There are few filmmakers with a more complete 2022 than that of Guillermo del Toro, who It’s been in all the headlines lately. To his usual enthusiasm commenting on any aspect of cinema, a last quarter with two important projects on Netflix has been added. One is his anthology of ‘The Cabinet of Curiosities’ and the other is his particular adaptation of ‘Pinocchio’ in stop-motion animation format.
Projects of different styles, but characterized by their particular passion for fantasy. But, again, Del Toro’s best is not in the goldsmith fantasy, but when he decides to get into the mire, be it in the form of a junky blockbuster or a vindication of pulp literature (from gothic romance to superhero comics). His best recent work It arrived almost undercover at the beginning of the year (here it worked well, yes): ‘The alley of lost souls’, available on Disney +.
monster parade
Released almost without much faith by a studio that has inherited several prestigious adult film projects that it has not known how to move in a complex landscape for movie theaters, del Toro’s leap into film noir ran into a wall in what commercial. In the artistic we find here one of his most different effortswhich manages to have a very personal stamp while exposing the classic.
Bradley Cooper stars as a man of dark morals and practical thinking, utterly convinced that he can sidestep the sins of another and continually get away with a convenient set of masks. His period as a worker in a traveling circus helps him to go learning the fine art of trile, to captivate audiences with deception and properly exploit their economy. The circus dutifully operates on a modest scale, but for him it’s not enough. We must go further.
Re-adapting the novel by William Lindsay Greshamalready made into a film excellently by edmund goulding in 1947, del Toro tries to explore all facets of noir. From a pictorial elegance in the staging and photography to the gruesome and sordid of the story that unfolds. The Mexican operates in a new field in which he seems to feel very comfortable, exploiting the most pulpy part to create a depraved but elegant entertainment to observe the darkest part of the human being.
‘The alley of lost souls’: corrupted elegance
Approaching it as an awards film does it a very disservice. ‘The alley of lost souls’ is a work that operates freely in a panorama that is not especially rosy for adult proposals or for ambitious authors. Its strangeness makes it difficult to put together, but terribly suggestive to unravel for the curious viewer, who can find incredible finds in a story of monsters with tragic overtonesalthough without showing anything supernatural.
In Disney + itself we can find the version of the film titled “Visions in the light and in the dark”, which changes the photography to an exquisite black and white to emphasize the noir character. However, while it is a rewarding experience, it misses out on several exquisite and gilded details of Dan Laustsen’s work that precisely achieve expose a convoluted and precious world that is terribly corrupted.
Its second half, criticized by several as a result of the prolonged length of the film, ends up revealing the most twisted fun and the vision of a more misanthropic del Toro than ever. The meticulousness with which the story is developed leaves fabulous dramatic and human details, giving an essential residue to make the film a commendable job and worthy of being rescued.