Freaks (1932)

 

A man falls in love with a glamorous woman, who has no romantic interest in him but feigns affection as her real interest lies in his handsome inheritance. She plots with her real lover to murder the man after they have wed so she can claim his riches.
Sounds like the premise of a James M Cain hard-boiled thriller but this story is the basis of a pre-Noir 1932 movie set on a travelling carnival sideshow - the smitten man is a dwarf performer, the femme fatale is a trapeze artist and her lover a circus strongman.
This film is Freaks, based on the short story Spurs by Tod Robbins, but more-so the creation of former carny and actor, the scriptwriter and director Tod Browning. Probably best known for his Universal monster movie adaptation of Dracula starring Bela Lugosi in the titular role; Freaks is quite possibly Browning's masterpiece but also alas the cause of his fall from grace in old Hollywood.

The photo above featured in a book that was one of the 'bibles' of my childhood - The Movie Treasury: Monsters and Vampires by Alan Frank. As the name suggests the book contained many stills of creatures of horror from the silver screen. Photos that fascinated me, but none so much as that above. This one alone disturbed me because of the declaration that the 'freaks' in the film were real!! I would flick fast past the page it was on, but always found myself being drawn back. It actually spurred a lifelong interest in teratology and as a kid my book rentals from the local library often included books such as Martin Howard's Victorian Grotesque alongside the Enid Blyton and Asterix books. I held a deep desire to see the film Freaks though in those days it was a case of waiting to see if by chance I could catch a screening on one of the 3 TV channels that were available then. Little chance within mostly conservative broadcasting as Freaks was a controversial film and had been banned in the UK until 1963. The weird thing is that I don't remember exactly when or where I first saw the film. I'd have likely been in my teens or early 20s at most, but certainly it was before the world wide web internet age. It did however instantly become one of my favourite films and remains so.

 

 

From its beginnings the film was controversial. Some people felt that the use of people with real life conditions such as dwarfism, hirsutism, Seckel Syndrome, microcephaly and various other congenital abnormalities, was exploitative. From the storyline and from all accounts of Browning he treated his cast with compassion and respect. Other criticisms came from reports of audience members, vomiting, fainting, becoming traumatised and reportedly in one instance a pregnant woman miscarrying during viewings of the film. This perhaps speaks more of the audience than the film - for even at its time, as powerful as the movie is, it was not particularly brutal or graphic (one scene of a character's implied castration had been cut out before distribution however). Complaints, heavy criticism, censorship and bannings of the film had a detrimental effect upon Browning's career. Such a history has perhaps led some subsequent viewers to expect a schlock-fest or something but I actually feel that Freaks is a beautiful film with an element of pathos alongside a dark revenge and retribution

 plot and cinematography that would not be out of place alongside a an offbeat Noir age thriller such as Edmund Goulding's 1947 film Nightmare Alley (which would make a good midnight double-bill with Freaks).
Perhaps the problem with Freaks was that it is a film ahead of its time.