Nightmare Alley

Directed by Edmund Goulding, Nightmare Alley follows an ambitious mentalist (Tyrone Power’s Stanton Carlisle) as he eventually partners with a shady psychiatrist (Helen Walker’s Lilith) to bilk a rich industrialist (Taylor Holmes’ Ezra Grindle) out of a small fortune. Filmmaker Goulding, working from Jules Furthman’s screenplay, delivers a deliberately-paced drama that contains its fair share of compelling elements yet remains mostly unable to wholeheartedly capture (and sustain) the viewer’s rapt interest, which is a shame, certainly, given that Nightmare Alley benefits quite substantially from Power’s stirring, engrossing turn as the far-from-sympathetic protagonist and its smattering of overtly engrossing sequences. (There is, for example, a stellar early interlude wherein Stanton uses his powers to convince a police officer to drop all charges against his carny cohorts.) And although the often episodic narrative contains a handful of intriguing twists and developments, Nightmare Alley‘s hit-and-miss midsection ensures that it slowly-but-surely peters out long before arriving at its head-scratchingly redemptive finale (ie there reaches a point at which the story should end but keeps going for another few minutes). The final result is a distressingly ineffective adaptation that’s never quite able to lift itself up to the above-average efforts of its star, and it seems apparent, ultimately, that the movie could’ve used a hefty dose of streamlining and a much shorter running time.

** out of ****