The Mexican director continues his flawless filmography with Nightmare Alley, on screens Wednesday, January 19. With Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette and Ronney Mara, this new opus based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham (Gallimard) brings together dark antiheroes, femme fatales and manipulation in a remarkable scenario and staging.
In the early 1940s, ambitious but unemployed, Stanton Carlisle was hired at a traveling funfair and discovered mentalist magic with the clairvoyant Zeena and her husband. Now initiated and enjoying success in New York with his faithful Molly, he is contacted by a rich and powerful magna who seeks to communicate with his deceased wife. Helped by an intriguing psychiatrist, he sets up a scam that could turn against him.
Guillermo del Toro rediscovers the dark charm of 1940s American film noir in a straight-forward reconstruction, a screenplay co-written by William Lindsay Gresham (for the 1946 version), and actors in osmosis. From the outset the charm operates in the image with warm colors and the atmosphere of the fairs of yesteryear, an iconoclastic setting that evokes Freaks (1932) by Tod Browning. The sequel unfolds with an intrigue where one wonders who is manipulating whom.
If the scenario and the treatment of Guillermo del Toro are all references to film noir, Nightmare Alley remains tinged with fantasy, his favorite genre, taking place in the world of magic. Bradley Cooper, lead performer and co-producer of the film, finds his match, surrounded by an empathetic Toni Collette and a bewitching Cate Blanchett, both evoking Veronica Lake and Lauren Baccal. The rest of the distribution, with Ronney Mara already mentioned, is on the small onions: Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins and Ron Perlman.
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The director signs one of his best films, if not the most accomplished. Quotative, as usual, Guillermo del Toro makes his borrowings a new work, beyond the homage. Adapted from a 1946 novel, the film is the remake of the version of the same year, signed Edmund Goulding (The Charlatan). Mentalism, which consists of making people believe in parapsychological abilities through tricks, is very popular at the moment. Nightmare Alley falls on time and will enchant lovers of mystery, in a masterfully crafted plot. Fascinating.
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Kind : Thriller
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Actors : Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Ronney Mara, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins and Ron Perlman.
Country : United States
Duration : 2h31
Exit : January 19, 2022
Distributer : The Walt Disney Company
Warning: scenes, comments or images may offend the sensibilities of viewers
Summary: While going through a bad patch, the charismatic Stanton Carlisle arrives at a traveling fair and manages to win the good graces of a clairvoyant, Zeena and her husband Pete, a former glory of mentalism. Learning from them, he sees there a way to get his ticket to success and decides to use his new talents to rip off the elite of good New York society in the 1940s. With the virtuous and faithful Molly at his side, Stanton begins to construct a plan to swindle a man as powerful as he is dangerous. He will receive the help of a mysterious psychiatrist who could well prove to be the most formidable of his adversaries.