by If you have a good thriller to put yourself under the tooth, look at the side of Disney+ and Prime Video! We advise you to take a look, and even both, to this work with a fantastic atmosphere signed Guillermo del Toro!
Released in 2022, Nightmare Alley is a thriller staged by Guillermo de Toro, 4 years after his triumph at the Oscars for the shape of the water. Worn by Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe and Toni Collette, the film presents the charismatic Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper).
As he crosses a bad pass, arrives in a traveling fair and manages to attract the good graces of a clairvoyant, Zeena (Toni Collette) and her husband Pete, an old glory of mentalism. Interesting with them, he sees a way there to win his ticket for success and decides to use his new talents to scam the elite of the good New York company from the 1940s.
With the virtuous and faithful Molly (Rooney Mara) by his side, Stanton begins to scaffold a plan to defraud a man as powerful as dangerous. He will receive the help of a mysterious psychiatrist who could well prove to be the most formidable of his opponents …
A captivating story
Thriller masterfully conducted, Nightmare Alley takes us into a tortured and winding plot, which takes us to the guts and captivates us to the end. Between film Noir and an account of a terror, the film is magnified by the interpretations of its main actors, Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett in mind.
The actor finds one of his best roles here. He has literally got barely for the needs of the film. Indeed, the scenario involved a scene where we see his entirely unized character. A first for the actor who had never made full front on the screen.
“I remember reading the script and told myself that it was a thug in a bathtub, and that it was part of the story. It had to be done. There was nothing free on this. It was for the story.” On the set, the actor had to stay 6 hours naked against the team as well as Toni Collette, of which it was the first day of filming.
Disney
Project genesis
Note that Nightmare Alley is a new adaptation of the novel The charlatan by William Lindsay Gresham, published in 1946. This book had already been brought to the screen by Edmund Goulding in 1947. It was on the suggestion of Ron Perlman, with whom he had just turned Cronos in 1993, that Guillermo del Toro was interested in Charlatan.
The actor had already expressed his desire to play Stanton Carlisle, central character of Nightmare Alley. At the time, the director had embarked on a real treasure hunt to get his hands on a VHS copy of the 1947 film, before immersing himself in the original novel. But when he tries to acquire the rights, legal complications come to put a brake on his ambitions, forcing him to put the project aside.
It was not until the end of the 2020s that Kim Morgan, screenwriter and companion of the filmmaker, revived the idea. “This time, we went directly to see Fox, since the 1947 film belongs to them. They were very open to our vision and gave us carte blanche to write the script”said director entrusted on the fantastic screen of January 2022.
A longtime dream finally realized, thanks to an intact passion … and a more favorable timing. Nightmare Alley is available on Prime Video and Disney+platforms.
