She is a lone wolf... They are both running from the past
Nightmare Alley, helmed by Guillermo del Toro, sees Bradley Cooper’s manipulative hustler meet his match in Cate Blanchett’s mysterious psychologist. LAURA HARDING spoke to the two stars and their Oscar-winning director
COMBINE the world of a 1930s travelling carnival, a drifting hustler who sets his sights on grifting the wealthy elite, and some stylish neonoir and you have Nightmare Alley, the first film from visionary director Guillermo del Toro since his 2017 offering The Shape Of Water won Best Picture at the Oscars.
The sinister story about greed, fear and manipulation, perhaps a cautionary tale about the dark side of American capitalism, stars Bradley Cooper as Stanton Carlisle, an ambitious drifter-turnedmaster manipulator, who learns to develop his own mentalist act to scam the cream of New York society.
However, an encounter with a mysterious psychologist Dr Lilith Ritter, leads to a fateful and destructive turn of events.
Based on the 1946 novel of the same name by William Lindsay Gresham, and already adapted for the screen in a 1947 movie, the film marks a departure for Mexican director del Toro, best known for highly stylised or supernatural films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, as well as the multi-Oscar-winning The Shape Of Water.
“This is the first of my movies that, although it has a magical atmosphere, is not mannered or stylised. It’s set in a reality that is identifiable and immediate,” he says.
“I wanted to render a classic story in a very alive and contemporary way. I wanted people to feel they are watching a story pertinent to our world.
“I was very interested in a story about destiny and humanity. Stanton Carlisle is a man who is given all the elements to change his life. He has people who believe in him, who love him and trust him. Yet his drive and his own hubris are so strong that they turn him away from that.
“When an audience is invested in the story of a person’s rise, their greatest fear is the fall and that fall can be very emotionally strong.”
The adaptation is set in 1939, as America was gearing up for another world war and, living in an era before television, the travelling carnival was the ultimate in live, mass entertainment, offering alluring fairy tales to audiences.
“The carnival is an incredibly closeknit, hermetic society,” says Guillermo. “It’s a place where people keep their secrets, and many are escaping a life of crime or a past they had to leave behind. And yet, they form a strong society. It’s almost like a microcosm of the world.
“Everybody’s there to swindle everybody. But at the same time, they know they need each other, and they protect one another.”
It’s a natural fit for someone like Stanton, a man with a natural talent for reading people, teamed with the flare of a showman, but who has never held any stock in truth, honesty or love and instead believes it is ruthlessness that allows you to make your way in the world.
“Bradley has all the goodness, physical beauty and innate grace to show what could be for Stanton. But at the same time, he has the skill to create a character of devastating darkness.
“Stanton is a broken man who has learned to lie to get the reactions he wants from people. He is always trying not to show his real self. He is a mercurial character, who transforms according to circumstances.”
It was finding his way into Stanton’s Mississippi-based drawl that first helped Bradley, best known for roles in A Star Is Born, American Sniper, The Hangover and Silver Linings Playbook, navigate such a slippery customer.
“As an actor, you need to believe your character’s circumstances, because if I believe them, then chances are you’re going to believe them.
“Guillermo and I talked endlessly about the character, and we placed him as coming from Canton, Mississippi, so that was the start. It was really once I unlocked his voice that I felt the rest of the character was there.
“Undoubtedly the best environment to create in is one where the director opens up the gates to everybody’s potential. When people feel safe, they will take risks and really start to show their souls.
“That was the atmosphere of Nightmare Alley, and the cast that Guillermo brought together was just insanely inspiring.”
Stanton meets his match in Cate Blanchett’s Lilith, the ruthlessly clever psychoanalyst who has her own axe to grind, and the Oscarwinning actress saw her character as the final beacon of truth in the three women he meets on his journey –Rooney Mara as his virtuous and loyal companion Molly, the carnival’s clairvoyant Zeena, played by Toni Collette, and finally Cate as his most formidable opponent.
“Both Guillermo and I wanted Lilith to be unknowable and mysterious,” she says. “At the same time, Guillermo was looking for those little perforations where you might see through Lilith’s many layers to what lies beneath – both physically and psychologically.
“The process of playing Lilith was that every day we’d discover a new, deep, frightening secret. There’s a lot of damage behind what seems to be a calm pristine exterior.”
And like Bradley, it was finding her character’s voice that helped her get under the skin of the character.
“I wanted it to be a voice that could go inside his brain. Like a demonic Jiminy Cricket, a noir Jiminy Cricket,” she says.
“She’s a lone wolf and that’s where she and Stan connect. They are both running from the past, and they can see a similarity between them.
“Lilith is also someone who’s interested in both the practical and mystical sides of psychoanalysis, so that’s part of why Stanton intrigues her. She’s trying to work out what makes him tick as she’s a bit of a shaman herself.
“Their entire relationship takes place in her office, so we thought about that set as being not just a physical space but a psychological space.
“In a way, Lilith’s office is where Stan is finally vulnerable. There are a lot of destructive urges in Stan that have a parallel in Lilith.
“It’s a manipulative, deceitful dance between them... and these things rarely end well.”
Stanton is a broken man who has learned to lie to get the reactions he wants from people
Director Guillermo del Toro
Nightmare Alley is released in UK cinemas on January 21.