NIGHTMARE ALLEY
US, 1946, 110 minutes, Black and white.
Tyrone Power, Colleen Gray, Joan Blondell, Helen Walker.
Directed by Edmund Goulding.
An unusual film from the forties. Its black and white photography, style and editing highlight the nightmare aspect of the title. Set in the background of Carnival and magicians, It shows people manipulating one another and using all kinds of overtones from trickery and corruption. Tyrone Power is quite effective in the central role and is an innocent-seeming hero among the oddities of the sideshows and the bizarre carnival. The director is Edmund Goulding, a very competent Hollywood director who made a very great number of memorable and interesting films ranging from Grand Hotel to Bette Davis' Dark Victory and The Old Maid.
1. The meaning of the title? The implications for theme and character? How was it verified throughout the film?
2. The importance of the black and white photography, the style? How realistic was the film, as presented as a thriller, a bizarre picture of a carnival? The importance of this offbeat world? style?
3. The focus on the carnival world and audience response? The reality of the carnival, its unreality? The world of enjoyment for people, the police suspicious of tricksters, the potential for enjoyment, the potential for corrupting? How well presented and explored? the films' attention to detail? the sideshows, the details of the tricks, the codes?
4. The film's exploration of truth and falsity, pretence, appearances and reality? The significance of the tarot cards, fate?
5. How did the film explore the nature of coincidence, fate, chance, patterns? The will to overreach oneself, the atmosphere of fatalism?
4. How well did the film focus on Stan? His presentation as an ordinary man at the beginning, his growing ambition, working in the carnival, the friendship and encouragement of his observations of Pete? The lessons of Pete and Pete's death, Molly and his wanting to succeed with her? His cool approach? The growing success? The success of the cab driver and his style? The importance of seeing him in successful action? The interaction with the doctor? The sophisticated world compared with the carnival? Was he able to cope with this? His work with the doctor and the tricksters? The lack of conscience, the belief in his own powers? The involvement in blackmail and its effect on him? Forcing Molly to fake the tricks? The showdown with the doctor? His overreaching himself? the fact that he was not so much in control? His being outwitted by others? His giving up and drinking? The fatalism? The humiliation of the ending?
5. How important was the film's paralleling Stan's fate with that of Pete? Seeing Pete as a wreck and drinking at the beginning? Expectations of Stan drinking, with the hobos, getting a job in the carnival, going berserk at the end? The pathos?
6. The role of Zeena? someone who was happy in the carnival, working within the limitations, for peoples enjoyment? Her helping of Pete, of Stan? Her capacity for love? her being insulted? The contrast with the world of Pete?
7. Molly as heroine, her work in the carnival, her innocence and enjoyment, her choice to go with Stan, her supporting him, the love, the happiness when she was a success, her revulsion at his belief in his own powers, losing her nerve, leaving him? Was this the best thing for her to do? The pathos of her love in supporting him at the end? The contrast with the doctor; the control in the use of the tapes, of the abuse of confidence and psychology, her criminal activities? Her outwitting of Stan?
8. The theme of gullibility and the search for the truth?
9. What insight into human nature did the film give? How pessimistic a view?
10. How could the film be seen as an allegory of the world, the struggle to survive, ambition and success, human weakness and sin?
