Brwning’s biographer Rosenthal offers analysis of the director’s style and themes:
“The adjective most often applied to Browning’s cinema is ‘obsessional’…he expresses his obsessional content in a manner that may properly be described as compulsive.
Certain shots, compositions and montages recur in Browning’s oeuvre leaving an impression of frank repetition.
For some critics (not me) he had limited range of themes and effects.
The overall scope of the entire Browning filmography is significantly broader than any single entry in it.
Thematic Categories:
Reality vs. Appearance, in which an individual’s social exterior (physical beauty, the trappings of authority or professional status) are exposed as facades masking cruel or criminal behavior.
The Unholy Three (1925), Where East Is East (1929)
Sexual Frustration, often involving a “sacred” father-child or other kinship relation in which “a man’s offspring represent extensions of his own sexuality” provoking a protective response to sexual insults from outsiders.
The Road to Mandalay (1926), West of Zanzibar (1928)
Conflict of Opposing Tendencies Within Individual, leading to a loss of identity when irreconcilable character traits in a person produces alter egos. Author Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explores this “intractable frustration.”
Outside the Law (1921), The Blackbird (1926)).
Inability to Assign Guilt, in which characters resort to violence or criminal acts in order to avenge injustice; guilt or blame often remain ambiguous.
The Unknown (1927), Freaks (1932)
Frustration
The factor that unifies all these thematic patterns is frustration:
“Frustration is Browning’s dominant theme.”
My Criticism:
This classification is using categories that are too broad and thus could be applied to any number of directors, both contemporaries of Browning’s and later ones.
