Movie Review: ‘Nightmare Alley’ a Stylistic Feast

A notable feature of film noir is that it moves fast and punches hard. No waste, no excess, no fooling. Ever seen Out of the Past (1947)? There’s about ten hours of prestige-television plot packed into it, and it runs 97 minutes. It’s as lean as a knife.

Writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, a remake of another 1947 film, is as lean as a ham hock in a bucket of butter in a sea of shortening. It’s an extravaganza of sets, costumes, and lighting — which is another way of saying that del Toro is one of those directors who keeps insisting you notice how much directing he is doing. He goes on and on for a loose, sprawling 150 minutes, 40 minutes longer than the original movie of the same title, which had much the same plot.

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Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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A notable feature of film noir is that it moves fast and punches hard. No waste, no excess, no fooling. Ever seen Out of the Past (1947)? There’s about ten hours of prestige-television plot packed into it, and it runs 97 minutes. It’s as lean as a knife.

Writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley, a remake of another 1947 film, is as lean as a ham hock in a bucket of butter in a sea of shortening. It’s an extravaganza of sets, costumes, and lighting — which is another way of saying that del Toro is one of those directors who keeps insisting you notice how much directing he is doing. He goes on and on for a loose, sprawling 150 minutes, 40 minutes longer than the original movie of the same title, which had much the same plot.