"Best Shot" Choices from 'Nightmare Alley'
Thursday, February 17, 2022 at 10:31PM 
We've revived the long dormant "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" club and kicking us off is Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley which is up for four Oscars including Cinematography. Each week anyone who would like to join is welcome to post their choice for the chosen film's best shot. We'll add more Nightmare Alley shots if any more come in.
Click on these "Best Shots" to see why these players chose it...
13 PARTICIPANTS
from Nathaniel R at TFE [FULL ARTICLE]...
from Ryan on Twitter... [THREAD]
from Roge on Twitter...
from Keisha at Cinema Cities [FULL ARTICLE] ...
from Working Stiff's tumblr... [CAPSULE]
from In Session Film on Twitter...
from Alexander Georgakis on Twitter...
from Ben Miller at Ice Cream For Freaks...
from Christopher James on twitter... [CAPSULE]
from Matt Neglia on Twitter...
from Christian Lewis on Twitter (the movie was also released in a black and white version)...
from Christian Frey on Twitter...
and from our own Cláudio Alves...
Guillermo del Toro visualizes William Lindsay Gresham's 1946 novel as a story about surfaces, the interplay of glossy exteriors and a hidden rot growing from the inside out. Despite the text's gestures towards self-contradicting psychology, the movie works best when it embraces the thorny possibilities of superficiality as a ruling order. That's why, to me, Rooney Mara's downplayed guilt, Toni Collette's underperformed weariness, and, to a lesser extent, Bradley Cooper's self-annihilating hucksterism fail as characterizations for this specific Nightmare Alley. This cinematic experiment demands archetypical dynamics and an overwhelming sense of fakery, the actor as an extension of the set design rather than people living within it. Cate Blanchett seems to be the only main cast member to fully get del Toro's style. In return, he films her with such glamorous devotion that it's impossible to come out of the picture not thinking about the Australian goddess's take on an evil analyst.
Obviously, the best shot must feature Blanchett. And yet, there are so many exciting choices, from a tremulous flash of vulnerability on a public stage to the theatre of sex and revulsion that occurs when she reveals a scar, going through a cornucopia of images that focus on a manicure that makes her hands perpetually look like claws dipped in blood. In the end, though, her introductory shot was too good to ignore. As the swindlers exit their grifting showroom, the camera pans to the tables of agog spectators. Amid them, a figure stands out for her unenthusiastic poise. Smoking and backlit to the gods, Blanchett enters Nightmare Alley like a primordial manifestation of the femme fatale archetype, a shadow given womanly form, the red gash of a smile still discernable in the dark silhouette.
Plus, you got to love the philosophy of excess underlying every design choice in the movie. The shot is the only time we ever see this evening gown, a perfect costume for a striking first impression, and one more reason why Luis Sequeira earned that Best Costume Design Oscar nomination.
thank you so much to all who played along
NEXT THURSDAY: Douglas Sirk's classic melodrama All That Heaven Allow (1955) - Streaming on Criterion Channel
Reader Comments (4)
Love seeing these. My runners-up were the one Ben chose (killer image) and the reverse angle closeup of the one Alexander and Cláudio chose—so noir: drink, cigarette, smoke, profile, hair.
Man, these shots are exactly why Guillermo is my favorite Mexican filmmaker.
Even though I didn't think this film was successful, and in spite of how digital some of the exteriors looked, I thought there were some arresting visual moments.
A lot of the Blanchett moments work, but especially when we first see her. It's jarring to see folks so nicely dressed given the world we've just spent time in, but then seeing Blanchett watch, with that look, is incredible.
I love the shot with Steenburgen.
Love this series, so glad you brought it back!
I wasn't actually wowed by NA's cinematography when I watched it, but these shots are making me reconsider. They are definitely (and impressively) Composed with a capital "C."