At the premiere of his new drama “Nightmare Alley” this month, the director Guillermo del Toro told the audience he had read the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham — the film’s official source material — before seeing the classic 1947 adaptation with Tyrone Power.
Like the update, the 1947 version picks up some tricks from a washed-up vaudeville couple, Zeena and Pete, whose former ambitions have been reduced to a small-time fairground routine.
You can’t chalk it up to auteurism.
Sarris also called Goulding’s career “discreet and tasteful,” but “Nightmare Alley” is hardly that.
But it is a dark and cynical film, and it makes a good test case for film noir, a category that resists clear definition.
But for Stan, in the 1947 version more than in the book or the new film, sex seems to be an ancillary interest.
The cinematography by Lee Garmes isn’t filled with the smoky, jaw-dropping shots that Garmes did for Josef von Sternberg on “Dishonored” or “Shanghai Express,” but the cluttered, tarp-filled carnival scenery affords him ample opportunities to bathe the actors in menacing shadows.
Ultimately, what makes “Nightmare Alley” enduring may be its suggestion that we’re all susceptible to being taken in — and perhaps even want to be.