The Unknown (Browning, 1927): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 2pm
This silent film will be introduced by BFI curator Bryony Dixon and feature live musical accompaniment by Neil Brand.
Chicago Reader review:
Before Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, before John Wayne and John
Ford, Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning forged an ongoing
collaboration–nine films from 1920 to ’29–whose macabre stories and
carny/underworld settings mocked the bright lights of the Jazz Age.
Their most delirious project was The Unknown (1927), a perverse
melodrama about an armless circus performer (Chaney) and a beautiful
bareback rider (18-year-old Joan Crawford) with a phobia of men’s hands.
With its undercurrents of frigidity and castration anxiety, the story
was excellent material for Browning, and the film races along with the
awful momentum of a bad dream.
Don Druker
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