Books into Celluloid: Nightmare Alley
Written by Kelly Cozy Thursday, 04 June 2009 19:13
Nightmare Alley
Directed by Edmund Goulding
Released in 1947
Cast: Tyrone Power
Joan Blondell
Coleen Gray
Helen Walker
A sleazy but smart pulp novel makes for a sleazy but smart noir film.
The story
At a seedy traveling carnival in Depression-era rural America, amateur magician Stan Carlisle is making a name for himself. But he’s not content fleecing the rubes for nickels and dimes. He wants more. When he gets hold of a number code he sets himself up as a mentalist; he hooks up with the carnival’s Electric Girl Molly and the two of them start working in vaudeville. But that’s still not enough for Stan and his grudge against anyone who has more respect and money than he does. He joins forces with Lilith, a coldhearted psychiatrist. Using the information that Lilith gives him, Stan reinvents himself as a spiritualist with the power to help people contact their dead loved ones. And when an industry magnate offers Stan a fortune to put him in touch with his dead lover, Stan leaps at the chance…and at his downfall.
The book
In terms of its basic story arc, William Lindsay Gresham’s novel Nightmare Alley doesn’t have much to set it apart — cynical protagonist with a chip on his shoulder tries to better his lot in life by breaking society’s rules, only to get a comeuppance and end up worse off than he was. It’s the book’s carnival setting that gives the story its unique flavor: Gresham’s protagonist starts as an ambitious small-time magician and ends up the lowest form of carnival life — the geek. And though Stanton Carlisle soon shakes the carny dust off his feet to become first a vaudevillian and then a spiritualist minister, he never stops being a flim-flam man — all that has changed are the monetary stakes and the penalty for failure. It’s significant that the Tarot card illustrations that open each chapter start with The Fool and end with The Hanged Man.
Gresham worked in carnivals in his youth and has an unerring eye for the details of the life. The monotony of traveling from place to place, setting up and knocking down the show; the audience members whose accents and skin colors change as the carnival loops through the states but whose need for entertainment by the carnival acts and for reassurances about the future from the carny’s fortune-teller never change; the cast of characters common to any such carnival — the strong man, the tattooed man, the midget, the sweet and innocent showgirl, the fortune-teller, the freaks real and manufactured, the glib announcer. All these details give the first section of the book an atmosphere unlike that of most other noir fiction.
By contrast, the book’s subsequent sections are less successful, though still entertaining. Gresham serves up fistfuls of (rather heavy-handed) Freudian psychology and a glimpse into the workings of spiritualist scams, as well as a sociopathic psychologist, Dr. Lilith Ritter, who’s a distant literary relation to Hannibal Lecter.
The movie
Given the book’s often sordid subject matter, it’s a bit surprising that a major studio opted to make a film version of Nightmare Alley. Even more surprising was swashbuckling star Tyrone Power’s desire to play the role of Stanton Carlisle. Power was eager for a chance to change his image and stretch his abilities, and while the film was a flop that forced Power back into his tried-and-true roles, it’s come to be regarded as his best performance. (Rock Hudson would have much the same experience some twenty years later with the movie Seconds.)
The film adaptation is remarkably faithful. Some elements from the book are softened, in particular Carlisle’s psychological baggage and his relationship with Dr. Ritter (in the book they are lovers); also, Stan’s relationship with his carnival lover Molly is made more palatable in that he actually seems to love her (it helps that in the movie she has both a brain and a spine, things the book’s Molly sorely lacked). But for the most part the movie is unafraid to let Carlisle be Carlisle — a selfish bastard who’s not above exploiting others’ miseries to enhance his own status in the world. Power succeeds in helping the audience not be repulsed by Carlisle even when he’s being a bastard; and while it’s clear he deserves his sorry end by this time he’s gained a measure of the audience’s sympathy as well.
Power’s well-assisted by a note-perfect cast. Joan Blondell is tough and vulnerable as fortune-teller Zeena, whom Stan seduces in hopes of obtaining her word code. Colleen Gray is sweet and lively as Molly, and has a standout scene when she berates Carlisle as a blasphemer for his spiritualist scam. And Helen Walker takes a cold glee in her role as the manipulative psychologist.
Which should you check out first?
You’ll be fine with either one. The movie was long out of circulation due to legal issues but is now available on DVD along with a fine commentary. The book has recently been reprinted as part of the Library of America’s Crime Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 1940s omnibus (stand-alone editions are out of print but can be found online if you’re willing to pay).
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