Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley transports us to not just one dreamy world, but two. He plunges us into the seedy and theatrical with a carnival during the first half, and then takes us to an Art Deco paradise for the other. With film noir, you are guaranteed femme fatales and men making huge, questionable choices, and Nightmare Alley‘s makeup and hairstyling team, headed by Jo-Ann MacNeil and Cliona Furey, deliver fascinating, alluring characters.
It’s interesting to think that the original Nightmare was released in 1947 while del Toro’s iteration is a loving tribute to it. “There was such a perceived simplicity to the era, and there were so few options available. But the women made it look so clean and beautiful and it’s one of my favorite eras,” MacNeil said about venturing back to a different time.
Nightmare Alley follows Bradley Cooper’s Stanton Carlisle, a huckster who climbs the ranks at a local carnival as he cozies up to Rooney Mara’s Molly, a performer with humble dreams of a different life. After Stanton and Molly depart the carnival, they start their own act in an upscale nightclub, but Stanton soon gets embroiled in a dangerous scheme with psychologist Lilith, played deliciously by Cate Blanchett.
As we see several carnival acts on display, we get a vivid sense of the squalid working conditions. They perform several times a day, and who knows what kind of weather or hardship they will have to deal with.
“We were filming in a real fairground field in Ontario, in the fall, getting close to winter with rain, snow, moist air and cold. For the characters, we gave them day looks and performance looks. The day looks were designed to be simple, because that’s how people’s hair looks walking around in the elements. Guillermo also, as you may have noticed, likes snow, rain, and atmospheric smoke. All those things are really beautiful, but they don’t lend themselves to the hair with women’s 1930s waves on set. I purposely designed the hair for the carnival goers and the carnival performers to be on the simple side of things. In the city, we purposely went for high octane shine, slick waves and very formed hair. All the men were slicked and pristine, and the women’s looks were very glammy. But at the carnival, we kept everyone a little more tired looking, sort of real looking hair. We ran around with clips in between takes to try and keep up with those elements.”
“We really tried to show the impact of the downtrodden life and conditions of the carnival workers and performers,” MacNeil said. “We used soot powders, dirt poofs and grime sprays to break them down and make them feel weathered both inside and out.”
All of the women in Stanton’s life are very distinctive. Lilith is a bold presence while Molly is subtler. The other woman in Stanton’s life is his friend and mentor, Zeena, played by Toni Collette. Furey wanted to show Stanton’s taste in women with the hair work on two different blondes.
“They both were blonde, but Lilith had more of an alluring, sexy, contemporary look for the time. Zeena was to look more bohemian and past her prime, if you will. They were both blonde, but I gave Zeena some darker roots. Her hair wasn’t quite as formed as Lilith. They both have interludes with Stanton, so you might sense his taste in women. I tend to have little backstories of my own going on with characters in terms of their hair. When Zeena was doing the bath scene with Stanton, I let her waves be a little looser–a little sexier and down in her eyes. For her carnival performance look, she had that turban, and we just kept it simple. Zeena wouldn’t conform to what society was doing. That’s how I saw that. With Lilith, it was actually Guillermo who had the vision of Lilith. He gave me a picture of Lauren Bacall and we decided on the gold tone of blonde.
Cate’s hairstylist Kay Georgiou did a fabulous job.
MacNeil added that she spent a lot of time researching and coming up with color palettes to differentiate between the film’s two worlds.
“In the city, we went with brighter reds and corals. We used medium brown tones with beige highlights to go with Tamara Deverell’s Art Deco production design and Luis Sequeira’s monochromatic look in the costumes. My strength was making sure all the characters’ makeup looks felt cohesive and authentic to our world. It was a real collaborative relationship with all of the makeup team. As for Lilith’s lipstick, Cate had a personal makeup artist, Morag Ross. She chose the Armani Power lip in two shades, 402 and 400, for that glamorous red lip!”
The difference between Molly and Lilith is huge, and that dichotomy is reflected in their respective hair and makeup designs. There is an earnestness to Molly that is juxtaposed in every way from the woman Stanton is lured by in Blanchett’s character. Even though Molly isn’t as flashy of a character, MacNeil had a lot to do in showing her character arc.
“Molly had a youthful innocence in the carnival and her makeup was kept minimal to reflect it. Molly never really completely bought into the big time of the city, she followed Stan but internally struggled. She tries to show Stan she is maturing and it’s reflected in her choices. As she moved into the city we moved to a cooler color palette of brighter reds and corals. She made an effort to embrace the life she was living in the city, mainly for Stan, and we made her a little more glamorous with false eyelashes, eyeliner, and red lipstick.”
The transformation of Cooper’s character is the most dramatic, because we see him at three very distinct points. When he first walks on screen, his face is stubbled and he keeps his head down. It’s as if he is trying to infiltrate the carnival before becoming a part of it. That look is totally different from the suave man in the second part of the film with his slicked back hair and Clark Gable mustache. MacNeil collaborated heavily with Cooper’s personal makeup artist, Jordan Samuel to make sure they had a cohesive character that not only fit into the Nightmare Alley storyworld, but made sense with Paul Anderson’s geek as well.
“In the beginning, he’s a simple man with simple things,” MacNeil recalled. “He was a drifter and we styled him that way, he wasn’t someone you would have looked at twice. He was disheveled, worn down, and had a few days of beard growth. His experience in the carnival changes him and he sees ambition for the first time. This allowed us to transition him to the city where Stan reinvents himself. He now has new hair, new clothes, and a sleek mustache. Just as it all seems to be working out his world crumbles around him and he is drawn down into the depths of despair leading to his fall from grace. This leads us to a rapid breakdown in his appearance through his tattered beard, weathered-looking skin, and his overgrown and unkempt nails.”
Furey noted how much Stanton was a character that lived in extremes. He goes from one polar opposite to another. By the time Nightmare Alley closes, Cooper is unrecognizable.
“His hairdresser, Lori McCoy-Bell, gave him a beautiful period cut so that he looked downtrodden for the carnival–very unkempt. His hair is slicked for the city. Guillermo wanted long hair for the end–he wanted Stanton to literally look like a hobo.”
When Stanton first joins the carnival, one of the ugliest things we see is one of the geeks captured and put in his pen. It’s the epitome of how dark and twisted this carnival life could be, and it’s a far cry from the places Stanton and Molly escape to. But can Stanton truly get away from that ugliness, or is it rooted inside of him? MacNeil explained the design of the geeks.
“The geek characters were homeless alcoholics and in the worst shape and place in life. The carnival bosses take advantage of their circumstances and really, in truth, torture them into becoming a crazed character of the carnival that will do anything for booze. We needed to show real desperation and despair. We broke Paul Anderson down with the soot powders, grime sprays, dirt poofs, and skin illustrator palettes that I mentioned. We also had small prosthetics transfers for him and had custom broken teeth molded, in addition to a wall eyed lens. We wanted to create a horrific character that you also feel sympathy for in his makeup and I feel we achieved this.”
“His character has to literally look like a caged animal,” Furey said. “The direction that I got from Guillermo was to give him shoulder length, oily hair. I had a beautiful wig made by Stacey Butterworth. It was gorgeous. Paul Anderson let me do whatever I needed for the look so I buzzed his own hair for the wig prep. He was really passionate about his character.”
Nightmare Alley is in theaters now.