gresham’s vision, Stan is a con man because he was conned into believing that life was good and he was loved, and that illusion was shattered by his parents’ betrayal, not just of him, but of social norms and human decency. There’s a very clear motivation for Stan’s journey in the novel, but in the film, he just sort of pops up and is who he is.
But again, considering how Gresham positions all of this – to be honest, Stan’s issues are Oedipal – not surprising that it didn’t make it into a film in 1947! I will be interested to see if del Toro picks up this thread.
He doesn’t.
Last point: in the novel, Gresham takes much longer to trace Stan’s journey from carnie to spiritualist, and in fact, Stan starts a full-blown pseudo-religious group preying on the grieving and desperate. He’s the Elmer Gantry of spiritualists – but that’s missing from both film versions, hence, Gresham’s broader critique of religion in general.
Charlotte was Both 