The Unknown (Tod Browning, US, 1927)

A circus performer has his arms amputated to satisfy his lover’s strange desires in Tod Browning’s shocking tale of madness and love, one of Lon Chaney’s greatest performances and still one of the strangest films that Hollywood has ever produced. On the run from the police, a disabled crook takes refuge in the circus and becomes a knife thrower, and soon falls for the charms of a scantily clad carnival girl (Joan Crawford, in an early role), who cannot stand the touch of men. A novel solution is soon discovered, but desire and love, it seems, are fickle creatures. Embraced by the Surrealists as a testament to mad love and irrational desire, The Unknown was thought lost for years until Langlois discovered a 35mm print in the Cinémathèque. (Langlois later joked that one of the reasons it took so long to find was that they had too many prints in the collection labeled “Unknown.”) 

• Written by Waldemar Young from a story by Browning. Photographed by Merritt B. Gerstad. With Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry. (66 mins, Silent, B&W, 35mm@18fps, From Warner Bros.)