Film Review
The best of the eight collaborations of director Tod Browning and
legendary star of the silent era Lon Chaney,
The Unknown is also Browning's
darkest and most disturbing film, several orders of magnitude more
chilling than his subsequent horror classic
Dracula
(1931). What makes this macabre tale of unrequited love,
self-mutilation and grisly revenge so potent is the unbeatable
combination of Browning's restrained but highly effective direction and
Chaney's remarkably intense performance. The abject darkness of
Chaney's portrayal is all the more striking when set against the
lightness which is brought by Joan Crawford, here playing the femme
fatale in one of her earliest major film roles.
One of the greatest actors of his generation, Lon Chaney had a
particular talent for playing villains convincingly. He manages
to bring to his performance not only a genuine impression of raging
malevolence but also an acute sense of pathos, and nowhere is this more
evident than in this film. The character that Chaney portrays in
The Unknown is a murderer
masquerading as a man with no arms. On the surface, there is
nothing likeable about Alonzo, and yet Chaney plays him with such
emotional force and poignancy that he becomes the character the
audience most identifies with. We want him to succeed in
winning the girl he has fallen for, even if it means his rival dying in
the most horrible way imaginable.
Given its sadistically dark subject matter, it is hardly surprising
that
The Unknown was not
well-received when it was first released. Even today, it
still sends a shiver down the spine and is definitely not one for the
squeamish, although, interestingly, there not one frame of explicit
horror. This is a film that poses an intriguing question: can an
evil act that is performed for noble, albeit misguided aims, ever be
seen in a sympathetic light? "No" will probably be your immediate
response. Watch this film and you may have a different answer.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Tod Browning film:
West of Zanzibar (1928)
Film Synopsis
Alonzo the Armless is the main attraction in a Spanish circus with his
knife throwing act, which he performs with the use of his
feet. Only Alonzo's assistant Cojo knows that he is a fake,
that he really has two perfectly intact arms. However, Alonzo
profits from his supposed affliction to win the sympathy of circus girl
Nanon. Knowing that Nanon hates being touched by men, Alonzo
encourages his rival, the strongman Malabar, to fondle her. Cojo
warns his friend that he cannot marry Nanon because on their wedding
night she would discover his secret and reject him. Realising the
truth of this, Alonzo coerces a surgeon into amputating both of his
arms. When he subsequently learns that Nanon intends to marry
Malabar, Alonzo is consumed with rage and resolves to destroy his
rival...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.