by Casey Mensing

Created on: September 10, 2009

"So for Alonzo there was an end to Hate called Death . . . and for Nanon, an end to Hate . . . called Love."

The quote above is the last title card of the silent masterpiece The Unknown. The film, released on June 4, 1927, starred Lon Chaney Sr. as Alonzo, Joan Crawford as Nanon, Norman Kerry as Malabar the Mighty, and John George as Cojo, was directed by Tod Browning, and based on a script written by Waldemar Young.

The Unknown is considered by most critics to be the best of the Tod Browning/ Lon Chaney collaborations, which also included Wicked Darling (1919), The Unholy Three (1925), and West of Zanzibar (1928). Lon Chaney plays Alonzo, an armless knife thrower in the Zanzi circus. Joan Crawford is Nanon Zanzi, the beautiful daughter of Antonio Zanzi (Nick De Ruiz), owner of the circus, and she is also Alonzo's assistant, and his greatest desire. Malabar the Mighty, the circus strongman, played by Norman Kerry is also wooing Nanon. Based on this premise the film sounds like the plot was stolen from a grocery store check out stand romance novel. But in the hands of Browning it becomes a brilliant macabre mystery story.

"The thing you have to most careful of in a mystery story, is not to let it verge on the comic. If something is too gruesome and too horrible, it goes beyond the limits of the average imagination and the audience just laughs." Tod Browning once said this about the essence of writing a mystery but with this story the viewer finds themselves walking on the edge of the straight razor, laughing until they see the blood. There is a sequence in this film that captures the genius of Browning the director and Chaney the actor. It becomes simple enough, with Alonzo and Nanon alone in Alonzo's wagon. They flirt with one another, Nanon with certain innocence, Alonzo like a man in love. Everything is going quite well for Alonzo until Zanzi finds them together and forces Nanon to leave and then gets into a fight with Alonzo. This is the moment in the movie that struck a chord with me. We had learned a earlier that Nanon is afraid of being touched by men, their hands hold nothing but terror for her, which is why she likes Alonzo. It's quite possible that Nanon's frigidity and fear of men's hands is a result of her father sexually abusing her. When Nanon's father finds she and Alonzo together his over reaction is one more of jealously than paternal concern, particularly when the two begin to fight after she leaves. Malabar the Mighty hears the commotion

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