Nightmare Alley
Director: Edmund Goulding
Year Released: 1947
Rating: 3.0
Huckster Tyrone Power takes his 'mentalist' racket - of blindfolding himself and "reading" his audience's minds (not unlike Sylvia Brown and John Edward) - away from the circus and tries employing it in 'classier' venues before getting greedy and thinking himself omniscient. Dark and oddly depressing, it's the ominous companion piece to the spiritual Goulding/Power film The Razor's Edge; here, Power's temptation to 'play God' and act as a fake liaison between the infinite and the human leads to his ruin. Power isn't always convincing - like Gary Cooper, he was too guarded - and some of the plot components are not tangible, though I do like what I perceive as a dig at psychiatry (there's a suggestion that it's little more than mysticism and guesswork).
