by Liz Wiest, Contributor

For the penultimate day of their Unspeakable: The Films of Tod Browning series, Film at Lincoln Center presented a back-to-back screening of the titular director’s The Unholy Three followed by the infamous Freaks. Despite being released seven years apart from one another, the two stories paired together flawlessly for a night of intense melodramatic success. These two stories, brought into the world at dramatically different points in the acclaimed director’s life, represent a fascinating depiction of not only a stark shift in Browning’s creative perspective, but also his descent from praise into controversy.  His films have always conveyed the commonality of a pulsing urge of incommunicable frustration, though this double feature highlighted how this theme–whether rooted in his characters’ guilt, appearance or criminality–becomes increasingly ambiguous over the trajectory of his life as a filmmaker.

The first screening of The Unholy Three, a silent Pre-Code crime melodrama directed by Browning in 1925, was shown on 35mm film pulled from the Library of Congress and accompanied by a live score from unparalleled composer Donald Sosin. The making of this was a highlight achievement for the time of the Browning-Lon Chaney collaborations at M-G-M pictures, as it put Browning on the map as a seasoned filmmaker and deepened both his personal and professional relationship with iconic character actor. The story follows a group of circus con artists, led by Chaney as the brilliant Echo the Ventriloquist, whose schemes grow increasingly violent on their way to achieving exorbitant wealth. The Unholy Three explores the notion of appearance versus reality. The only thing authentic about Chaney’s character is his gift as a ventriloquist, a power he ultimately chooses by the end to weaponize for good instead of evil by saving the man he knows can give Rosie, the only woman he loves, a better life. As a longtime fan of Chaney’s Phantom of the Opera, I couldn’t help but pick up on the identical theme of a brilliant man on the outskirts of society developing a sense of morality through the love of a woman. A theme that truly no one knows how to do like Chaney.

The takeaway of The Unholy Three is all things considered an uplifting one, and its critical acclaim and box office success at the time speak to this. Despite being Pre-Code, it checks all the boxes of good prevailing, evil being punished, and even repentance and reconciliation on the part of Echo. While the trio of thieves attempt to create their own code of ethics among one another, they fail miserably. Tweedledee and Hercules brutally get what’s coming to them, and even though Echo is resigned back to his original life in the sideshow while he watches Rosie run off with Hector, it’s indicated to the audience that he has only become the better for it. Through his sadness there is a detectible joy, and the final shot of his character is identical to the one we are introduced to him in, but he carries himself in a vastly different way. With Chaney’s legacy of relying on intense physicality in his performances, this certainly cannot be considered an accident. The Unholy Three was also a far friendlier depiction of the vaudeville scene and the people who inhabit it; a world that is near and dear to Browning to his roots as an actor and circus performer.  In retrospect, the story told here appears as his attempt to test the waters before the creation of his film that shocked the world.

The legacy of Freaks is certainly a more complicated one. Browning spared no risk in his creative choices, and this was undoubtedly met with tangible consequence, though I believe it is of critical important to analyze why this was. At the time, he had hit his directorial peak with the success of Dracula and was likely riding a no-bars-held high in terms of his relationship to the studios graciously producing his work. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that Browning came up in the world of the circus and spent the majority of his life collaborating with and learning from those whom society had abandoned. His decision to cast real persons with disabilities was a powerful and controversial one, and ultimately led to the film’s demise (but subsequent redemption in 1960s when critics rediscovered the true meaning of the film).

There has been decades worth of debate over whether Freaks was progressive or exploitive. It’s opening direct address to the audience leaves no doubt that it was a movie marketed to an able-bodied audience and was relying on them for its commercial success. Browning was a cis white able-bodied man, this we know. Though through his upbringing, and life-altering car accident later in life that took him from in front of the camera to behind it, it’s clear he feels some sort of comradery (albeit misplaced) with the differently abled. For the time, it seemed Browning had as good of intent as one could assume from a filmmaker of that time. Though the stories that prevail of how the unkindly the set was run towards everyone but it’s able-bodied actors is a legacy directly opposed to any good the film brought about.

That being said, it’s worth noting that Freaks flipped the script on what audiences came to expect of mainstream horror at the time. The characters with disabilities were the heroes of the story, not the monsters with abnormalities the way they had historically been portrayed. The able-bodied who sought to exploit them met their demise, though by becoming “one of them.” Browning’s thesis on this can be surmised in the film’s most iconic quote:

“We didn’t lie to you folks. We told you we had living, breathing monstrosities. You’ll laugh at them, shudder at them, and yet, for the accident of birth, you might even be as they are. They did not ask to be brought into the world, but into the world they came. Their code is a law onto themselves. Offend one, and you offend them all”!

Upon its release, the film was met with intense backlash for depicting differently abled people, and God forbid, humanizing them and depicting them going about their daily life. Though deserving of the criticism for how differently abled actors were treated on set, Freaks was Browning’s attempt to show bigots that even if they didn’t feel we were all the same, it didn’t change the objectively reality that we are. And by forcing groups of people to the outskirts of the world, it shouldn’t be surprising when laws, codes and a world of their own develop tangentially to the one we are socialized to believe is the undisputed “norm.” 

On my way out of the theatre following the final screening, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation between fellow theatregoers about the evening’s selections, decrying them as problematic and dated. While from a logistical filmmaking standpoint, where is a lot of validity in that point, I couldn’t help but feel this was a reductive way to view the legacy of The Unholy Three and Freaks. In our present-day world where marginalized groups, whether queer, trans, POC etc. are still forced to continue to fight for basic inclusion and inequality, I think we are reminded why Freaks, though far from perfect, was dramatically ahead of its time. Given that we live in a time where every diverse casting decision is lambasted for being the agenda of a ‘woke mob’ and accused of ‘shoving something down someone’s throat,’ I think it’s worth it to ask ourselves how different are our modern-day cis white audiences operating from a place of privilege that different from those of Browning’s times who tore apart Freaks on nothing but the basis of inclusion? A community born out of necessity, though not always harmonious, are subject to their own set of rules and code of ethics divorced from mainstream traditional norms. Though nearly almost a decade later, this is not something that can ever be understood by anyone who is not, as the film’s characters would say, “one of them.”

Ultimately, revisiting Tod Browning’s films in this modern era that is signaling the beginning of the end for the narrative feature film was a powerful choice on the part of FIL’s programming.  His macabre tendencies are what put him on the map and indefinitely alter the course of the horror genre, though it’s worth recalling that he died in obscurity once the glitz and glamour of the Hollywood Golden Age became the norm. This is not too dissimilar from the cultural reboot hell that plagues what is left of movie theatres. There was once a time where nuance, horror, love could work in harmony together to evoke emotional and lasting responses from audiences in a way that only now exists in episodic storytelling, and it was refreshing to relive a time where this was not the case.