Review: Tod Browning's Freaks (1932; DVD 2004) - Page 2

Oh yeah. There’s a plot to the film, too. And not a bad one, either. Certainly a great deal of the film is devoted to (depending on your disposition) either documenting and preserving or exploiting the unique appearances and abilities of the film’s cast. I mean, seriously, watching Prince Randian open a box of matches, strike a stick, light his cigarette, and extinguish the flame while holding a conversation is not something you see all that often, and the film allows you to stare. Now whether or not the staring is a life-affirming celebration of the “ability” in “disability” is up to the individual, but you better believe Freaks delights in bringing such spectacles to the unsuspecting masses. Still, there is a story, a rather compelling, though simple, plot dealing with a love quadrangle encompassing two little people engaged to be married (Hans and Frieda, played by the real-life siblings, Harry and Daisy Earles); a tall, blonde trapeze artist named Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova) who toys with Hans’s heart; and her strongman boy-toy, Hercules (Henry Victor). Basically, Cleopatra notices that Hans has eyes for her and pretends to return his affection to amuse her friends and benefit from the diminutive German’s generosity. When a concerned Frieda confronts Cleopatra, the former accidentally reveals that Hans has recently inherited a fortune and Cleopatra contrives to marry and subsequently poison Hans in order to obtain the fortune for herself (and possibly Hercules, who supports Clio’s efforts). After embarrassing Hans at their wedding ceremony and getting caught trying to poison her husband, Cleopatra finds herself at the mercy of a vengeful mob of freaks in the film’s brilliant climactic sequence. Several sub-plots interweave with the main thread, making for an all-around good movie.

Tod Browning, having earned his fame during the silent film era, never really took to the talking picture form. Partly owing to the director’s inexperience and partly due to the fact that Freaks cast a slew of people with little to no acting experience alongside several heavily-accented thespians, much of the dialogue seems stunted or forced, even for an era often criticized by modern viewers for awkward speech. Yet, the dialogue is at least consistently passable, and occasionally quite good. Still, Browning’s reluctance to abandon the visual tactics he perfected during the silent film era during awkward forays into talking pictures yielded some truly beautiful visual sequences. For instance, as film historian and Browning biographer David J. Skal observes during his commentary on Freaks, the wedding banquet scene is so expertly choreographed that the removal of sound from the film would not prevent the viewer from understanding what occurs or from feeling the range of emotions the director strives to elicit. (The scene was, in fact, largely filmed without sound, with the soundtrack added during production).

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