Nightmare Alley (1947)

 Edmund Goulding's "Nightmare Alley"


Edmund Goulding's 1947 film "Nightmare Alley" differentiated itself from the typical 'noir' structure by eliminating a lot of plot devices that have kept the genre upright. With this new addition to the 1940s & 1950s Hollywood cornerstone, it instead opts to keep the brutal fatalism instead. The film centers on Stan Carlisle, a seedy traveling carnival's barker who attempts to work his way up the ranks. Our protagonist isn't a righteous fellow, as his main method for advancement is deception. His whole act is deception and trickery, which is exactly what he uses to manipulate everyone around him and climb the ladder of success. However, it ends horribly for Stan whose own tricks and deceptions are used against him in the end. 

In a typical noir, the structure of our society is unearthed to showcase a seedy, horrible, and parasitic humanity underneath. The same is true for "Nightmare Alley." Our protagonist is already a deceiver and doesn't care about anyone but himself. But when you pull back the curtain even more, you discover that the entirety of human relationships, at least presented in the film, are that of people taking advantage of one another. Like the relationship between carnival act and spectator, the carnival act collects money from those they are deceiving with their trickery. On a grand scale, everyone is a carnival worker, metaphorically, espousing some deceptive nonsense in order to trick others and take advantage of them. 

Our protagonist faces a rise to the top and a sharp fall to the bottom when he discovers that he has been deceived in turn. It is a fascinating film and one of the better film noirs that I have seen. It has such a fatalistic and brutal ending that contends with the true spirit of the noir better than many other noirs seem to. 



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