Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 93: Thu Apr 3

Freaks (Browning, 1932): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.50pm



Freaks is screened as part of the Passport to Cinema season and is also being shown on March 31at and April 21st. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
If the heart of the horror movie is the annihilating Other, the Other has never appeared with more vividness, teasing sympathy, and terror than in this 1932 film by Tod Browning. Browning flirts with compassion for the sad, deformed creatures of his sideshow—most played by genuine freaks from the Ringling Brothers circus—but ultimately finds horror and revulsion as the outsiders take their climactic revenge. A happy ending, shot by Browning but deleted when the film was rereleased, resurfaced after many years: it shows the midget couple reunited under the condescending gaze of the “normal” friends, firmly reestablishing the complacent sense of “separateness” the body of the film has worked so hard to undermine. With Leila Hyams, Wallace Ford, and Harry and Daisy Earles.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an excerpt.

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