I completely agree with the detailed review of the user Milhouse on this site, so refer to it interested reader.
In the 1930s, the film failed. It is necessary to investigate further why the audience did not accept him, but since most of the actors were able to have a good career in Hollywood, apparently, it was not their unsightly appearance. It is difficult to disagree with the conclusion that this movie is immoral. The theme of inner beauty and deceptive appearance has been raised in art for centuries. Suffice it to name such works as the fairy tales “Ricky with a tuft” and “Beauty and the Beast”, “Portrait of Dorian Gray”, “Notre Dame de Paris” and “The Man Who Laughs”. In the movie "Freaks" this theme is shown in the ugliest way.
The horror is not only that at the end of the film “moral freaks have become physical, and physical freaks have become moral”, that is, as if mixed. The horror is that in the end, the director builds an insurmountable wall between physically “full” and physically “inferior” people. After all, the insidiousness of ordinary people of Cleopatra and Hercules is “usually”: if a person with a standard appearance were in the place of the dwarf Hans, just not very beautiful, weak and complex, the situation would be just as realistic, and the plan would be just as criminal. But it is unlikely that the friends of such a hypothetical Hans would have resorted to such savage revenge if they were normal people. It turns out that “freaks” are freaks in everything.
No wonder bearded woman Olga Roderick always regretted her participation in the filming and never again collaborated with Hollywood.
It is surprising that many people see a humanistic message in the film. A rather characteristic quotation: “Friendly mutual assistance and touching unity of all the freaks who spoke out against [...] Hercules and [...] Cleopatras, make it possible to understand that the actions of people and their spiritual qualities are in no way connected with the appearance and leisurely ideas of normality.” How can you call what the bastards did to their offenders “touching”? Isn’t that kind of vision ugly in itself?
The main goal of the director was to create as creepy a film as possible, not a film that arouses good feelings. This is evidenced by the offensive for freaks advertising slogans of the film, and the description of the cut scenes. D. Lynch’s film “The Elephant Man” has a completely different meaning and does not cause disgust either to the main character or to the people who sheltered him (it is also useful to read the real story of the elephant man).
I can also recommend the short film “Butterfly Circus” (2009), in which Nick Vujicic played the main role, and in which it is really shown that non-standard people are the same people, it is important for them to believe in themselves, and they can be no less complete than other “normal”.
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