Posthumous critical appraisal of Browning’s Career
Vivian Sobchack: “…Browning was sometimes called the Edgar Allan Poe of the cinema, much admired by the surrealists. Browning’s creations were, of course, a commercial cinema as well.
The films suggest a man of humor and compassion who had a dark and melancholic fascination with physical deformity and with the exotic and extraordinary, and yet who observed the oddities of life with unprejudiced objectivity and some delight. A Southerner who ran away with the circus; a former Vaudevillian and magician who traveled the world before he became a filmmaker, a [literary] aesthete and a beer drinker, above all a storyteller, Browning was both a poet and a pragmatist.”
Alfred Eaker: “Browning himself continues to be dismissed by less insightful critics, who evaluate the man and his work by contemporary entertainment standards or even accuse the great empathetic artist of exploitation. Browning’s standing still remains low. Neither he, nor any of his films have received a single honor by a major film recognition or preservation institution.”
Stuart Rosenthal: “Although the work of any auteur will repeatedly emphasize specific thoughts and ideas, Browning is so aggressive and unrelenting in his pursuit of certain themes that he appears to be neurotically fixated on them. He is inevitably attracted to situations of moral and sexual frustration…what sets Browning apart is his abnormal fascination with the deformed creatures who populate his films—a fascination that is not always entirely intellectual, and one in which he takes extreme delight.”
Filmography
Director
The Lucky Transfer (1915)
The Slave Girl (1915)
An Image of the Past (1915)
The Highbinders (1915)
The Story of a Story (1915)
The Spell of the Poppy (1915)
The Electric Alarm (1915)
The Living Death (1915)
The Burned Hand (1915)
The Woman from Warren’s (1915)
Little Marie (1915)
The Fatal Glass of Beer (1916)
Everybody’s Doing It (1916)
Puppets (1916)
Jim Bludso (1917)
A Love Sublime (1917)
Hands Up! (1917)
Peggy, the Will O’ the Wisp (1917)
The Jury of Fate (1917)
The Legion of Death (1918)
The Eyes of Mystery (1918)
Revenge (1918)
Which Woman? (1918)
The Deciding Kiss (1918)
The Brazen Beauty (1918)
Set Free (1918)
The Wicked Darling (1919)
The Exquisite Thief (1919)
The Unpainted Woman (1919)
The Petal on the Current (1919)
Bonnie Bonnie Lassie (1919)
The Virgin of Stamboul (1920)
Outside the Law (1920)
No Woman Knows (1921)
The Wise Kid (1922)
Man Under Cover (1922)
Under Two Flags (1922)
Drifting (1923)
The Day of Faith (1923)
White Tiger (1923)
The Dangerous Flirt (1924)
Silk Stocking Sal (1924)
The Unholy Three (1925)
The Mystic (1925)
Dollar Down (1925)
The Blackbird (1926)
The Road to Mandalay (1926)
The Show (1927)
The Unknown (1927)
London After Midnight (1927)
The Big City (1928)
West of Zanzibar (1928)
Where East Is East (1929)
The Thirteenth Chair (1929)
Outside the Law (1930)
Dracula (1931)
Iron Man (1931)
Freaks (1932)
Fast Workers (1933)
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
The Devil-Doll (1936)
Miracles for Sale (1939)
Actor
Intolerance (1916) – Crook (uncredited)
Dracula (1931) – Harbormaster (voice, uncredited, final role)
