Cinema Corner Volume I: Freaks (1932)
I was pleasantly surprised, and needless to say, genuinely flattered when the pjazza team asked me to start writing periodic articles primarily focused on discussing my greatest passion of them all: cinema. I immediately accepted the offer without any hesitation. Being completely aware of the fact that there is quite an extensive number of movie lovers out there, I promptly decided to dedicate the space so generously offered to me in reviewing some of the greatest movies in the history of cinema.
Choosing the first movie to review was certainly no easy task. There are so many to choose from that you almost feel lost. However, I honestly feel that Freaks fully deserves this undisputed honour. Firstly, it is a classic movie of which not everybody might be aware. Secondly, it is arguably one of the most unique movies ever filmed. More than 75 years have passed since its initial release, and there has never been another movie quite like it.
Freaks tells the story of Hans (Harvey Earles), a German midget performing in a circus sideshow. Early on in the movie, Hans falls in love with Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), a pretty but ultimately wicked trapeze artist who eventually decides to marry the midget for the sole reason of inheriting his supposedly vast fortune. Hans’ friends, a fascinatingly creepy group of deformed people, all of whom make part of the same sideshow, gradually become aware of the woman’s evil plan to poison and murder their friend immediately after the wedding, and embark on a journey of revenge in order to safeguard Hans’ own life.
The movie is directed by Todd Browning, who is primarily famous for helming the classic Dracula movie starring Bela Lugosi. After the tremendous success achieved after Dracula came out and hit box-office gold, Browning was basically given free reign in choosing which project he should tackle next. His final decision to film Freaks was solely responsible for ruining his career. Audiences found it so upsetting that the movie was banned in the United Kingdom and in a number of other countries for many years.
One of the main reasons behind such a negative reaction possibly revolved around the fact that Browning took the brave route and used people with real deformities for shooting the film. Thus, we are presented with an impressive cast of real life side show performers. There’s the Living Torso, a man born without arms and legs who relies only on his mouth and shoulders in order to carry out the most basic tasks. In one of the most memorable scenes in the movie, he is seen rolling a joint (cigaret) and lighting it with minimal effort. There’s the Living Human Skeleton, a bony character who weighs a mere 58 pounds. There’s Josephine Joseph, a Polish side-show performer whose body was rumoured to be split down the middle – one side male, the other side female. And then there’s Schiltze, my personal favourite – an adorable microcephalic who practically steals every scene that he’s in. These, along with a number of other performers, made Freaks one of the most controversial movies of all time.
Angry audiences accused Browning of shamelessly exploiting these people for his own personal gain. Unfortunately enough, most people completely missed the entire point of the movie during its initial release. The film actually challenges you time and time again to ask yourself who the real freaks referred to in the title are. There is a certain aura of innocence and purity circling around the disabled characters that makes you root for them from very early on. The first time we get a glimpse of these misshapen human beings is when they are shown playing in the woods near the start of the film. It doesn’t take long before two men enjoying a walk in the sun spot them and shamelessly start throwing cruel insults at them. This scene builds the whole foundation for the entire theme of the film.
Perhaps the greatest scene of them all is the wedding reception scene, in which the characters are all gathered around a table, drinking and celebrating their friend’s marriage. The freaks perform a sort of ritual where everyone is asked to drink from a cup as a symbol of fraternity among them. The cup is finally handed to a bewildered Cleopatra as the freaks keep chanting “We accept her, one of us!” (a phrase which consequently became synonymous with pop culture, even finding itself in the Ramones song Pinhead). You do feel genuinely sorry for the freaks when they show so much uncompromising love and go to such great lengths in order to be accepted by the supposedly normal community, and you cannot help but watch in agony as Cleopatra blatantly refuses to drink from the cup and starts cursing the freaks in a painfully insulting manner. The tables are soon turned, however, as soon as the freaks come to know of Cleopatra’s true plans, which leads to one of the most disturbingly satisfying endings ever filmed.
To state that the real monsters in this movie are the seemingly normal people is an under-statement. To acknowledge that physical deformity is nothing but an accident of birth is to acknowledge the film’s overall message. As the voice-over in the movie duly states, “But for an accident of birth, you might be as they are”. The film became somewhat of a cult phenomenon throughout the years, slowly being universally acknowledged by many as a misunderstood masterpiece. Shame that Browning was no longer around.
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