ARPAVAX:UNKNOWN:G:asa (09/21/82)
I believe FREAKS was made in the 1930s, but I could be off by a
decade or more. I first saw it in 1969 or 1970 at the Orson Welles
theater in Cambridge when I was doing alternative service at the
Fernald State School (a residence institution for the retarded) in
Waltham, Mass. It is an astonishing film, and I never fail to see it
when I get the chance. Browning's direction is a tour de force: not
only does he reveal the human qualities in his extraordinarily
grotesque actors, but he gives them a plot and a story as well (i.e.,
he treats them as ACTORS as well as HUMANS). What struck me most
about the retarded children I worked with was their capacity for
emotional response and interaction (including empathy and compassion
for others) independent of their intellectual handicap, and I was very
impressed by Browning's ability to capture this in a film that is a
STORY rather than simply a DOCUMENTARY.
The "message," of course, is that the REAL freaks are the
Strongman and the Trapeze Artist, who try to murder one of the freaks
for his money. This sounds very ham-handed in the abstract, but I
thought Browning did a fairly subtle job in making his point. And
while some of the scenes are played for fairly cheap laughs (i.e., the
siamese-twin sisters, joined at the waist, each of whom is married to
a different man), other scenes are most memorable (i.e., the finale in
the thunderstorm).
I strongly recommend this film, with the caveat that you should
expect to be repelled for the first twenty or thirty minutes until you
get synchronized with the film's world view. Remember, these are
people you're watching.
John Hevelin ucbvax!G:asahstrop (09/22/82)
Freaks was made in 1931. I saw it at Berkeley in the early 70's at a film festival on campus. I agree with everything that has been said about it. Regarding another inquiry, GWTW stands for Gone With The Wind, a low budget feature that has remained rather obscure. Harvey S. Trop mhuxt!hstrop