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In seeking darker roles, Bradley Cooper exhibits the same qualities that drew another actor — Tyrone Power — to an adaptation of Nightmare Alley.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Nightmare Alley, now playing in theaters.
Among its copious virtues, Nightmare Alley boasts an unusually talented cast, which relishes the chance to sink their teeth in director Guillermo del Toro’s darker, bloodier take on a classic film noir. But none of it works without Bradley Cooper in the lead. The original novel took place almost entirely from his character’s perspective, and he remains center stage in nearly every scene. And Cooper’s oily, casually brutal performance holds the movie together as much as Tyrone Power’s did in the first movie adaptation in 1947.
Above and beyond the strength of the performance itself, there’s something in the actor’s innate onscreen presence that makes him perfect for the part. Cooper and Power are alike in more ways than it seems, and the role reflects a potential in both performers that took time to develop. And both versions of Nightmare Alley benefit from the way they foster it.
Turner Classic Movies discussed the background of the first film during a 2019 airing. 20th Century Fox purchased the rights to the original novel at the behest of actor Tyrone Power, who wanted to star in a film adaptation. Audiences largely knew him as a romantic leading man at the time, best known for heroic parts in the likes of The Mark of Zorro and A Yank in the RAF. Nightmare Alley gave him a chance to break out of that typecasting with an openly amoral character. It was a risk, and initially, it didn’t pay off. The film failed in its initial run — not unlike the del Toro film, which suffered a brutal opening weekend at the box office — but Power’s belief in the project ultimately prevailed, and today, the movie stands as one of his best works.
Cooper possesses many of the same qualities that Power hoped to tap into with Nightmare Alley. Though possessed of a leading man’s looks, he often finds characters with a lot of darkness under the surface. That began with his work on to TV show Alias, where duplicity and double-crosses were a common plot thread. Films like The Hangover and A Star Is Born parleyed the same vibe, with characters hiding darkness or self-destructive qualities behind a handsome and confident façade.
Nightmare Alley required that kind of energy in spades. His character, Stanton Carlisle, is a slick hustler too smart and too handsome for his own good. He begins as a carnival barker assisting in various sideshow attractions before escaping to the city after procuring the secret to an elaborate mentalist’s code. When success as a nightclub act bores him, he moves on to bilking the wealthy as a spiritual medium before a bungled con utterly destroys him. Throughout it all, he remains charming, seductive and manipulative in the extreme and is ultimately revealed as a full-bore sociopath.
That’s more than Power took on as an actor, and yet it’s absolutely necessary for the movie to success. Carlisle has to keep the audience’s sympathies, even as he lies, deceives and callously destroys those around him. At the same time, the movie’s horrific ending — in which an alcoholic Carlisle agrees to a living death as a carnival geek — requires no mercy. He gets what’s coming to him, regardless of viewers’ comparative support, and the balancing act between the two is solely Cooper’s responsibility.
Leonardo Di Caprio was famously in talks for the lead before moving on to other projects, and his characters have the same ability to charm as they destroy. But Di Caprio’s intensity isn’t quite the same fit as Cooper’s more laid-back approach, which suits a character accustomed to watching and waiting. Carlisle’s fall in Nightmare Alley is horrific — a deal with the devil gone spectacularly wrong that ends in a hell of his own making — but it took more than just a good performance to make that work. It took an actor with the right combination of qualities, and like Power’s performance before his, Cooper makes it hard to imagine anyone else doing it quite right.
To witness Cooper’s powerful performance, Nightmare Alley is in theaters now.
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