NIGHTMARE ALLEY dir: by Edmund Goulding - CINEMIN review

Perhaps one of the great qualities of the film Nightmare Alley directed by Edmund Goulding (1947), among others, is the fact that for the first time Tyrone Power the eternal romantic and hero of past films represents an authentic con man and opportunist in a departure from all his previous performances. The result was this film that breaks rules even when compared to other film-noir classics of the same time and has its main actor in the best performance of his entire career (without exaggeration). In this film Tyrone Power is Stanton Carlisle a low-living man who without much perspective works as an assistant to Zenna, the mentalist in a carnival show. This is where Stan plans to one day leave that life and move on to higher ambitions in life. For this reason, he learns how to read people’s minds in a trick that Zenna teaches him. He then marries Molly - who is also one of the attractions of this same Carnival and the two move to Chicago where he becomes a celebrity in an exclusive high society c