Friday June 16, 9:00pm The Moore
"Hands! Men's hands! How I hate them!"
In the final years of the silent era as feature films reached their zenith, few actor/director teams achieved the success and notoriety of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. Beginning with The Wicked Darling in 1919 and ending with Where East Is East in 1929, their collaborations typically involved a character seen at first as sympathetic. In the course of the story he would reveal his true monstrous nature, only to once again be seen with some sympathetic qualities in the end. Chaney himself said, "Tod Browning and I have worked so much together he's called the Chaney director." Released in 1927, The Unknown was the sixth of their ten collaborations and is considered by many to be their very best.
Alonzo the Armless (Chaney) is the knife thrower in a traveling Spanish circus. He hurls razor sharp blades with his feet at the beautiful Nanon (Joan Crawford) in their act. The Circus Strongman, Malabar the Mighty (Norman Kerry) makes no secret of his deep desire for Nanon, who responds with revulsion to his slightest touch. "Alonzo, all my life men have tried to put their beastly hands on me to paw over me." Alonzo is a sympathetic friend to her and the one man Nanon knows will never hold her in his grasp. "You are the one man I can come to without fear." She is unaware of Alonzo's true feelings and his obsessive longing for her. " ... no one is going to have her! No one but me!" One fantastic secret stands in the way of Alonzo's plans. His bizarre and macabre attempts to win Nanon later on become even more grotesquely shocking and horrific. It has been said that Chaney's exquisite talent for physical expression came from growing up in a home with deaf parents. His gesture and movement remains unmistakable, even when concealed by the costumes and makeup of his many characters. Much of his performance in The Unknown is remarkably conveyed using his facial expressions alone. Chaney's biographer Michael Blake recounts an interview with Burt Lancaster, who described the climactic scene of The Unknown as "The most emotionally compelling scene he'd ever seen an actor do." It is a moment of realization, both gripping and overwrought, as Alonzo teeters on the very brink of insanity.
"Hands! Men's hands! How I hate them!"
In the final years of the silent era as feature films reached their zenith, few actor/director teams achieved the success and notoriety of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. Beginning with The Wicked Darling in 1919 and ending with Where East Is East in 1929, their collaborations typically involved a character seen at first as sympathetic. In the course of the story he would reveal his true monstrous nature, only to once again be seen with some sympathetic qualities in the end. Chaney himself said, "Tod Browning and I have worked so much together he's called the Chaney director." Released in 1927, The Unknown was the sixth of their ten collaborations and is considered by many to be their very best.
Alonzo the Armless (Chaney) is the knife thrower in a traveling Spanish circus. He hurls razor sharp blades with his feet at the beautiful Nanon (Joan Crawford) in their act. The Circus Strongman, Malabar the Mighty (Norman Kerry) makes no secret of his deep desire for Nanon, who responds with revulsion to his slightest touch. "Alonzo, all my life men have tried to put their beastly hands on me to paw over me." Alonzo is a sympathetic friend to her and the one man Nanon knows will never hold her in his grasp. "You are the one man I can come to without fear." She is unaware of Alonzo's true feelings and his obsessive longing for her. " ... no one is going to have her! No one but me!" One fantastic secret stands in the way of Alonzo's plans. His bizarre and macabre attempts to win Nanon later on become even more grotesquely shocking and horrific. It has been said that Chaney's exquisite talent for physical expression came from growing up in a home with deaf parents. His gesture and movement remains unmistakable, even when concealed by the costumes and makeup of his many characters. Much of his performance in The Unknown is remarkably conveyed using his facial expressions alone. Chaney's biographer Michael Blake recounts an interview with Burt Lancaster, who described the climactic scene of The Unknown as "The most emotionally compelling scene he'd ever seen an actor do." It is a moment of realization, both gripping and overwrought, as Alonzo teeters on the very brink of insanity.