Freaks (1932)

Freaks
Directed by Tod Browning
Written by Willis Goldbeck and Leon Gordon suggested by “Spurs”, a story by Tod Robins
1932/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
One of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Cleopatra: You dirty, slimy, freaks! Freaks, freaks, freaks! You fools! Make me one of you, will you?

On the one hand, this is certainly a powerful film.  On the other hand, it leaves me feeling kind of dirty.

The film is mostly taken up with slice of life views of the backstage goings on of a variety of circus sideshow “freaks”.  In addition, there are two plot lines.  In the first, a midget (Hans Eiler) becomes obsessed with a beautiful full-sized trapeze artist (Olga Baclanova).  She finds out he has a large inheritance and plots with her strong man boyfriend to marry him and murder him for his money.  The freaks exact a cruel revenge.

The second concerns the budding romance before Phrodo the clown (Wallace Ford) and Venus (Leila Hyams), who has been dumped by the aforementioned strong man.  Both these characters treat the “freaks” with kindness and humanity.

I may never sort out my reaction to this. The wedding banquet scene and the revenge sequence are powerful film making by any standard. On the one hand, the presentation of the deformed performers is unashamed and human. On the other hand, the whole thing is fundamentally exploitative and disturbing.  There is a perverse interest in how these people have sex which is pretty icky.  So much so that exploitation king Dwain
Esper re-released it for his target auditence.  Despite it all, this is probably essential.