Guillermo del Toro’s Mature Approach to Filmmaking with ‘Nightmare Alley’: ‘I Wanted a Dark Jewel’
variety.comTim Gray Senior Vice PresidentSearchlight’s “Nightmare Alley” has four well-deserved Oscar nominations: production design, Tamara Deverell, Shane Vieau; costume design, Luis Sequeira; cinematography, Dan Laustsen; and best picture.And while filmmaking greats including Martin Scorsese have praised “Alley,” some audiences were caught off-guard because it isn’t what they expected from Guillermo del Toro, who is director, co-writer and one of the three Oscar-nominated producers.“It’s the first film of a different period in my life,” del Toro tells Variety, marking a new style and outlook.
The film is also physically beautiful. “I wanted a dark jewel, a dark splendor. If you have a movie that talks so brutally about the human spirit, you’re weakening the material if you make it hard to look at.” Praising his nominated colleagues, del Toro says, “It is so moving to me” to look at the details and creativity of their work. “Most of their job was to work as a single unit, not little fiefdoms, and the role of director is like a general or conductor.
You get the best people available and no discipline works without the other.”“For those who have the chance, see it in black-and-white on the bigscreen; it’s a different movie in different ways,” he says. “It adds grit in a way that color can’t do.
You see the crafts, the textures, the shapes, the beauty of the cinematography in a different way.”Fantasy has been key in del Toro’s past films including “Hellboy,” “Pan’s Labyrinth” and best-picture Oscar winner “The Shape of Water.” But, here, he says, “As opposed to flights of fancy, I was trying to find those truths in a world that was recognizable.” He has wanted to film this for decades, after reading the 1946 novel by William.
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