Freaks
Controversy is a double edge sword. The minute a film is doused in taglines like “banned in the United Kingdom” or smeared with the tagline “panned by critics everywhere,” and people turn their noses up. Others relish upon it, hunted down taboo as though it were a craze (and some could argue that this is the foundation of cult movies.) 1932 was one of the most restricted periods of cinema and anything that toed the line between upset and intrigue. While horror was feasted upon in the masses, owning to Tod Browning and Bela Luigosi’s stellar Dracula, when he followed it up with his circus act Freaks, he was subsequently run out of Hollywood. With his career in tatters, it’s a shame that people picked up on the phenomenal soul of this movie thirty years too late.
Freaks is and will always be Browning’s masterpiece. Using real life “sideshow” attractions and people who were born with disfigurements as well as his own experiences with the circus, Freaks tells the story of a band of misfits who have grown close together on the circus circuit. Hans, a midget, falls in love with the beautiful Cleo, a trapeze artist. Unfortunately, Cleo is a horrid soul who plans to marry Hans and murder him for the large inheritance he has acquired.
Looking at Freaks now, from a fresh generation of cinema goers and it’s the reaction to the film is most upsetting. It inspired tonnes of backlash from people who failed to see Browning’s point of the movie. Whilst Dracula, a pretty tame in comparison film, gave Browning his name, it was work based on material acclaimed before with the talented Luigosi as lead; no wonder it lead to his fame. And even then, Browning had to fight for his right to showcase people of different proposition and “non-actors.” Freaks destroyed his name but boasts an original story that is equally captivating and striking as it is unnerving.
The thing is, the unnerving part of Freaks has nothing to do with the deformed and the social rejects. Browning’s real grip in the movie is the utterly compelling contrast between so called normality. Here, the horrific message is not the attack on Cleo at the end of the movie (though, her final transformation is scary even now.) The true horror of Browning’s Freaks is how awful people can be when presented with something out of their norm. It’s about how people can judge so quickly and use that distorted perception to commit heinous acts. The “freaks” in question are full of humanity. They love, they hurt, they band together and there is such a portrayal of ordinary goodness that are juxtaposed with Cleo and her scheming boyfriend Hercules, making the audience, in turn, question their perceptions. Many movies have chanted "one of us" hauntingly based on the "freaks" indicting Cleo to their family but chillingly its Cleo's angered reaction back at them that provides most shocks.
Perhaps (more like definitely) Browning was ahead of his time. With Freaks, he used the absurd and provoking to send a message of equality. Incidentally, the version of Freaks that is bounding around now is not Browning’s final work, it is a cut up of everything he had strived for and therefore, it is a movie squeezed into an hour. We can only hope that a final cut in movie heaven is being screened and it is just as tantalising as this. Nevertheless, audiences, studios and critics damned it in 1932.
Perhaps because the movie damned them too.