(Part Two of the Siren's thoughts on Nightmare Alley. Part One is here.)
You have to say one thing for Tyrone Power, even in a depressing movie he has a way of lifting a gal's spirits. The more the Siren reads about Power, the more affection she develops for the man. According to everyone who ever knew him, Power desired two things above all: respect as an actor, and a happy, stable family. Life gave him too little of either. Several of his adventure movies are still well-loved, such as The Black Swan and The Mark of Zorro, but few were the roles that gave him a chance to created a complex character. Nightmare Alley shows he had real ability under the gloss.
That Power worked so hard to put Nightmare's Stanton Carlisle on the screen tells you something about him as an actor. Take a look at the brilliant Montgomery Clift, for example, who has a large reputation for emotional nakedness on-screen. Given the chance to play Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard, Clift bailed at the last minute, saying he didn't want to play more love scenes opposite an older woman after doing The Heiress. Others have noted that the part might have rung a bell (more like a cathedral) regarding Clift's relationship with far-older singer Libby Holman. Power, on the other hand, with a resume dominated by candy-box historicals and swashbucklers, fought long and hard for the chance to play the lead in a movie that equates entertainment with fraud and ends with his character barely hanging onto humanity.
Nightmare Alley opens in late afternoon at a carnival--not a big flossy one, but a low-end affair serving the shirtsleeved masses. Power is killing time before his act goes on, snapping his gum and restlessly wandering around the grounds. He starts watching the sideshow geek, the debased individual whose "act" consists of biting the heads off chickens. Salary: one bottle of rotgut a day. Behind the geek's barker we see a big painting of what appears to be the Piltdown Man on a bad day, but we never see the face of the real geek. Instead, the camera focuses on the barker's patter, the geek's screams and Power's reaction. "How does a guy become a geek?" wonders Power to another worker. He doesn't get a real answer. But if you have watched much film noir at all, the question alone is the foreshadowing equivalent of dropping a counterweight on your head.
Stanton is working the crowds for the carnival's phony seeress, Zeena (fabulous Joan Blondell, sexy as ever, but just past the point where "blowzy" got permanently affixed to her description). But that's a stopgap. Already Stanton is angling to get the code Zeena used for a mentalist act with her old partner, Pete, now a hopelessly broken-down alcoholic. Stanton is clearly having an affair with Zeena, and clearly he is using her, despite some off-handed regard for the woman. Stanton drops hints, but soon realizes Zeena is still in love with Pete, and won't betray her old partner or their act. Pete, despite his condition, won't give up the code either. One night Stanton tries to ply the drunk with a bottle of cheap booze, but it doesn't work, and Stanton accidentally swaps the hooch for a bottle of wood alcohol. That's the end of Pete, and Stanton gets the code soon after.
That's just the beginning of Stanton's climb. All along his real attraction was to "electric girl" Molly (the remarkably beautiful Coleen Gray). Soon enough he has left Zeena and the carny behind. He marries Molly and moves to a more sophisticated act in a Chicago club, stringing along another group of suckers. At first the new marks differ only in wardrobe and grammar, but one night up turns psychiatrist Lilith (Helen Walker). She's running her own sort of game, secretly recording the socialites who pour out their neuroses to her. She lures Stan into joining forces, and together they set up the biggest con yet: disguising Molly as the long-dead love of a wealthy old man. But Molly can't go through with it, and the scheme unravels. Stan has the tables turned on him by Lilith. He goes on the run, and becomes utterly dependent on booze as he hops freight cars. Eventually--inevitably--he winds up back at the carny, willing to do any job...
Power was about 33 when the movie was made, already getting a bit hooded in the eyes and softer around the jaw, but still completely gorgeous. His looks get little direct comment in the movie, but Power's beauty is vital. You don't have to wonder why Blondell doesn't seem put off by Stanton's barely concealed ambition. Stanton knows something Power himself must have known well: Looks matter, they matter a lot. See the elderly lady in the Chicago nightclub blush and lower her lashes at Stanton's approach. Watch the way Stanton draws back when Molly's strong-man boyfriend objects to his presence. The retreat isn't that of a man afraid of a beating, but that of someone so sure of his attractiveness he can pick his moment, any old moment.
One strength of the script is the way it fleshes out Stanton's background. To fellow carnies at a roadhouse he talks of life in a orphanage, and how he learned to feign religious devotion because it deflected the brutality of the people running the place. His parents? "They weren't much interested." Fakery has been his survival mechanism for a long time.
That doesn't mean fakery is the whole of Stanton's persona, however. There's a part of him that wants something real. In a scene with the boozer Pete, played with amazing fervor and pathos by Ian Keith, Stanton is immediately drawn in by Pete's "psychic" spiel: "I see a boy...a dog..." Immediately Stanton says yes, that's me! that's my dog! "There's always a dog," says Pete, with a malicious, wheezing laugh. Power moves back like a crestfallen boy--only for an instant. Then he's back to his main plan, trying to hoodwink Pete into getting the code.
Power's best scene in Nightmare Alley comes after Pete's death, when the carny is about to be shut down by a local sheriff. The manager, Zeena, Molly and the other employees all try to get around the sheriff, to no avail. Stanton, possessed of the all-important code and emboldened by weeks of perfecting his delivery with Zeena, persuades the manager to let him have a go. In a tent stripped of its garish scenery, crowds gone and the night-time lighting showing the seediness more than ever, Stanton starts to talk to the sheriff. I sense things about you, he tells the sheriff. There are people who are jealous of you. Stanton mentions the sheriff's wife (there's always a wife). As he talks more and more, Stanton unravels the sheriff's life, bit by bit, breaking down the man's defences. The sheriff starts to glow with the same interest we saw Stanton show Pete--this man sees me, he understands me. Stanton, vampire-like, grows stronger and more confident by the moment. The sheriff leaves, dumbstruck with gratitude for the "truths" he has been shown, and Stanton seems invincible. From here on, until his schemes unravel, Power gives Stanton a much cooler and more collected physicality. When we see him working, Stanton no longer seems restless or nervous. His shoulders are squared, every expression is calculated for effect. His guard comes down at times--when Lilith talks to him about Pete, when he is with Molly, when Zeena and the strong man come for a visit--but until his career as a mentalist crashes to a close, Stanton's poise leaves him completely only when he is alone.
Power's transformation in the sheriff scene is so strong that many viewers, including James Ursini and Alain Silver, who provide the commentary track on the DVD, maintain that the scene shows Stanton has actual psychic abilities. The Siren isn't so sure. Not long before we saw Pete deceive with equal ease and aplomb. To the Siren, the sheriff scene reads like a master con artist finally reaching the very peak of his abilities, becoming more daring with each well-timed, educated guess. There are elements of the supernatural in Nightmare Alley, including Zeena's fearfully accurate tarot cards, and the Miltonian question of whether Stanton's Satanic ambition angers God. But the actual abilities of the humans are left to the imagination. You can read the movie as suggesting a spiritual world, but you don't have to believe Stanton has access to it. And you can also give it a straight Darwinian reading: There is no Guiding Force out there, only the "blind, pitiless indifference" of life's long con.
If Stanton does have psychic gifts, his abilities are fitful and desert him when most needed, after he encounters Lilith. She's another con artist, but she has one essential Stanton lacks: utter ruthlessness. Stanton, haunted by the accidental death of Pete and showing the irritability of the guilty when Zeena shows up late in the film, has a conscience he must fight. Walker, an actress with the slanted eyes and slightly flattened features of a Persian cat, shows no emotion or empathy. Stanton's the sheriff now, lured in by the way Lilith seems to understand his wants and conflicts. Her late-stage betrayal takes Stanton apart with terrifying ease. Power's face and body show him as crushed as he was by Pete, but this time he can't put the mask back on. It would be easier to see his character get shot. His subsequent slide into suicidal drinking doesn't seem like too big a stretch at all.
Siren fave Flickhead, in the comments to her previous post, called Nightmare Alley and The Shining "probably the two finest illustrations of alcoholism and alcoholic thinking ever committed to film," and went on to note "Stanton’s delusions of grandeur at odds with his low self esteem, the alcoholic ‘egomaniac with an inferiority complex.’ Plus the knowing scene of him succumbing to the bottle in his hotel room as the walls close in. Putting the booze to his lips, you can hear the faint screams of the geek rattling in his head." Power wasn't a big drinker (his vice was cigarettes, three to four packs a day), but he shows a deep understanding of addiction. Nightmare Alley was released after The Lost Weekend, but for the Siren, Power's portrayal of alcoholism was more devastating than Ray Milland's (and Milland was good indeed). Perhaps that's because Nightmare Alley isn't a "problem illness" film--it doesn't diagnose or sketch out a cure, it just puts the results up on screen.
Power is so good in Nightmare Alley that the Siren feels guilty about not giving him more credit previously. Not that she ever disliked Power (show me the woman who does), but the Siren admits she was too much in the sway of critics who dismiss him. ("Power was as much like a very nice bank clerk as ever," sighs David Shipman, describing The Razor's Edge. Pauline Kael called him "wanly miscast" in, of all things, The Mark of Zorro, one of Power's best swashbucklers.) Admittedly, there was always something guarded about Power as an actor. You seldom get the sense that you are seeing the whole of one of his characters on screen. The difference in Nightmare Alley (as well as in Witness for the Prosecution) is the way he takes that wariness, the reluctance to reveal, and uses it. When, back at the carny, he accepts that final job offer, Tyrone Power's still-beautiful face is as psychologically bare as any actor in noir.
Yes, another list, but truly, what is the Siren to do if good bloggers like Edward Copeland keep coming up with exercises like this one? The assignment: Pick 25 non-English-language features, in order to form a final ballot from which bloggers will choose the best 25 foreign films of all time. Or the favorites. Or bloggers' favorites. At that moment in time. Insert your favorite caveat here.
With amazing industry, Edward has already posted the ballot. And now the polls are open for the public voting phase. Here are the rules, quoted from Edward's page:Choose 25 of these titles and rank them from 1-25 and e-mail them to copesurvey@yahoo.com by midnight Central Time on Sunday, Sept. 16. A first place vote will get 25 votes, second place will get 24 votes, etc. In the event of tie scores, the total number of ballots on which the films appear will decide who is ahead of the other. If there is still a tie, the films will just be ranked as tied. The final list will be either of the top 25 or top 50, depending how the voting goes. Now, here are the nominees. Feel free to include comments about your choices that I can quote when I post the final results.
The Siren hereby posts the list that she sent in. She prefaces with a comment left by Operator_99 of the blog Allure, a favorite stop of the Siren's when the world is too much with her and she needs something like this to lift her spirits. Operator_99 does reminding us what a list can, and cannot do:Well, at 62, I'm must the least trusted person to make any comments, but...while "age is definitely not a meter of intelligence", it doesn't negate it either, if the sentient in question kept his or her eyes and ears open during waking hours. I have seen so much film during my life that I think I can truly say that I know what is good and what is not. However, film criticism, once a fun exercise for me, like debating Marxism in the early 60's (the late 60's are a bit of a blur) at the Cafe Figaro on Bleeker, often removed me from the pure joy of the experience as experienced. I just hope that everyone can step back occasionally and let the flickering moments take you away with no thought of camera angle, the comparison to the director's previous effort, etc. Its not easy to do, but kick back once in a while, ok? Then rip something to shreds.
La Règle du Jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) If you put the Siren under hypnosis, this is the one she would probably name as all-time Number One.
Ivan the Terrible Part I (Sergei Eisenstein, 1944) Despite the extraordinarily creepy hagiography of Stalin, this movie is a superb visual achievement, so beautiful and composed with such extraordinary grace and precision that the Siren sat slack-jawed through much of it.
Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carné, 1945) The most sweepingly romantic movie every made, with a script by Jacques Prevert that achieves the status of literature, yet remains cinematic at all times. "So you want to be loved for yourself, like the poor people? What's left for the poor people, then?"
Quai des Orfèvres (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947) The relationship between the detective and his young son was beautifully done. A policier that is mostly a fine character study, this may not be as great as Le Salaire de la Peur or as twisty as Diabolique, but the Siren loves it more than either of those.
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) The Siren has wondered several times over the years if this movie gains in her memory from being the first significant Japanese film she ever saw. Perhaps, but it holds up for her, viewing after viewing.
Madame de... (Max Ophuls, 1953) If this one had not made the ballot the Siren would have been throwing her own jewelry boxes around the room.
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Like listing Citizen Kane, but like Welles's masterpiece it deserves its reputation.
A Geisha (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953) Extraordinary study of the ways in which women bond.
I Vitelloni (Federico Fellini, 1953) 1953 was some year, wasn't it?
Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955) Pure, shimmering delight.
Lola Montes (Ophuls, 1955) The Siren thinks Martine Carol's marionette quality helps rather than hurts the film, emphasizing Lola as someone to whom history just happened--like other mortals who never slept with composers or kings.
Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956) The movie that should have mothballed the "whore with a heart of gold" characters for all time, but alas, did not.
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)
Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) Visconti's elegy for the aristocracy becomes a lament for the fleeting nature of all beauty.
Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963) Almost too much to ponder here, but the element that always grabbed the Siren was the fragility of love--how one misguided moment can erase it all.
Seduced and Abandoned (Pietro Germi, 1964) A breakneck farce with a Swiftian soul.
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) They say the Pentagon screened this one during preparations for the second Iraq War, which convinces the Siren that elementary principles of cinema studies should be taught in college. That way, maybe smart guys won't watch a movie and, somehow, miss the entire goddamn point.
L'Armée des Ombres (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969) Certainly the movie owes a great deal to Melville's studies of the gangster life, but it shows what a strict code among comrades can mean when applied to an honorable cause.
The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973)
The Marriage of Maria Braun (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979) The Siren wants to rewatch this one, as she suspects the scathing picture of a society rebuilt on false dreams is as relevant as ever. Entirely worthy of Fassbinder's idol Douglas Sirk.
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
Bullet in the Head (John Woo, 1990) The Siren surprised herself by selecting this one, but she had to include it. This action movie, despite some incongruous sentimentality and the bonkers editing of the first half-hour or so, captured unpleasant truths about the Vietnam War far better than many a high-minded prestige picture.
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991) A women's picture like the ones the Siren worshipped as a girl, melodrama raised to the level of art.
The Blue Kite (Zhuangzhuang Tian, 1993) The Cultural Revolution through the eyes of a child, and family love seen as one of the few hopes we have.
So, according to her count, the Siren got 15 of her choices on the ballot, not a bad ratio at all. She makes no comment on the ballot; it seems pretty solid to her, and if there are a half-dozen or so the Siren would not have included, it still isn't as though Back to the Future showed up.
My mother is in town (yes Virginia, Sirens have mothers too) and so the Siren hopes to finish up with poor Tyrone Power by later this week. Meanwhile, the Siren leaves you with a piece of advice. Do not, for God's sake, ever, ever Google Image "Bullet in the Head" without plenty of other search terms such as "John Woo" and "Tony Leung." Sweet Saint Francis of Assisi. The Siren may have to spend the rest of the week watching MGM musicals in order to crowd that mistake out of her brain.
Still out there? Good. The Siren has raised the blinds, put away her lace-trimmed hanky and is ready to face down Gladys Cooper, or whatever else gets dished out this week. She is still working on her Nightmare Alley thoughts, but the sudden, unwelcome spike in film obituaries has spurred her to put some down some old rambling thoughts.
Hell of a time for film fans, isn't it? RIP, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Michel Serrault and László Kovács. More interesting than the end-of-an-era stuff, however, is the subsequent scorekeeping. We cinephiles tend to pooh-pooh Greatest 100 Films of All Time Lists, then dive like Greg Louganis into debates over whether or not a director is an all-time heavyweight. In the most recent round, Jonathan Rosenbaum had critics all over the blogosphere uncorking either the champagne or the smelling salts when he ran a New York Times opinion piece on Bergman that the editors, in a moment of inspired chutzpah, titled "Scenes from an Overrated Career." Roger Ebert wrote a spirited defense, and discussions ensued all over everywhere, particularly at Scanners, a_film_by, Elusive Lucidity and Girish.
It is fascinating how the general tone in the treatment of a director or other film artist changes over time. If you admired Bergman in 1973, the year of Scenes from a Marriage, chances are you still do. But in that year you wouldn't have been contending with nearly as many reservations as have been heard in the two weeks since his death.
Other directors are also getting fewer awed reactions than in the past. When in her late teens the Siren started trying to watch movies in an intellectuallly engaged manner--reading up on history, seeking out serious critics, trying to mix as many highly regarded films into her viewing as possible--it was axiomatic that John Ford was a towering great. That was a while back, and Ford's status has slipped for some; he even got a sideswipe in Rosenbaum's piece. David Thomson and Richard Schickel, both veteran Ford haters, have a lot more company now.
On the other hand, back in the 1980s the Siren had a hard time getting a serious discussion of Billy Wilder going, unless she wanted to talk about his supposed misogyny. (She didn't want to talk about that, because she doesn't think he IS a misogynist, but that's another post.) Reagan was in office and, not coincidentally in the Siren's view, Frank Capra was fashionable. It was a go-go era, a time of vocal patriotism, even more so than now. Capra was better suited to it than Wilder, with his mordant view of what success means for Americans, and what we will do to achieve it. With the publication of Cameron Crowe's book and the tributes after Wilder's death in 2002, suddenly the Siren had no trouble finding Wilder admirers. He is better suited to the tenor of our own times than Capra--Ace in the Hole is a lot closer to the age of reality television than Meet John Doe--so it isn't surprising that Wilder now is more in vogue.
In vogue, if not in full pantheon membership. According to Brian Baxter of Britain's Guardian, Wilder is still "second rung" (though "never second rate"). In this Guardian obituary for Ingmar Bergman, Baxter names a "handful of geniuses--Robert Bresson, Carl Dreyer, Yasujiro Ozu, Jean Renoir, [and] Roberto Rossellini" who outrank Bergman and Antonioni, and by the way, they're also better than Wilder, Visconti, Kurosawa and Ray. You might think that with six Film Pageant Runner-Ups (if Mr. Bresson cannot fulfill his duties as Greatest Director of All Time...) you would have just six different ways of getting pissed off. But the Siren's initial reaction was "What about Max Ophuls, huh?"
Her readers can replace the name of Ophuls with their particular favorite. We all have our teacher's pets, no matter which directors are being debated more in film classes. Year by year, with pious patience, the Siren sits waiting for Mitchell Leisen to get his due. And she loves John Ford, but has resigned herself to the naysayers. Now the Siren can read David Thomson's vituperative Ford piece in A Biographical Dictionary of Film without recourse to ripping out pages, scribbling in the margins or calling her cousins to rant. On some directors she retains a certain touchiness, however. When you trash Ernst Lubitsch, smile, cowboy.
The Siren is firmly on the side of the Bergman lovers. His "private psychodramas" still say many large and universal things to her. She does think, however, that people should give Mr. Rosenbaum a break about not seeing Fanny and Alexander. For one thing, Antonioni's death sent the Siren scurrying to her Netflix queue in embarrassment--even though he isn't really in her chosen specialty, boy, does she need to get cracking on his filmography. For another, she is exceedingly fond of Fanny and Alexander and does not wish to hear it nitpicked, by Mr. Rosenbaum or anybody else. Far more painful than someone loving a movie you loathe is someone who hates a movie that you consider a work of genius--or, worse yet, waves the movie aside as old hat.
Rosenbaum himself gave a nod to the way reputations cycle when he showed up at Jim Emerson's place and remarked, "I don't think I could have written such an article for the Times WITHOUT it being to some extent a piece about fashion." The Siren thinks Bergman will swing back into fashion; he's too good not to. One rediscovered movie is often enough to do it. When I Vitelloni had a brief re-release in theaters some time back, the Siren went to see it. As she sat in the audience she felt a sense almost of surprise coming off some other patrons--the startled laughter and enjoyment of people who weren't expecting to be wowed. Fellini has also been out of style--try Googling Fellini and "overrated" and just look at all the opinions that come up--but the movie is so good it constitutes its own form of rebuttal. So does Fanny and Alexander.
Anyone wish to share some perceptions of who's in favor these days, and who seems to be getting more knocks than in the past?
