Nightmare Alley                                                4 ½ stars

Four years after creating the weirdly romantic film about a woman and her fish man lover, The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro brings us a gritty, lurid film based on the 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham that shares the same name, Nightmare Alley. When you see the famed Mexican director’s name associated with a film, you know you are in for something unusual and disturbing. We can sense that this is a story of betrayal and doom. We first meet Stanton Carlisle, a man down on his luck in 1939 as he is burning a body inside an old house. The mysterious Stanton played by Bradley Cooper in one of his best roles to date manages to get hired at a carnival by the boss (Willem Dafoe). The carnival features a very seedy collection of freaks and sideshow performers in scenes that capture the feel of the depression. Stanton is immediately drawn to the carnival’s mentalists Zeena (Toni Collette) and Pete (David Strathairn) and finds he has a gift for reading people, eventually leaving and creating his own act, teaming up with another of the performers, Molly (Rooney Mara), whose beauty makes her stand out from the carnival freaks. As the pair perform their craft in high end clubs, Stanton encounters Lilith Ritter, a wealthy psychoanalyst whose clientele includes politicians, judges and business tycoons. Cate Blanchett plays the role expertly as her very presence commands our attention. She was born to play roles like this. Soon enough this pair devises a plan to separate the elite from their money with an elaborate scheme that is bound to lead to ruin, (though I won’t say whose). The film gets the feel of forties film noir movies that is aided by an astounding collection of gifted A list actors. Nightmare Alley was previously made into a movie in 1947 starring Tyrone Power, but I am sure del Toro did it with a much bigger budget. I am expecting it will receive a few Academy Award nominations later this week.