Guillermo Del Toro

NIGHTMARE ALLEY: enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies

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Photo caption: Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Nightmare Alley is Guillermo del Toro’s absorbing remake of the 1947 film noir classic, a cautionary fable of overreaching. Del Toro has deepened the minor characters, creating a showcase for many of our finest film actors.

It’s just before WW II and a drifter named Stan Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) is desperate enough to take a menial job in a transient carnival. In the first scene, we learn that Stan is lethally dangerous; he also has movie star good looks, a gift of charm and enough burning ambition for a thousand carnies.

Stan befriends (and beds) the world-weary Zeena (Toni Collette), who stars in a mind-reading act. Zeena is married to Pete (David Straithairn), a master of clairvoyance acts, whose alcoholism has dropped him from vaudeville stardom to this gutter-level carnival. Stan ingratiates himself with Pete and steals Pete’s notebook of secret codes. Armed with Pete’s secret system, Stan seduces the good-hearted and pretty, young Molly (Rooney Mara), and the two head off to launch a new nightclub act in the Big Time.

Stan and Molly achieve great success and encounter Lilith, who has her own phony psychologist racket. Stan sees an opportunity for even greater riches by fleecing the rich – pretending to communicate with their dead loved ones. Pete had warned Stan against “the spook business”, and Molly has moral objections. But Stan sees Lilith as an equally ruthless and amoral partner, and he proceeds with his scheme. Will he succeed? (Hint – this is a film noir.)

Bradley is very good as Stan, a guy who will do anything to win, and who is intolerable when he gets to the top. Blanchett is superb as the sleek and cynical Lilith. Willem Dafoe is perfect as Clem, the carnival boss; Clem’s pay-by-play description of geek recruitment is one of the best scenes this year.

Del Toro wrote the screenplay with his wife Kim Morgan who is also (YAY!) a longstanding movie blogger (Sunset Gun). The source material for both movies was the William Lindsay Gresham novel. Gresham had a buddy in the – Spanish Civil War who was a carnie abd fascinated Gresham with his tales of the carnie life.

The 1947 original runs one hour and fifty minutes. With my strong bias against overlong films, I was initially skeptical of the 2021 version’s two hours, thirty minutes running time. But del Toro and Morgan invest the extra forty minutes into enriching the minor roles played by Straithairn and Dafoe, and other fine character actors: Ron Perlman, Mary Steenbergen, Richard Jenkins, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Beaver and Holt McCallany (Mindhunters).

Willem Dafoe in NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

I recently rewatched the original 1947 Nightmare Alley, and it still stands up. I’m not usually a fan of Tyrone Power, but I’ll admit that he’s perfect as Stan, and his work at the end, when Stan is on the skids, is heartbreaking. Joan Blondell is excellent as Zeena, and Colleen Gray is compellingly adorable as Molly. Helen Walker’s turn as Lilith is brilliant, and it’s a shame that an auto accident scandal derailed her career. Ian Keith, a stage actor with very few memorable screen appearances, delivered a touching performance as Pete (in far less screen time than Straithairn gets).

Tamara Deverell should win the 2022 Academy Award for production design; she deserves it for Lilith’s art deco office suite alone, never mind for creating the extraordinary world of the carnivals.

Nightmare Alley is the first film i”ve seen with geek credits: Paul Anderson as Geek #1 and Jesse Buck as Geek #2. I also stayed to the end to see no animals were harmed – bad things happen to chickens, so the CGI effects in Nightmare Alley are pretty cluckin’ effective.

The final line is one of the all-time best. Nightmare Alley is one of the Best Movies of 2021, and is currently in theaters.

THE SHAPE OF WATER: an operatic romance (and it’s inter-species)

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Sally Hawkins in THE SHAPE OF WATER

The Shape of Water is an epic romance from that most imaginative of filmmakers,  writer-director Guillermo del Toro.  The Shape of Water may become the most-remembered film of 2017.

The story is set in 1962 Baltimore. Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a mute woman who lives in a dark apartment above an aging downtown movie palace.  She and her friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer) work as a janitors on the graveyard shift at a government research laboratory.  The Cold War adventurer Strickland (Michael Shannon), a tower of menace, has captured an amphibian creature from the Amazon and has brought him in chains to a tank at the laboratory.  The male creature, in the approximate form of a human, has dual breathing systems, so he can survive both under water and on the surface; it develops that he also has intelligence, feelings and even healing powers.

The scientist Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) wants to study Amphibian Man to discover how his species could benefit humanity.  Strickland, on the other hand, wants to rush into killing and dissecting the creature.  Strickland is a sadist, who enjoys brutalizing Amphibian Man with his cattle prod.

Elisa is repulsed by Strickland’s torture, and she feel compassion for Amphibian Man.  She starts showing Amphibian Man some kindness.  As Amphibian Man becomes more trusting of Elisa, he feels gratitude for her kindness.  She cares about him, too, first with pity and then with the fondness of a pet owner.  As Amphibian Man’s intelligence and feelings become more apparent, the two become more equal, and their mutual fondness blossoms into passion.

But Strickland’s nefarious plans force Elisa and her supporters into a race against the clock to save Amphibian Man.  And so we’re off on a thriller, with a heist-like rescue and a chase, culminating in an ending of operatic scale.

Now this is a romance that transcends species.  I totally bought into this.  If you can’t, the movie is less moving and much, much more odd.  Romance is often consummated sexually, and this one is, too.

Sally Hawkins is not conventionally pretty, yet del Toro didn’t make Elisa a stereotypical spinsterish ugly ducking.  Elisa is vital, with a rich inner life, a wicked sense of humor and cultural interests, and who expresses herself sexually.  She may only be a night janitor with a disability, but that doesn’t define her.  Elisa’s defiant gaze at Strickland is one of the movie’s highlights.

Hawkins’ performance is a tour de force.  Shannon makes for a formidable villain, especially when he clenches his own gangrenous fingers.  Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer and Nick Searcy (Art Mullen in Justified) are all excellent.

Richard Jenkins’s performance as Elisa’s neighbor Giles is very special.  This is a very vulnerable man, with his sexuality trapped in a closet, his growing sensitivity to his own aging and his career as a commercial artist becoming obsolete.  With his episodes of resolute denial spotted with instances of inner strength, both the character and the performance are very textured.  And Giles’ eccentric reactions to the story are very, very funny.

I highly recommend Guillermo del Toro’s interview on NPR’s Fresh Air , in which he discusses many of his choices in developing the story of The Shape of Water, including shaping the character of Elisa and the inspirations from The Creature from the Black Lagoon.  In the interview, del Toro explains that, if this movie were made in 1962, Strickland would have been the hero, the Cold Warrior protecting humans from the alien creature.  Instead of course, the heroes of The Shape of Water are a woman with a disability, a woman of color, a gay man and a commie spy and, of course, a monster.

None of the characters have any reason to envision that white male supremacy, oppression of gays or the Cold War would end, or even be tempered, in their lifetimes.  It’s a graphic time capsule, with the grand movie palace empty, pushing out a sword and sandal epic to compete in futility with the small screen offerings of Dobie Gillis, Mr. Ed and Bonanza.  It’s a world in which the coolest thing imaginable is a teal 1962 Cadillac De Ville.

Here’s where Guillermo del Toro’s imagination triumphs. This story could not be told as well in a novel, on stage or in any other artistic medium. It has to be a movie.

This is filmmaking at its most essential and most glorious. Del Toro, along with production designer Paul B, Austerberry and art director Nigel Churcher, create a set of vivid and discrete worlds, each with its own palette. There are Elisa’s and Giles’ dark apartments, the brooding institutional green of the laboratory and the bright mid-century modern domain of Strickland’s family.

This is a beautiful movie.  Between del Toro’s filmmaking genius and Hawkins’ performance, The Shape of Water is a Must See, one of the best movies of the year.