THE GREAT PRETENDERS (NIGHTMARE ALLEY)

In previous years, Guillermo del Toro's 'Nightmare Alley' could have been a contender.

It may be a Best Picture Oscar nominee this year but its hopes of taking the top prize are faint, at best.

Why is that so?

'Nightmare Alley' is arguably the most stylish of the ten nominees.

It boasts an accomplished cast who turn in terrific performances.

But in a year when 'The Power of the Dog' and 'CODA' - and to some extent 'Belfast'  - have grabbed all the attention, it hasn't really figured as an awards season frontrunner.

Maybe Hollywood feels with 'The Shape of Water's Best Picture Oscar win in 2018, del Toro has had his time in the sun.

Adapted for the big screen by the Mexican director and Kim Morgan from William Lindsey Gresham's 1946 novel of the same name, 'Nightmare Alley' is a neo-noir tale of confidence tricksters in a travelling carnival.

Set in 1939, a perfectly cast Bradley Cooper plays Stan Carlisle, a drifter who observes a gruesome show at carnival in which a wild man eats a live chicken.

Rooney Mara's performer Molly Cahill also catches his eye and after wandering offstage, he manages to secure work from Willem Dafoe's owner Clem Hoatley at the carnival.

He starts assisting Toni Collette's Madame Zeena who purports to be a clairvoyant and her alcoholic husband, David Strathairn's Pete.

It's a confidence trick, of course and Zeena is also only too eager to take on Stan as she is immediately attracted to him.

As Pete struggles to keep sober, Stan absorbs all the tricks of their trade, including the coded language they have devised to help work out their audience.

Stan also learns the wild men that Clem touts are actually alcoholics hooked on an opium based drink he has concocted.

One night, Pete asks Stan to get him booze and he subsequently dies.

With a sheriff threatening to shut the operation down, Stan uses the fake mind reading skills he has learned from Pete and Zeena to change the lawman's mind and saves the carnival from closure.

Two years later, he has built a career as a psychic who performs for the wealthy in Buffalo, with Molly serving as his assistant.

However during one performance, Cate Blanchett's psychologist Dr Lilith Ritter interrupts proceedings and sets about exposing his act as a confidence trick.

After besting her and performing a cold reading on Peter MacNeill's Judge Charles Kimball, he is approached by the judge and his wife, Mary Steenburgen's Felicia to help make contact with their son who died during World War I in a private session.

Molly is unsure this is wise but Stan agrees.

Ritter, meanwhile, persuades Stan to undergo a psychological session in which he will reveal details about his past in return for information about the judge.

After the judge's reading goes well, he offers to split the profits with Ritter with whom he embarks on an affair but she refuses, agreeing to hide the money instead from Molly.

Stan reveals that Judge Kimball offered to give him the lowdown on a former patient of hers, Richard Jenkins' Ezra Grindle who forced an abortion on a girl called Dorrie.

Cheating on Molly and boozing, Stan starts to carry out sessions on Grindle.

But this will set in train a series of events leading to his downfall.

'Nightmare Alley' is beautifully shot and gorgeously lit by Director of Photography, Dan Lautsten.

It also boasts superb costumes by Luis Sequeira and sumptuous production design by Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau.

Whether you will like it or not, though, will ultimately depend if you have an appetite for two and a half hours of del Toro's unique brand of freak show imagery and film noir.

Not everyone will but this reviewer found it mesmerising and actually more enjoyable than 'The Shape of Water'.

A lot of that is down to the writing and the cast.

Del Toro and Morgan understand the dynamics of film noir - its need for morally compromised characters engaged in sleazy activities. 

And Cooper and Blanchett deliver lead performances that are wonderful throwbacks to a classical Hollywood age.

However they are not the only ones on top form.

Mara, Dafoe, Collette, Strathairn, MacNeill, Steenburgen, Jenkins and Ron Perlman as a strongman named Bruno are all magnificent.

Strathairn, in particular, should feel unfortunate not to have made the Academy Awards shortlist for Best Supporting Actor and likewise Collette in the Supporting Actress category. 

Like all great film noir, del Toro's psychological thriller also has a certain contemporary relevance.

Audiences will be struck by the fact that the freakish world of the carnival and its hucksters pretending to be clairvoyants resemble Donald Trump and other populist politicians in the US and around the world who tell voters what they want to hear while milking them for personal financial and political gain.

The blind belief they inspire has devastating consequences for their most gullible victims, just like it dud for those Trump supporters who ransacked the Capitol Building in January 2021.

That truth may have been too unconmfortable for voters in various awards this year to digest.

However even if it does walk away empty handed on Oscar night, don't be surprised if the stature of 'Nightmare Alley' grows in years to come.

('Nightmare Alley' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on January 21, 2022)