Tod Browning directed The Unknown, a silent horror movie starring Lon Chaney as carnival knife thrower “Alonzo the Armless” and Joan Crawford as his love interest as carnival girl Nanon.
MGM originally sought to pair Swedish star Garbo with Chaney, “the man of a thousand faces,” the studio’s top box office draw in 1927, but the female lead went to MGM starlet Joan Crawford.
The film, originally titled “Alonzo the Armless,”carried the tagline: “A superb mystery thriller, unusual and startling even for a Chaney film. Lon as “The Unknown” eats, drinks, shoots a rifle and dresses with his feet. Don’t miss this startling spectacle!”
“Alonzo the Armless” is a circus freak who uses his feet to toss knives and fire a rifle at Nanon, the daughter of the circus’s owner. Alonzo has arms, but he keeps them tightly strapped to his torso. This secret is known only to his friend, Cojo the dwarf. Alonzo’s left hand has a double thumb, which would readily identify him as a criminal.
Nanon only feels comfortable around the armless Alonzo, because she doesn’t feel threatened by him. When she kisses him one day, he is given hope, but Cojo warns him that he cannot let it happen again–if she holds him too tightly, she might feel his arms.
Alonzo learns that Malabar and Nanon have been practicing a new act, where the strongman’s arms seem to be pulled in opposite directions by two horses running on hidden treadmills. During the first show, Alonzo stops one treadmill, hoping the horses will tear the strongman’s arms from his body.
On the end, trady occurs when Alonzo tries to save her from injury by pushing her out of the way. The horse knocks Alonzo down and stomps on his chest, killing him. The machine is turned off, and Malabar is saved from mutilation.
Browning reflected on an individual who suffers multiple amputations and the dramatic personal repercussions. He decided to describe this process with the spectacle of traumatic disfigurement, rather than plot.
Actor and collaborator Chaney developed his characterization of Alonzo: “I contrived to make myself look like an armless man, not simply to shock and horrify you but merely to bring to the screen a dramatic story of an armless man.”
Chaney collaborated with real-life armless double Paul Desmuke (sometimes credited as Peter Dismuki),who used his legs and feet to manipulate objects such as knives and cigarettes in frame with Chaney’s upper body and face.
In the original screenplay, Alonzo murders both the doctor and Cojo to eliminate them as witnesses before returning to claim Nanon, but these scenes never made it to the final print.
The Unknown is widely regarded as a masterpiece of the late silent film era and the most outstanding of the 10 Browning-Chaney collaborations, eight of them at MGM.
Browning’s rendering of Alonzo and the horrific self-mutilation he endures to win the love of Nanon is reminiscent of the theatre of the Grand Guignol.
Actor Burt Lancaster later said that Chaney’s portrayal in The Unknown featured “one of the most compelling and emotionally exhausting scenes I have ever seen an actor do.” (referring to the scene where Chaney realizes he has cut off his arms in vain.
The book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” states “Drawing a remarkable and haunting performance from Chaney and filling the plot with twists and unforgettable characters, Browning here creates a chilling masterpiece of psychological (and psychosexual) drama.”
Like other Chaney pictures directed by Browning, this one is define by a macabre atmosphere.
Based on a story by director Browning and a scenario Waldemar Young, this tale of sexual obsession involving physical and emotional disfigurement unfolds in a circus, a setting that comports with Browning’s penchant for “the lower forms of spectacle and theatrical performance.”
Browning, demonstrating penchant for “demystifying the spectacles of show culture” opens The Unknown with the exposure of a simple carnival illusion: The Gypsy knife-thrower “Alonzo the Armless” masquerades as a double amputee who expertly hurls his projectiles with his feet. Browning quickly disabuses moviegoers of his deformity, as Alonzo, a fully intact man, uses a corset to bind his arms during performances to appear as a freak. Alonzo’s faux disability has a more sinister and practical purpose: as a criminal on the run from the law, his “armless” condition places him above suspicion by authorities.
Alonzo’s only genuine abnormality is a congenital bifid thumb on his right hand. This minor deformity is a key element that leads Alonzo to submit to a surgical enormity.
The object of Alonzo’s secret affection—Nanon, his dare-devil partner— harbors neurotic phobia, an obsessive, hysterical revulsion to the embrace of a man’s arms. Her dysfunction (perhaps instilled by pathological father, ringmaster Zanzi (Nick De Ruiz) undermines any sexual intimacy with the virile Alonzo, his sexual prowess symbolized by his knife-throwing expertise and his double thumb.
A violent dispute with Zanzi leads Alonzo to strangle him to death. The only witness to the murder is Nanon, who discerns only a single feature of the assailant: a double thumb.
The logic of Alonzo’s dilemma serves as the rationale for Browning’s and Chaney’s most outrageous conceit: Alonzo, in order to make himself appealing to Nanon and eliminate the bifid thumb, has both his arms amputated by a back alley surgeon, an act of symbolic self-castration, satisfying Nanon’s need for a “sexless” man.
Browning’s male protagonists frequently exhibit the instinctual and impulsive behavior of animals, arising from physical abnormality. In “Dead Legs” in West of Zanzibar (1928), a man who communes with a chimpanzee, “Tiger Haynes” a wildlife trapper in Where East is East (1929) and Dan “The Black Bird” Tate in The Black Bird (1926).
The typical Browning protagonist is a man reduced to a state of an animal. He often displays a physical deformity that reflects the mental mutilation he has suffered at some element of callous society. Alonzo, in The Unknown, is among the most rabid and instinctual of Browning’s protagonists
Restoration
For years the film was considered lost, until a 35 mm print was located at the Cinémathèque Française in 1968.
In 1973, at lecture at George Eastman House, Cinémathèque Française director Henri Langlois said the delay in finding the print of The Unknown was because they had hundreds of film cans marked l’inconnu (French for “Unknown”) in their collection.
Several early scenes may be missing, but they do not affect the story continuity. The rediscovered film ran 49 minutes at a projection speed of 24fps.
In 2022, a new restoration by George Eastman House premiered at Pordenone Silent Film Fest; the running time was 66 minutes.
The existing shortened version was augmented with footage from a newly-discovered Czech nitrate print which contained all the scenes missing from the other print.
Restored shots/scenes include: the original opening scene of a boy watching the circus tent from a church tower and his father giving him a coin so he can pay his way into the circus; audience reactions during Alonzo’s show; the fight between Alonzo and Costra after the show; scene of an old fortune-teller warning Nanon that something terrible is going to happen.
This restoration of The Unknown made its homevideo debut in October 2023 as part of The Criterion Collection in a boxset that includes Freaks and The Mystic.
Cast
The Unknown (1927) Lobby Poster. Lon Chaney as “Alonzo the Armless” with “Cojo” (John George on palm of hand.)
Lon Chaney as Alonzo the Armless
Norman Kerry as Malabar the Mighty
Joan Crawford as Nanon Zanzi (Estrellita in the original script)
Nick De Ruiz as Antonio Zanzi (Nanon’s father)
John George as Cojo the dwarf
Frank Lanning as Costra
Polly Moran as Landlady (scenes deleted)
Bobbie Mack as Gypsy (scenes deleted)
Louise Emmons as Gypsy Woman (uncredited)
Julian Rivero as Man in Audience (uncredited)
Billy Seay as The Little Wolf (uncredited)
John St. Polis (John Sainpolis) as Surgeon (uncredited)
Italia and Venetia Frandi as undetermined
Tom Amandares as Gypsy
Paul Desmuke as Alonzo Body Double (uncredited)
Credits:
Directed by Tod Browning
Written by Joseph W. Farnham (titles)
Screenplay by Waldemar Young; Story by Browning
Produced by Irving G. Thalberg
Cinematography Merritt B. Gerstad
Edited by Harry Reynolds
Errol Taggart
Distributed by MGM
Release date: June 4, 1927
Running time 5517 feet (original release)
66 minutes (2022 reconstruction)
Budget $217,000
Box office $847,000
