Nightmare Alley - Film Noir And The American Dream Read Free Page A

combining the parents Stan lost. 4 In this scene, however, she wears her hair down, dons a flowing robe, and, like a forgiving mother, reassures Stan of his normality by telling him he is “selfish and ruthless when you want something; generous and kind when you’ve got it,” just like everyone else (Williams, “Naturalist” 135–36). He feels guilty, she says, only because he profited from Pete’s death. Because of her advice, Stan pledges to proceed into the “spook racket,” holding séances in which bereaved survivors contact their deceased loved ones. This is his ticket to the big time: “I was made for it,” he declares.
    Through Lilith and a wealthy client, Mrs. Peabody, Stan meets Ezra Grindle, a rich industrialist who carries a burden of regret over the death of Dorrie, a girl heloved and lost. Lilith and Stan engineer a swindle whereby Stan will receive $150,000 to “recall” Dorrie and permit Grindle to speak to her again. To do so, however, Stan must persuade the reluctant Molly to perform as the dead girl. 5 Although Stan exhorts her to help him save Grindle’s soul, Molly demurs: mentalist acts are one thing, but this is “goin’ against God.” They might be struck dead for blasphemy! Stan assures her that his séances are “just another angle of show business.” When Molly threatens to walk out, he resorts to his final ploy: phony sincerity. Admitting that he’s a hustler but professing undying love for her, he persuades her to play Dorrie, complete with turn-of-the-century garb and parasol, in a scene staged for Grindle. (Goulding and his director of photography, Lee Garmes, employ deep focus and fog to make the bower resemble a late nineteenth-century postcard.) But the trick fails when Molly, moved by Grindle’s pleas, breaks the illusion: “I can’t, not even for you!” she cries, then flees (in the novel Grindle tries to grope Molly). Exposed as a “dirty sacrilegious thief,” Stan—or at least his plan—is ruined.
    No matter: he already has the 150 grand, which he retrieves from Lilith, who has been holding it for him. But Lilith turns out to be a bigger con artist than he, having replaced the roll of high denominations with one-dollar bills. When Stan tries to get the money back, she retreats into her psychologist persona and insists that he suffers from delusions. “You must regard it all as a nightmare,” she informs him. Having learned from her research that Pete’s death was “self-administered,” she coldly tells Stan that his guilt is merely a “homicidal hallucination” and that he has made a “strange transference” to her. Just in case he doesn’t get the picture, she also reminds him that she has recorded his sessions and can, if necessary, implicate him in fraud. Confused and desperate, Stan sends Molly away: along with his money he has lost the only person who loves him; perhaps worse, he has lost the swagger that enabled his success.
    His fall is as precipitous as his rise: he begins drinking heavily, moving from one seedy, dark hotel room to another, hearing the geek’s howls wherever he goes. 6 Before long he has become a hobo giving stock readings to other derelicts in exchange for a slug of cheap liquor. Echoing Pete’s earlier words, he scoffs at his credulous listeners: “Every boy has a beautiful old, gray-haired mother. Everybody except maybe me.” At last he seeks work as a carnival palm reader but is told that they don’t hire boozers. On second thought, there may be a job for him—a temporary one, just until they can get “a real geek.” Stan accepts the gig: “Mister, I was made for it.” This is where the novel ends, but the film adds a semiredemptive epilogue (probably the work of producer Darryl F. Zanuck) inwhich Stan—shot amid deep shadows on the barred carnival set—goes berserk, then rushes into the arms of Molly, who happens to work in the same carnival. The film gestures toward the salvation narrative that the novel