vortex

Freaks

Freaks | Tod Browning | US 1932 | 64 Min | DCP
Metro
Double Feature with 2551.01
Su,26.09.▸15:30

Tod Browning’s Freaks has given SLASH its soul. Emotions abound in a carnival sideshow when, against all warnings, little person Hans weds the beautiful Cleopatra. When she reveals her true nature at the wedding banquet, the “freaks” throw down the gauntlet. No other film tells a clearer and better story of the humanity of what society deems “monsters” and the monsters humans can be: a call to solidarity among the marginalized, a manual for revolt and civil disobedience. “Gooble gobble, one of us!”

Tod Browning
Browning, Tod (* 1880, † 1962) was the helmer of seminal movies like the classic 1931 Dracula starring Bela Lugosi, The Devil Doll and, of course, Freaks. After performing in carnivals and vaudeville circuits for more than a decade and working as an actor for D.W. Griffith and others, he transitioned to directing and screenwriting. Specializing in exotic, crook, bizarre, and mystery melodramas, he had his breakthrough in 1925 with The Unholy Three, a story about a sideshow ventriloquist, midget, and strongman teaming up to commit robberies. His sensibilities later fell out of style in a Hollywood that was increasingly looking for glamour. Miracles for Sale (1939) would become his final feature.
Language eOV
Cast Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Henry Victor, Daisy Earles
Writer Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon
Editing Basil Wrangell
Cinematography Merritt B. Gerstad

Screenings

Metro
Double Feature with 2551.01
Su,26.09.▸15:30