MOVIE · 1947

Nightmare Alley

CrimeDramaThriller111 min

Roustabout Stanton Carlisle joins a traveling carnival and starts studying its most profitable illusion: the mind-reading act of Mademoiselle Zeena and her alcoholic husband. Tyrone Power is Stanton, a drifter with an eye for the angles behind the patter, slipping into a world of barkers, tents, and carefully staged wonders. As he learns how the act works, ambition and deception begin to shape his next move. Joan Blondell and Coleen Gray are among the women in Stanton’s orbit as the film follows him deeper into the carnival trade and the grift behind its polished performances.