By
Ed Garea
Mad
Love (MGM, 1935) – Director: Karl Freund.
Writers: P.J. Wolfson, John L. Balderston (s/p); Guy Endore
(adaptation); Maurice Renard (novel, Les Mains
D’Orlac); Florence Crewe-Jones (translation and
adaptation); Leon Gordon, Gladys Von Ettinghausen
(additional dialogue, uncredited); Edgar Allan Woolf, Leon Wolfson
(contributing writers - uncredited). Stars: Peter Lorre, Frances
Drake, Colin Clive, Ted Healy, Sara Haden, Edward Brophy, Henry
Kolker, Keye Luke, May Beatty & Charles Trowbridge. B&W, 68
minutes.
“I,
a poor peasant, have conquered science! Why can't I conquer love?” –
Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre).
Mad Love was
Peter Lorre's American film debut and he was judged a hit by critics,
with The Hollywood Reporter noting that “Lorre
triumphs in a characterization that is sheer horror,” Time Magazine
calling him “perfectly cast,” and both Graham Greene and Charlie
Chaplin weighing in with raves as well, with Chaplin citing Lorre as
“the greatest living actor.”
Director Karl Freund
didn’t fare as well and Mad Love would be his
final directorial assignment. He would return to his prior career in
cinematography, where he was acknowledged as one of the best behind
the camera. With the passage of time, however, Freund’s work behind
the camera on Mad Love has become rightfully praised
for its mixture of German Expressionism with classic horror elements.
Also, like Freund’s other excursion into horror, The
Mummy (1932), Mad Love is not so much a
straightforward horror outing as it is a macabre love story.
Freund and scenarist
Guy Endore depart from both the source novel and previous cinematic
adaptations by relegating the tragedy of a gifted pianist given the
hands of a killer to a supporting role. The main focus would now be
on the surgeon who performed the operation, a new character named Dr.
Gogol, who in the hands of Lorre becomes a depraved megalomaniac one
or two steps from the edge of madness. The decision by Freund and
Endore to give the story more of a Freudian twist adds a new
dimension to the story.
At the film opens,
Dr. Gogol (Lorre) is a regular visitor to the Parisian Horror Theatre
(a take on the Grand Guginol), where he occupies his own box. The
reason for his frequent visits is his obsession with the theater’s
star, actress Yvonne Orlac (Drake). For her part, Yvonne is a normal
young woman madly in love with her concert pianist husband, Stephen
(Clive). She listens backstage on the radio to his London concert,
waiting to hear his signal to her, a cough. They share a secret of
which Dr. Gogol is unaware. This will be her final performance at the
theater, for she is to meet her husband, who will traveling to France
once his concert ends.
Dr. Gogol has a
bouquet of flowers delivered to her dressing room and comes to
introduce himself, during the course of which she tells him of her
plans. He comes on a little too strong in return and she is repelled.
The theater manager invited Gogol to a cast farewell for Yvonne,
where he comes on even stronger, grabbing her for a lengthy kiss
against her will. His obsession is such that, as he leaves the
theater, he bribes a couple of stagehands to deliver a life-size wax
model of Yvonne used as a lobby display to his house instead of the
waxworks to be melted down.
As the train
carrying Stephen is speeding to Paris, in a bit of irony the pianist
meets Rollo (Brophy), a circus knife thrower who killed his wife and
knifed his father over the loss of a woman. Rollo, being escorted to
his execution on the guillotine, shows off his skills for Stephen.
At the station,
where Yvonne is waiting, Stephen’s train is late. It is then
announced that there has been an accident. Stephen has survived, but
his hands are crushed. The doctors at the local hospital are advising
amputation. Yvonne pleads otherwise; Stephen makes his living with
his hands and an operation such as that would kill his spirit.
“Doctor, you don't understand,” she says. “His hands are his
life!” What she is implying is that, for Stephen, amputation is
tantamount to castration.
Yvonne, desperate,
has Stephen brought to Dr. Gogol’s surgery. The doctor, like any
self-respecting mad-scientist, has just returned from the execution
of Rollo. He examines Stephen and says there’s nothing he can do.
But Yvonne plays on his emotions, begging him to find a way. After
consulting with his assistant, Dr. Wong (Luke), Gogol decides upon a
radical solution. He replaces Stephen’s hands with those of the
dead Rollo.
Unaware of the
details of the operation, Stephen discovers he can no longer play the
piano, but he has become accomplished at throwing knives. Gogol,
meanwhile, returns home every night to serenade the wax statue of
Yvonne on his organ, As Gogol’s obsession increases, Stephen’s
virility decreases. Having lost his ability to tickle the ivories, he
becomes morose, uninterested in life around him. The bills pile up
and he visits his stepfather, Henry Orlac (Wolfe) for financial
relief. But none is forthcoming; Henry is still bitter that his son
forsook the family jewelry business in favor of the concert
hall. Their encounter ends with Stephen losing his temper and
throwing a knife at his father, which misses.
Later the newspapers
report that Stephen's stepfather has been found murdered. Gogol, who
killed Henry himself, sends for Stephen in an anonymous note. Their
meeting is one of the great moments of horror films. Gogol appears to
Stephen in disguise. His arms, hands and fingers are covered in
metal, while his head appears attached to his body by an elaborate
use of a brace that pushes his chin up. He hides his bald head with a
hat and his eyes with dark sunglasses, telling the frightened Stephen
that he is Rollo. Speaking with an eerie whisper “Rollo” explains
that Stephen's hands were his and that Stephen used them to murder
Henry. He also says that Gogol transplanted his (Rollo's) head on to
a new body, showing him the neck brace as proof of the operation.
Stephen returns home
and tells Yvonne that his hands are those of Rollo and that he must
turn himself in to the police. Yvonne. panic-stricken, goes to
Gogol's home, where she finds him completely mad. The mad Gogol
believes that Yvonne is the statue come to life. She is Galatea to
his Pygmalion. He embraces her and then begins to strangle her.
Stephen and the police arrive. Stephen produces a knife and throws it
at Gogol, hitting him in the back. Gogol dies as Stephen and Yvonne
embrace.
Afterwords
Mad Love is
a wonderfully perverse film. How it ever got past the censors is a
marvel in itself, but by sublimating the sexual theme to the plot
instead of focusing on it, Freund and Endore were able were able to
tell there story the way they wanted to, with little interference
from the blue noses.
Right from the
opening scenes we know we’re in for something different, as Gogol
speaks to the weak statue of Yvonne before going in to watch the
play. As he sits through the performance, as Yvonne's flesh is
“seared” by the hot irons of her “torturer.” Gogol is clearly
enraptured with sexual ecstasy. During their dressing room meeting,
her cavalier treatment of him should discourage just about any
admirer. But it affects Gogol in the opposite way; his lust is
spurred to the point where he later buys the statue of her for
display in his bedroom. He’s not about to take “no” for an
answer.
One theme of the
film is sexual repression through sublimation, which occurs via
substitution. The replacement of Stephen’s hands leads to the loss
of his vitality. In an odd twist of irony, knives were the natural
substitute for Rollo’s virility and they come to perform the same
function for Stephen, the knife representing the penis. And as with
Rollo, Orlac’s turn to violence is a subconscious response to his
emasculation. It isn’t until Orlac has given in to his feelings of
despair and anger that his hands seemingly take on a life of their
own, repeating the cycle that led Rollo to the executioner.
There is also the
relationship between Gogol and the statue of Yvonne. As it goes on it
becomes more intense and will become one of the things that pushes
him over the edge. In the finale, when Gogol returns home to discover
that the statue “has come to life,” he begins to hear voices in
his head telling him that “each man kills the thing he loves.”
Acting on those voices he grabs Yvonne and begins to strangle her
with her hair.
The traditional
ending of a husband saves wife from the clutches of madman takes on a
new, macabre turn in that Orlac is able to do so because of the
replacement of his hands by Gogol. Despite the heroics, though,
Orlac is still in despair over his reduced circumstances,
and there's probably very little happiness in the future for either
Orlac. The theme of “mad love” is now transferred from Gogol to
Yvonne Orlac.
As to the
performances, this is Lorre’s film and he makes the most of it.
With his bald head, his face becomes akin to that of a petulant, and
dangerous, baby. Add to that his intentions and his eerie speech
pattern and Lorre becomes one of the great villains of horror films.
As the sexually depraved megalomaniacal Gogol, Lorre balances being
soft-spoken and rational in public, with his cackling madman in
private without going over the line into sheer hamminess. His
strength is his restraint, which gives him even more of a terrifying
edge.
Colin Clive and
Frances Drake also give memorable performances. For once Clive is
able to tone down his usual hysteric histrionics and makes Stephen
Orlac into a much more sympathetic figure. And Edward Brophy is
wonderful in his all too brief appearance as the doomed murderer
Rollo. The only glitch is the casting of Ted Healy (former frontman
for the Three Stooges) as the comic relief, Reagan, an American
reporter covering Rollo’s execution and who later becomes involved
in the Gogol case. It seems as though the filmmakers are trying to
cast him as another Lee Tracy (as in Doctor X), but Healy
lacks both the necessary time to develop his character and the
presence of Tracy. Most of his screen time is devoted to his scenes
with Françoise (May Beatty), Gogol's drunken housekeeper, who
carries a Gogol’s pet cockatoo on her shoulder. Sara Haden, as
Yvonne's maid and Keye Luke, playing Doctor Gogol's assistant, are
fine in their brief roles.
Karl Freund’s
direction is superb, mixing Expressionistic elements of sharp angles,
chiaroscuro lighting and depth of shadow. Combined with the MGM
glossy set design it creates the illusion of a strange netherworld.
Greg Toland handled the cinematography, though he often clashed with
former cinematographer Freund, who had ideas of his own on how to
shoot the film.
Trivia
Based on a popular
novel, Les Mains d'Orlac by Maurice Renard, Mad Love
has enjoyed numerous screen adaptations: Orlacs Hande, a
1924 silent version starring Conrad Veidt, The Hands of
Orlac (1960) with Mel Ferrer, and Hands of a
Stranger (1962), a low-budget version from Allied
Artists featuring Sally Kellerman in an early screen appearance.
Pre-production
publicity announced Claude Rains as Gogol and Virginia Bruce as
Yvonne. Lorre originally came to Hollywood to star in Crime
and Punishment, but when the production was delayed, MGM signed
him as the Gogol.
The Hays Office was
most concerned with against showing any scenes depicting the train
wreck, its gruesome aftermath, or acts of torture. While they urged
the filmmakers to refrain from Gogol fondling the wax replica of
Yvonne they missed the entire subplot.
Critic Pauline Kael
wrote a controversial essay titled “Raising Kane,” for The
New Yorker. In the essay she accused director Orson Welles of
copying the visual style of Mad Love for Citizen
Kane, noting such items that both Gogol and Kane are bald,
Gogol's house and Kane's “Xanadu” have marked similarities, and
that Gogol and Kane both have a pet cockatoo. She attributed this to
Gregg Toland, writing that he had “passed Freund's technique onto
Welles.” Peter Bogdanovich rebutted Kael's statements in Esquire,
although both critics took a dim view of Mad Love. Kael
described it as a “dismal static horror movie, while Bogdanovich
called it “one of the worst movies I've ever seen.” Though the
critics have been kinder to the movie since then (see the Rotten
Tomatoes website), both essays, from 1972, are required
reading for cinephiles.
Budgeted at
$403,000, Mad Love was not a hit at the box office,
with a small domestic gross of $170,000. Its foreign gross was
larger, at $194,000.
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