Tod Browning was born on 12 July 1880 — 145 years ago! He is best known for his silent film collaborations with Lon Chaney and the sound films Dracula (1931) and Freaks (1932). David Meuel states in his book Silent Film’s Last Hurrah, “A major force in creating and refining the horror genre in American film, he has also received a colorful name from film writers: ‘The Edgar Allan Poe of Cinema.'”
Browning ran away from home as a teen and literally joined the circus. After roughly a decade of this life, he got his start in Hollywood in 1913 as an actor. Notably, he starred in a number of films by Edward Dillon. In 1915, he directed his first silent short. One year later, he directed his first feature film. He had his first major success directing the Lon Chaney film, The Unholy Three. He collaborated with Chaney on four other features: London After Midnight, The Unknown, West of Zanzibar, and Where East Is East. All of these were silent films.
When Hollywood turned to sound, Tod Browning adapted as well as could be expected. And in 1931, he directed his first sound masterpiece, Dracula. The studio hired Lon Chaney for the title role. But Chaney died before production began. So the producers grabbed Bela Lugosi, who had performed the stage play for years. The rest is history.
The next year, Browning directed Freaks — a film that, along with a number of his early ones, took place in a circus. Even today, it’s quite disturbing even if providing a satisfying ending. At the time and even today, a lot of viewers thought that the film exploited the “freaks” who star in it. But I see the film in exactly the opposite way. The “freaks” have most of the humanity in the film.
Sadly, all the controversy surrounding Freaks more or less ended Browning’s career. He directed a few more films but soon retired, forgotten by Hollywood.
Celebrate Tod Browning’s birthday. Here is a free print of Freaks, which you should definitely watch if you haven’t seen it.
Image of Tod Browning via Wikipedia. It is in the public domain.
I think “Freaks” is absolutely sympathetic to the sideshow performers! It’s why the climax is so great, because it’s so morally conflicted. You do want to see them get their revenge. Yet you’re aware it’s gonna be NASTY.
It’s weird and fun how movies shocked people in the pre-Code era. Basically, if a movie pushed audiences too far, it got in trouble. Which wasn’t ideal, it meant that sickos who WANTED to be outraged went to movies that outraged them, got excited, then screamed about protecting the rest of society from Hollywood’s depravity. (Surely the people who would be truly bothered by such movies knew to avoid them, the same way I would avoid The Human Centipede.)
But it beat the next 30 years or so of movie morality being enforced by people who were sorely tempted by this stuff and couldn’t control themselves, so they wanted to stop everyone else who was just mildly curious from seeing something they found interesting.
So much of these movements aren’t even about sex and violence; they are about constraining thought. It’s the same reason that people freak out about trans genders. If they could, these people would make women wear dresses and men pants. It’s probably the case that the outrage was mostly because the “freaks” were presented positively. I’ve gotten very negative about humanity the last decade…
Quite right on “make women wear dresses and men pants.” And if they got that enacted into law, they’d be offended that the dresses weren’t modest enough.
Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” (it’s a very good movie) has a scene where the turdburgers in Iran are complaining that headscarves aren’t modest enough. That’s always how these assholes are.
She got out to France! I wish I was a good enough artist to escape. I wouldn’t even think twice, and do a Jafar Panahi and stay. I would bolt at the first chance and never look back. It is not gonna get better!
I love all my friends but every one of them is USELESS at cheering me up!
Fascism has a limited time it can exist because it must have a group to vilify. It doesn’t solve real problems. It says that whatever your problems, they are the result of “those people.” So you get rid of “those people,” but of course nothing improves. So there needs to be a new “those people.” And by the time the fascist elites have grabbed all the money, it makes no sense to continue. Although my experience with Americans is that this could gone on longer because we have the powerful combination of ignorance, stupidity, and arrogance. Go team!