Sunday Morning! “Nightmare Alley” x 3

When he served as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, William Lindsay Gresham heard a story he never forgot: a former carnival worker told him how to “make” a sideshow “geek”- the carnies would simply find a desperate alcoholic or addict and cajole him into a temporary job pretending to bite the heads off chickens for gawking audiences; the position was never really temporary, and if he wanted to be kept in booze, he’d have to learn to really bite. The sheer exploitative cruelty of this story haunted Gresham and he planned for years to turn it into a novel. Also, drinking was his own vice and, perhaps, he feared reaching the same nadir himself one day.

William Lindsay Gresham

He wrote his first novel Nightmare Alley while frequenting the notorious Hotel Carter in Manhattan and drinking heavily, and the novel feels somehow desperate and seedy- if it could breathe, its breath would smell like cheap rum- but also driven by an undeniable power and energy. It tells the story of a drifter named Stan Carlisle who hitches along with a carnival where he learns how to perform mentalist tricks from the experienced Madame Zeena. He takes to the gimmicks and tricks, seemingly delighted to be putting one over on the local yokels and the sense of superiority it gives him. He’s always been a bit of a loser, but now he’s the one taking advantage of others.

He also takes to Zeena, who has become a sort of babysitter to her husband Pete, who is also a rummy. Before long, he’s got affairs going with her and the kind-hearted young performer Molly. One night, seemingly by accident, he gives Pete the wrong bottle of (wood) alcohol and kills him, and soon after slips out with Molly, now his wife, to take the show on the road. Having memorized a set of verbal cues and cold reading techniques, “The Great Stanton” and assistant become a popular nightclub act. But, of course, there are no real accidents.

He eventually decides the big money is in metaphysics, and he becomes the Reverend Carlisle, a spiritualist preacher who can communicate with the dead. The tricks are basically the same; religion’s as much a grift as the carnival, as far as Stan’s concerned. But the stress of keeping up the ruse starts to get to him, and so he goes to see a psychiatrist, subtly named Lilith, who is as manipulative in her work as anyone else in the novel. A classic femme fatale, she talks him into a scheme in which he will perform seances for a very rich man, who happens to have revealed his deepest secrets as her patient.

The millionaire’s darkest secret was the true love he lost years earlier after pressuring the girl into a back alley abortion that killed her. It’s simple: all Stanton needs is for Molly to play the dead girl for the tycoon, who will pay him handsomely and the two of them can retire, after giving Lilith her cut. Since this is essentially a noir and, to date, no scheme in a noir has ever gone well, it does not go well. Stanton has already sowed the seeds of his own destruction. And he thought he was so much smarter than everyone else.

Nightmare Alley works so well as a novel because it has moments of almost hallucinatory horror, but still chuckles under its boozy breath about absolutely everyone being a con artist- the carnies are no better or worse than preachers, spiritualists, psychiatrists, or lovers. Indeed the novel never really leaves the sideshow at all; everyone is trying to grift each other in this world. Everyone has a deep inner need they yearn to have filled, but can’t; and they all sense that need in each other, but see it as a vulnerability. Stanton finally has nothing left to fill it with but alcohol, and the grim ending becomes fairly inescapable. We see it coming for about a hundred pages, but it still lands like a sledgehammer. There is nothing to this world but scammers and  they finally fold in upon him.

Every culture in the world has tricksters and scammers, but nobody loves a con man like Americans. Maybe the appeal is how they seem to hear us and find us interesting at last. We’re not so alone after all; so, if they take a little blood now and then, what’s the problem? You have plenty to spare. Gresham shows the appeal of being a con artist, never forgetting that, if you live by the scam, you’ll die by it too.

Alcohol is the final and greatest con artist in the novel- it offers to fill an endless need, but never quite does. It convinces you that everyone else is untrue and manipulative, while pulling more and more of your strings. Alcoholism haunted Gresham’s life, even after his first novel was a success, he couldn’t escape it, even as his health began failing. Eventually, he checked into the Hotel Carter one last time and took an overdose of sleeping pills; he was 53.

Nightmare Alley is a novel that has almost worked as a film twice now. It was adapted pretty much immediately by Edmund Goulding and starring Tyrone Power. The two had recently worked together on an adaptation of The Razor’s Edge (I swear that was not planned!) and the film is considered a gem of film noir. The producers built a full working carnival with 100 attractions and those early scenes have a punch that wears off once we leave the carnival. Much of the later film seems stagy and somewhat slower than the novel. The ending is toned down and happier as well, at the demand of Darryl Zanuck. But, Tyrone Power is perfect as a lead character without a moral compas. He’s lost, but loving it.

Guillermo Del Toro’s recent adaptation turns this into a lush, immersive period piece set in an art deco fantasy world. As one would expect, his loving eye catches every detail of carnival life and Buffalo, New York, hasn’t looked so good on film in years. It’s also not surprising that he restores many of the darker elements of the novel. The ending is intact and it still hits like a sledgehammer. There are a few additional deaths and darker elements; it is hinted that the millionaire has been hurting women, for instance. Film Noir is supposed to be as dark as the Marianna’s Trench, and Del Toro happily complies. Most of all, it just looks really good.

Nevertheless, it’s hard to ever forget you’re watching a movie, and it rarely feels like you’re watching a nightmare. It’s weird to suggest that a director who loves the horrific and grotesque left out the most frightening parts of the book, but the mood is different here. Del Toro tends more towards the Universal Pictures type of monster, and the novel is about a much more common type of terror. He makes Stanton tragic, as well, giving the character serious daddy issues and a sort of split personality. It works, in a sense, because we feel like maybe he could have been saved, and that’s more resonant; we like to think we can be saved too.

But, even that’s a con. Stanton is a dupe who dreams himself to be a master manipulator. Del Toro doesn’t quite capture the bitterness and absurdity of a world in which everybody loves a con man, until they stop.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, what are YOU watching, playing, pondering, reading, or trying to get a way with this weekend?