Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light is another in a recent line of black-and-white re-releases of popular films, following similar experiments with Bong Joon-Ho's Parasite and George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road. The difference with this theatrical re-dux of Guillermo del Toro's remake of the essential 1947 noir of the same name is similar to those previous re-releases in that it's already been poured over in an impeccable, full-color presentation, but different in how this black-and-white version immediately puts us in conversation with the pictures of the noir era. In this sense, what del Toro's Darkness and Light version evokes is something more akin to Steven Soderbergh's "silent film" treatment of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which, in the opening sequence alone, becomes an unexpectedly concise history lesson in visual storytelling that reaches back to the adventure pictures of the silent and pre-code era (you can check out Soderbergh's entire experiment with Raiders at his website, Extension 765- definitely worth a look). I'm not sure that anything as compelling ultimately happens with del Toro's new "vision," but that doesn't mean the film itself wasn't already having a fairly rich conversation with the past, the original 1947 Edmund Goulding film, and the 1946 source novel by William Lindsay Gresham.
In short, the biggest case against Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light is that it's not in color. I suppose that there's a certain nostalgia effect that will play well with audiences for the new black-and-white print, which is clearly carefully supervised and rendered, but beyond that the question remains: why would you want to negate the color design of this gorgeously designed film? I say this with the voice of Orson Welles ringing in my ears (or, more accurately, the voice of the recently departed Peter Bogdonovich telling stories of Welles ringing in my ears), exclaiming that "no one ever gave a great performance in color!" While, at a certain time, the hyperbole of Welles productively jarred my view of black-and-white cinematography, and while the work of Welles and Toles in Citizen Cane certainly, irreversibly, altered the black-and-white era of filmmaking that followed, including the original Nightmare Alley, it doesn't change the fact that the performances in del Toro's Nightmare Alley were already pretty great in the color version, and the case might be made that the stand-out performer of the film as a whole is the art direction, particularly the set design by Tamara Deverell.
My first view of the new Nightmare Alley was, admittedly, tainted a bit by my fondness for the original, and even after having seen the Darkness and Light version my initial response to the film is the same: while being a highly engaging and often beautiful noir, it lacks the tautness and punch of the 1947 version. Even though the original Nightmare Alley is rather lengthy for what you'd expect from something like a carny-noir, it captures a perfect balance of the novelistic and noir genre elements. The original feels like an 80 minute noir that runs more like a buck-forty; it's pacey, where del Toro's version is looser and significantly longer, sometimes to great effect, but other times in ways that mildly threaten to kill the overall flow. Yet, Darkness and Light ultimately does achieve something that Welles once barked about in the same breath as his admonishing of color film performances, and that has to do with the way black and white tends to create a greater focus on story. I'm not sure that the theory of less information (color) equaling more room to focus on other aspects (story) is one that necessarily holds a lot of water, but I did find that Darkness and Light seemed to bring the storytelling to the fore (also, it was a second viewing, and the first viewing was spent considerably overwhelmed by design, as can happen with del Toro's films). Unfortunately, bringing the storytelling to the fore is not always to a film's benefit. For instance, what became clear on a second viewing of del Toro's Nightmare Alley is how saving a few scenes for the DVD extras might have allowed everything to move at a better clip.
Darkness and Light version aside, what the new Nightmare Alley lacks in tautness it makes up for in rich design elements. In terms of performance, Bradley Cooper brings an indelible and specific combination of coldness and charm to charlatan Stanton Carlisle that doesn't owe anything to the highly memorable, animalistic performance of Tyrone Powers in the original, and manages to be the emotional root of the movie in ways that go beyond the original, with great credit payed to del Toro's screenwriter partner, Kim Morgan (check out her excellent writing on film at her site, Sunset Gun), as well as the high-waisted, brute affect of the costume design by Luis Sequeira. Likewise, a potentially unsung aspect of this film is the incredible physical performance of Paul Anderson as The Geek, a thoughtfully twisted foreshadow of Stanton's ultimate arc. Toni Collette as Zeena the Seer and David Strathairn as her boozehound partner Pete are perfectly engaging, if not quite able to transcend the work of Joan Blondell and Ian Keith in the original, while Cate Blanchett's psycho-analyst femme fatale surely matches the sinister glee of Helen Walker, and then ups the ante via some literal scarring that creates just the right amount of perverse sexual heat. In the most resonant scene in the film, where the idea of Stanton coming to believe his own "spook show" becomes most ecstatic, the perfectly cast Richard Jenkins and Holt McCallany submit Stanton to a lie detector test, only to find that it's impossible to detect a liar who so fully believes his own lies. The film abounds with similarly great supporting performances from the likes of Willem Dafoe, Jim Beaver, and Tim Blake Nelson, who brings home the final scene across from Cooper in a way that really marks one of the most significant improvements on the original. Of course, getting caught in the comparison game with remakes such as this is, perhaps, unfair, especially since the new film clearly manages to stand on it's own, and del Toro and Morgan's adaptation seems to be primarily dedicated to the book, and mostly uninterested in any winking references to the audience. In an era of cinema that seems to run on winking references, it's refreshing to see something this lovingly made and genuinely rooted in an obsession for the most unique noir.
It would be a mistake to call Mass a small film, and I hope that audiences are able to see past the chamber piece aspects of the film that could keep it from being held in the same esteem as so-called "bigger" pictures. At first look, Mass seems to be the type of film that may have been adapted from a stage play, but, make no mistake, writer/director Fran Kranz has crafted this tale of two families living in the aftermath of a school shooting as a wholly cinematic affair. Mass entirely avoids the limitations we might associate with something playing around the boundaries of "filmed theatre," even though it has only four main characters, three minor characters, and but one location--a small Episcopal church.
Though Mass could easily be translated to the stage (and I'll be curious to see if a stage version is attempted), what couldn't be transferred is the remarkable way it's observed by Franz, who brings an adeptness to staging and cinematography not usually associated with a first-time director. A deep investment in these characters--and, for me, an early and unique sense of empathy and tragedy--is established before one might even consider how handily the framing and pacing has allowed such a confined story and location to contain such dramatic momentum. For a film that is, primarily, four people in a room speaking across a small table from one another, the sense of immersion is astonishing. It's incredibly well observed, capturing everything the actors bring to that table, which is some of the most detailed and compelling performance we're likely to see at the movies this year. And, perhaps, this is because Franz is also a prolific actor who has obviously picked up a trick or two along the way (my favorite appearance of his being stoner/hero Marty in Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods). Still, just because one has been in front of the camera doesn't guarantee they could write and direct something as rich as Mass, which is obviously crafted by someone interested not only in speaking to the current gun crisis, but creating something that aspires to endure beyond the cultural moment.
One more note on the camera work: there's a moment in the film that stays with me, and it's a moment that some may read as incongruous with the rest of the film, since it involves the camera drawing attention to itself. At a moment of impasse between the characters the camera begins to drift, lingering for just a moment on the space between the two couples. The move feels almost instinctual on the part of the filmmaker--and not incongruous to me at all--both attempting to separate from the moment, from the fraught countenances in conflict, yet entirely connecting us to the intangible weight of the scene. Also, occasionally, the camera drifts not toward the actor speaking, but the actor listening, in the way that one's attention might drift to someone on the outskirts of the action in a stage play. It's in these moments we see not only how much Franz is in touch with the actors, but our experience as audience.
Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs play the parents of a child who was the victim of school shooting, Anne Dowd and Reed Birney the parents of the shooter. While these performances make up the core of the film, it's important to note supporting cast members Breeda Wool, Kagen Albright, and Michelle N. Carter, actors playing characters that are essential both in the script and as realized on screen, all played as impeccably as the central roles. The dramatic weight and trajectory of the film is almost imperceptibly due to how these peripheral characters interact with the story, and, like the way in which the camera and editors relationship to the actors is as important to the film as the actors themselves, I think this calls for special note. Mass is solely focused on a single meeting of these two couples affected by tragedy, attempting to find a way to address the implacable divide between them, to seek the possibility of forgiveness. In lesser hands, the film would quickly become a platform for trotting out the "greatest hits" of divisive political rhetoric we've been drowning in for decades of debate on gun violence and control. The characters even acknowledge the point at which they approach that slippery slope, and what's remarkable about what follows is how completely the script refuses to fall into that chasm of political divide, instead opting for something much more resonant, something that truly deals with grief and loss. Mass is a reminder of how valuable dealing with those themes can be, and how rarely we see movies pull it off.
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