Spectacle or Side-show?  Greek Tragedy via Film Noir

James V. Lowe (John Burroughs School)

Some of the most stimulating sessions at recent CAMWS meetings have been panels devoted to classical mythology as refracted through the lens of Hollywood’s cameras.  More often than not, papers have concentrated on filmic versions of literature, e.g. “Troy,” or blockbusters more or less loosely based on the historical record (e.g. “Gladiator”).  This paper will take a different tack; I propose to explore how a film from the “classic” Hollywood era, which, prima facie, has nothing whatever to do with the classical world, can in fact serve a useful pedagogic function by enabling students to see how the timeless themes treated in ancient literature resurface, in surprising but illuminating ways, in celluloid.  To be specific, I shall speak about the film “Nightmare Alley,” directed by Edmund Goulding and released by 20^th Century Fox in 1947.  I shall argue that watching this film can enhance young people’s understanding of and appreciation for nothing other than Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.  In both play and movie, the central characters find themselves caught in the web spun by fate; the more they struggle to extricate themselves, the more they are enmeshed.  Furthermore, both the tragedy and the film represent characters who have divergent attitudes towards mediums that purport to give people a look into their destiny: Tarot cards and bogus mentalist acts in “Nightmare Alley” work remarkably similarly to the Delphic oracle’s enigmatic pronouncements in Oedipus Rex.  I shall argue that the huge differences in medium, date of production, and particularly mise en scene (the royal palace of Thebes vs. the sordid, midwestern carnival) only enhance the intriguing commonalities shared by these two works of creative fiction.  I shall show brief but relevant clips from the film, complementing a handout with excerpts from the play, to illustrate my points.