Nightmare Alley

The 1940s saw a fair number of downbeat pictures emerge from Hollywood’s generally sunny halls—think film noir—but few are quite as relentlessly bleak and tawdry as the pride-goeth-before-etc. saga Nightmare Alley. Goulding is best known for prestige pictures like the Bette Davis weepie Dark Victory, but postwar despair doesn’t get much more acute than this.