Critic’s rating: ★★★★1/2
(111 minutes; R)

“I am not like this,” says the Geek, a booze- and opium-addicted man, disheveled and stringy haired, cruelly imprisoned as a sideshow attraction and brought out of his cage only to feast on a live chicken for 25 cents a show, in the carnival at the center of “Nightmare Alley.”

It’s the last days of the Great Depression, and the pitiful, whimpering, practically speechless creature (Paul Anderson), advertised as a being who exists halfway between a beast and a man, is kept alive only to entertain passersby promised a chance to see human freaks from all over the globe.

Questions about identity — mutable, disguised, unreliable and sometimes even genuine — are at the heart of this often stunning period noir from Guillermo del Toro, the Mexican-born filmmaker responsible for such lavishly photographed gems as “The Shape of Water” and “Pan’s Labyrinth.”

Is Stan (Bradley Cooper), the itinerant laborer seen disposing of a corpse and then lighting a house on fire during the film’s opening moments, an inherently very bad man with potential for doing good? While joining others in trying to capture the escaped Geek, he pauses in front of a funhouse mirror, above which is inscribed the words, “Take a look at yourself, sinner.” Redemption doesn’t appear to be in the cards.

On the other hand, his heart seems soft enough for him to genuinely fall in love with fellow carny Molly (Rooney Mara). He declares his intentions during a magical bout of dancing aboard a beautifully lit revolving carousel. It’s another of the Americana-esque images littered across the film — Del Toro and cinematographer Dan Laustsen also give us a neon-lit all-night diner and red-and-yellow “Jesus Saves” sign in the shape of a cross, retro-looking posters of a fictitious famed mentalist, and big-city buildings and interiors adorned with art deco touches (slightly out of time?).

So, the answer to whether Stan can transform into a better version of himself is … maybe a kind of goodness will triumph, or perhaps his sinful nature will win out. Stay tuned.

Del Toro, offering the second remake of a novel first adapted as a 1947 film featuring a cast-against-type Tyrone Power, convincingly details a world of con artists and scammers, well practiced and motivated to take money from poor clucks and marks — in the movie’s parlance — who are all too willing to suspend their disbelief in exchange for a few minutes of wonder.

The kaleidoscopically grungy carnival is peopled with a small universe of well-cast characters, particularly loving couple (with an asterisk) Zeena (Toni Collette) and Pete (David Straitharn), who collect a tidy sum pretending to read minds. Their act fails only when the latter gets too sauced to play his part in the operation; the two, we’re told, once had a four-week string of triumphant performances in Paris, where they stayed at the Ritz. Also in the mix of performers are a strong man (del Toro regular Ron Perlman, aka Hellboy), a mighty little person (Mark Povinelli), a contortionist and a spider woman. The enterprise is helmed with a firm hand by sleazy carnival barker Clem (Willem Dafoe), whose favorite possession is a gallery of pickled unborn fetuses, including a particularly scary-looking one he calls Enoch.

Having succeeded as a big fish in a lower-class pond, even fooling a local sheriff determined to bust the carny crew, Stan decides to remake his identity once more. So he takes his show, and Molly, to high society circles in Chicago, where he proves efficient at tricking audiences in upscale joints. “It’s the same grift, just different threads,” he explains. Stan soon joins forces with Lilith (Cate Blanchett), a sexy, devious psychologist who goes along with his plan for scoring even bigger paydays by conning wealthier and more powerful men, made even more vulnerable to the scam because of devastating personal losses, knowledge of which she has acquired through her counseling sessions. Is she femme? Or femme fatale?

It all builds to a whizbang pair of climaxes, one a kind of Grand Guignol piece set against the sprawling, snow-covered, mazelike gardens of an enormous estate owned by a financial magnate (Richard Jenkins, superb here again, as he was in “The Shape of Water’), the other inside Lilith’s luxurious office. Masks are dropped, weapons are fired, and blood flows.

In a coda, Clem accepts the job he says he was born to play. Similarly, Cooper, so adept at portraying such a wide range of characters in a fairly eclectic mix of movies, seems to be born to play the role of a schemer whose sins may finally catch up to him. It’s a compelling performance, — a man with so much apparent “panache,” as one character terms it, who nevertheless may have a permanent stain on his soul.

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