Muristek
Guillermo del Toro’s freaky noir brings back a neglected genre, and Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett offer masterclass performances
At the time of writing, Nightmare Alley is the longest of long shots for the Academy Award: it’s the complete outsider at the bookies, and absolutely no one is tipping it. But just because it won’t win the best picture Oscar doesn’t mean it shouldn’t. It’s a big, brash picture in the old style, stuffed with heavyweight performers oozing class, and put together with seemingly effortless aplomb by director Guillermo del Toro – who of course has pedigree at this level, having won this very award in 2018 with The Shape of Water.
Now, The Shape of Water was admittedly a bit lucky to win ahead of Dunkirk, Phantom Thread and Get Out, but perhaps its eccentricity and Creature from the Black Lagoon references made it distinctive. Certainly, Nightmare Alley is a less obviously odd film, but like The Shape of Water, it has its roots in Hollywood’s pulp past; a remake of a 1947 Tyrone Power film noir, one of the freaky bizarro kind of noirs, as opposed to the tightlipped hat-and-gun type, or hapless patsy head-over-heels in love type. Noir hasn’t been part of the serious Oscar conversation for years: while the definition is pretty elastic and some might argue for Joker, the last contender was probably LA Confidential in the mid-90s. So we can be grateful to Del Toro for this, if nothing else.
Continue reading...