In Google Scholar, is it possible to view the list of papers cited by a specific paper?
As you mentioned, unfortunately, Google Scholar only provides the list of publications that cite a given reference.

However, if you have access to Web of Science, to look up a list of references cited in a given publication, you can use the Cited References tool.

Note that some journals are not indexed by Web of Science, so having several tools to do the job may be the best way to approach this; e.g., in addition to Web of Science, you could also use Research Gate as mentioned in the other answer. For those journals that are indexed by Web of Science, I find the Cited References tool to be very useful.