Month: November 2024

Finishing off that Criterion Tod Browning set with what is evidently the least known of the three films therein… Interesting that the titular mystic is actually a somewhat secondary character; she’s one of a group of circus gypsies recruited by an American crook, Michael Nash, as part of a scheme to part people from their money through staged seances. But Nash gets greedy and this ultimately results in a somewhat unexpected complication. Not a million miles removed from something like Nightmare Alley, I suppose, albeit a couple of decades before that… Browning couldn’t get any of his usual cast (including Lon Chaney) so he had to make do with a bunch of people who seem to be pretty obscure now, though they all acquit themselves well enough, even if I never entirely bought Nash’s change of heart which drives the plot in the last third or so of the film. I’m mostly puzzled by the score Criterion used for the film, though… not that it’s bad, cos it’s not, it actually suits the film pretty well; it’s just that, frankly, it comes off sonically like an old Vitaphone track despite being newly written, i.e. not just music but sound effects as well, and the latter tend to be distracting just like they did in the old Vitaphone soundtracks I’ve heard. (Doesn’t help that Criterion presents the soundtrack in mono for some reason.) But on the whole it’s pretty well made and well presented; the production is solid early MGM, and the seance fakery actually produces a surprisingly ominous mood that’s more effective than you might expect. This whole set was well worth getting.

I first saw this, as I recall, back in 2002, at which time I was quite panicked by the climax of this film and seriously thought it would in fact end with Norman Kerry’s arms being ripped off, and I was making some very odd squealing noises while watching it. If a then-75 year old silent film could have that effect on me, it had to be something remarkable. 22 years later, as The Unknown approaches its centenary, it perhaps didn’t quite have that effect on me tonight, but it wasn’t that far off… plus in those intervening a second print of the film turned up, thus returning it to its original length and proportions. If Freaks was an odd choice for MGM to make and release in 1932, this was even odder in a way for them to have made five years earlier; it really is one of the most fucked-up romances in 20th century cinema, the criminal trying to keep his… distinctive hand concealed by posing as an armless circus knife thrower and the young woman terrified of the touch of men’s hands, leading to an… extreme makeover, shall we say. This must’ve seemed amazingly grotesque in 1927, cos it sure as hell does in 2024, and I’ve always seen it as the sort of thing which demonstrates how good an actor Lon Chaney was quite apart from his obviously formidable make-up skills. The Unknown is melodrama of somewhat preposterous luridness, but somehow Chaney sells this bizarre proposition, even though Alonzo the Armless is a character that even Werner Herzog might have found excessive. I did kind of miss the Alloy Orchestra’s score from the older release, but that was written for the 49-minute version so wouldn’t have worked the same for this restoration; whatever, though, it’s good to have it back to what appears to be almost its original length. Pleased to see this again too.

As I was saying about films I need to rewatch, this was one of them, having recently scored the Criterion blu-ray with this (ludicrously, I don’t think I’ve ever actually owned this in any form until now), The Unknown and The Mystic… both of which will also be making appearances here. This wasn’t Tod Browning’s first rodeo …er, circus story, but by casting actual “freaks” he was crossing boundaries audiences weren’t prepared to go beyond with him; although I’m not sure if they were offended on behalf of the “freaks” for being exploited, or on behalf of themselves for being forced to look at these misshapen things… I suspect it was more the latter, however, given that behind the scenes MGM’s other staff were finding Browning’s cast kind of unacceptably monstrous as well. It’s clear, though, that Browning’s sympathies are absolutely with his human oddities from start to finish; even when they go on their climactic rampage against Cleopatra and Hercules, the latter—a pair normal-sized able-bodied people who hate the rest of the circus cast, even the other “normal” ones—have been painted as so awful and venal that the “freaks”‘ revenge on them is quite understandable. Alas that critics and audiences would take a few more decades to catch up with Browning, whose career was pretty fatally damaged by the fuss; all this time later it still seems incomprehensible that MGM, of all the major Hollywood studios at that time, made and released this thing. Less incomprehensible than them repudiating it until the 1960s but even so. It’s still pretty transgressive and kind of questionable, but a lot better and more seriously intended than it could’ve been in less careful hands. Very pleased to have seen this again.