Cinema
Freaks
Tod Browning · 1932
Synopsis
A circus that travels in caravans. Hans, a performer of small stature, is engaged to Frieda, a bareback rider who is also of small stature, but he falls for Cleopatra, the trapeze artist, who mocks him until the day she learns that he has inherited a large sum. With her lover Hercules, the strongman, she decides to marry him in order to take the money. At the wedding banquet, the troupe's freaks welcome her with the rite that makes her one of them; drunk, she insults them and kisses Hercules in front of everyone.
Context
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which saw Universal succeeding with horror, entrusted the project to Browning, from a short story by Tod Robbins published in 1923; Irving Thalberg backed it against the hostility of part of the studio. The test screenings were disastrous: the film was cut from about ninety minutes to an hour and four minutes, without the director's agreement, and the cut scenes are lost. It was withdrawn from cinemas shortly after its release, and this failure ended Browning's career in the major studios.
Who it is for
A film of one hour four, in the shortened version, which is the only one to survive; it shows real bodies, without make-up.
Prizes and reception
A commercial failure, banned for some thirty years in the United Kingdom, shown at Venice in 1962 and added in 1994 to the National Film Registry.
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