Freaks

by Aaron Fallon, , February 23, 2006

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These days most movies follow the same formula: thunderous explosions, weak dialogue, little plot intrigue, and horrendously unrealistic special effects. It’s a crying shame that consumers pay money for shoddy work with little appeal, and it’s a shame that we cannot blame the forefathers of cinema for these sins. Recently I became disenfranchised with modern movies, and discovered a little gem known as Freaks.
The plot is as simple as time: man with an inheritance meets a scheming woman, falls madly in love with her; she and her lover systematically poison this man in order to attain the money. The man’s friends learn of these actions and enact a horrendous revenge upon the woman and her lover, however there is a small twist: all of this takes place among a group of circus performers and sideshow freaks. The man, Hans, is a dwarf who is engaged to another dwarf named Frieda. Hans becomes enamored by the trapeze woman, who’s involved in a secret affair with the strong man. During her affair, she relentlessly flirts with Hans in front of his fiancée and turns him into an object of ridicule between her and her lover. Frieda, concerned for her fiancée’s feelings, begs the trapeze woman to leave Hans alone; he recently suffered a loss of a family member and was very fragile. In the course of the conversation,Frieda accidentally informs her of Hans receiving a fortune from the death.

You can guess the rest from there: Ms. Trapeze and the strong man come up with the idea of her marrying the dwarf so they can get their hands on his money. She does this, and begins to poison him. His friends and fellow carnival freaks begin to notice these dealings, and decide to do something about it. They create a revenge that someone as vain and evil as the trapeze woman’s actions would warrant: they make her a freak. The strong man gets killed by a gang of freaks: men with no legs, pinheads and a quadriplegic. The diminutive lovers are reunited at the end of the film and all are happy, except the trapeze woman, who now becomes “one of them”, a fate worse than death to those like her. This movie was probably more clever and entertaining than anything Hollywood has released in decades.

The best part of this movie is the fact that it took such a simplistic plot and added something that made people watch: Director Tod Browning made a conscious choice in putting in real “freaks”. This is taboo even by today’s standards; people are afraid to look at the reality of birth defects and genetic orders. We are raised to look and stare at something we do not see everyday, and he knew that. It’s genius because today we will marvel at the makeupthat people will put on to resemble their character, but if we were ever forced to see these people in reality we would think it was rude. Browning does this without making them look like freaks, he does this to show that these “freaks” are no different than any of us, that they have needs and wants just like any of us, and throughout the movie we see these things.
There is a pair of conjoined twins; one is married to a man that hates her conjoined sister who gets engaged to a man in the movie. That’s just plain funny! In one scene the man tells her brother in law that he and his wife have to come over to see them after they are married, the point of humor is this: they are attached, how is he going to take her to live with him?! The humor is astounding, but it does not objectify the people’s disabilities. It is just simply amazing.

The best feature is the documentary; it nearly outshines the movie. The commentators talk about how Tod Browning got the idea, and how he formulated it into the gem it became. They also discuss in-depth what happened to each of the actors after the film, all the way up until their deaths. You get insight on how the bearded lady was furious with the film; she thought it portrayed circus freaks in a bad light, but you also discover that she was a socialist. Or the conjoined twins in the film, they discuss how they were virtually slaves to their guardian until they became legally emancipated and took control over their own careers. Prince Radian: the man with no arms or legs, “The Human Torso”, he lived to be 63 years old with a wife and children. We also get a glimpse into the life of the lead actor who played Hans. He went on to be one of the “Lollipop Guild” members in the original Wizard of Oz. You see how they lived as human beings, and how these people succeeded in their own right; they give you a sense of closure that you never get from studios these days. You discover that it was more than a movie, it was about their “One for all and all for one” moral code, not just on the set but as carnival folk still carry with them today.
In a little over an hour you become very depressed about the state of cinema today. You realize that Hollywood has been ripping us off with processed crap for years. You realize that producers are becoming increasingly lazy, assuming that the public will only watch a movie if it’s three hours long with lots of booming explosions and CGI-created beings. Here is a director that took a simple plot and used people that are real and turned it into a cinematic masterpiece.

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