Cinema Speculation

by Quentin Tarantino

Of course, the two indisputable classics in the genre are Tod Browning’s Freaks and Edmund Goulding’s Nightmare Alley. Freaks is rightly recognized as a towering classic of cinema’s golden age, which once seen is never forgotten (what the fuck is that Pinhead girl?). And while Nightmare Alley is also rightly considered a classic, I still think it’s underrated. To me Nightmare Alley is as good as studio filmmaking ever gets. Tyrone Power (who I’ve never been fond of) is fucking sensational in the movie. And the script adaptation by Jules Furthman (one of my handful of nominees for greatest Hollywood screenwriter of all time) is excellent (it could have never been made in the fifties). Power doesn’t say Furthman’s dialogue, he sings it. Nightmare Alley feels every inch like an Italian neorealism movie from the same era. The film could swap casts with Bitter Rice, Tyrone Power/Vittorio Gassman, Doris Dowling/Joan Blondell, Silvana Mangano/Coleen Gray, and both films would still hold their same place of pride in film history.