Never had Bradley Cooper been so impressive as in Nightmare Alley by Guillermo Del Toro. He becomes Stanton Carlisle, a man with a troubled past and questionable morals who will impose himself as a mentalist first in a fair then in New York in the 1940s. Three women camped by Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Toni Collette follow his rise and fall.
“I wanted Bradley Cooper to unleash the disturbing side that I had glimpsed in him for Limitless and A Star is Born, confides Guillermo Del Toro to 20 minutes. I wanted people to understand that Stanton Carlisle is capable of destroying people but that he has enough charisma that we accept that we can be bamboozled by him. The actor gave himself a dark Gary Cooper look to hide his character’s dark designs.
Two Americas back to back
The Charlatan, a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, published in 1946, had already been brought to the screen by Edmund Goulding the following year. The version written by Guillermo Del Toro, halo of the Oscars received for The Shape of Water in 2018, and his wife Kim Morgan, oscillates between classicism and modernity. “It’s a cinema banquet, insists the director. This story echoes the present day with its conspiracy, lies and paranoia. » Stanford Carlisle imposes itself first on the fair between « phenomena », circus artists and showmen (Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins and Ron Perlman are all wonderful).
He then tries to break into town where a psychiatrist, Cate Blanchett as an icy femme fatale, will take him at his own game. “I put two Americas back to back, insists Guillermo Del Toro. That of the fair where people deceive the public in an almost honest way, and that of the city where the elites give themselves a respectable gender while they are deeply corrupt. Guillermo Del Toro’s love for different beings surfaces throughout this homage to film noir with sumptuous images.
“Stanford Carlisle is like a drug dealer who shoots himself with his cargo, explains Guillermo Del Toro. When he starts believing his own lies, he’s cooked, but aren’t we all more or less capable of being convinced by what we make up? The final scene of the film, terrifying, proves that differentiating between reality and his inventions can be a rich idea. We leave the room with the shivers that a passage in a Nightmare Alley deliciously dark.