Out Of Context Cinema: Mad Love

MAD LOVE (1935)

Every time I mention this film to someone, they think I am talking about the terrible Drew Barrymore film of the same name. And it just isn't fair. It isn't fair that so many people can instantly bring back the image of her and Chris O'Donnell banally cavorting together, while almost nobody knows about the film that made Peter Lorre a star in the U.S.

Lorre plays the mad genius Dr. Gogol. He spends every night in the box seat at the Grand Guignol theatre, and is more than a little erotically moved by the torture porn he witnesses. But then his favorite actress (Frances Drake - the actress, not the explorer) decides to leave the theatre and go on tour with her pianist husband, Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive, who himself played a mad doctor in Frankenstein). Gogol begs her not to go, which gives our actress heroine the total creeps. But when Orlac loses his hands in a terrible train wreck, she has to turn to the not-so-good doctor to save him.

Gogol performs miracle transplant surgery, but in the process he sews on the hands of an executed murderer. Now the pianist can’t play, but he sure knows how to throw a knife! Or is it all in his mind, being manipulated by the crazed Dr. Gogol - the same doctor who keeps a wax statue of his wife in his bedroom.

This is great classic atmospheric horror with all the macabre wit and charm of the best of the era. German transplant Karl Freund (cinematographer on Metropolis, and director of The Mummy) jumped ship to MGM for Mad Love, which was adapted from Robert Wiene's German version. And Peter Lorre? German. Well, Austrian, but he became a star and emigrated from Germany. You get the picture.

The movie is high melodrama, filled with knife throwing, chopped off heads, sado-masochism, and most of all, obsessive love. Thus the title, which shows that this film differs from other versions because it isn't really about the hands-of-a-killer mystery plot, but about sad, obsessive, unrequited love, and how it can drive a man completely mad. In a funny way, this is the role Lorre was born to play.

Unfortunately the film was a box office flop, but it did kick start the actor's career, and has grown over the years to be a cult classic. Earlier this year it finally hit DVD in the "Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection".

The scene above is one of my favorites, but the shocking finale is really the centerpiece of the whole film and not to be missed. However, I didn't want ruin the ending. If you really can't wait, you can catch it on YouTube. "Galatea! I am Pygmalion! You were wax, but you came to life in my arms!"

Comments

[woid]

I first heard of Mad Love in the 70s, in Pauline Kael's book-length essay about the making of Citizen Kane, "Raising Kane," in the New Yorker (later published as The Citizen Kane Book). Kael makes a case for Mad Love as a major influence on Kane -- particularly Orson Welles' look as the old, bald Kane, along with the general look of the cinematography, which, once you see it, is clearly coming out of German Expressionist cinema... thanks to Karl Freund.

Freund's later claim to fame: he was hired by Desi Arnaz(!!!) when I Love Lucy was in development for TV -- where he invented the 3-camera method of filming sitcoms!

I finally saw Mad Love on TCM in recent years. It's a blast. Set your Tivo, or Shmeevo, as the case may be.

[Dave the Spazz]

As great as Mad Love is, I've always had trouble with the irritating presence of unfunny former Three Stooges leader Ted Healy. The mood of the film stops dead in its tracks when MGM brings Healy in to do his crappy wise-guy reporter schtick which Lee Tracy had already made into an art form in so many Warner Brothers thrillers of the early thirties. Healy was truly one of the most obnoxious characters on and off camera--he made life a living hell for Moe, Larry, Curly and Shemp and he was eventually beaten to death in the parking lot of the Brown Derby by future James Bond producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli. Healy was out drunkenly celebrating the birth of his son and I guess Cubby figured enough was enough. Cubby was never charged and the only witness to the event was the forgotten stuttering vaudeville comedian Joe Frisco. You can catch Frisco's act in The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) where he plays forgotten stuttering vaudeville comedian Herbie Temple.

Mad Love is also studded with the top flight character actors of the day: Ed Brophy, Keye Luke and the always funny Billy Gilbert who was the inspiration for the Homer Simpson exclamation of "D'oh!" (Ask Matt Groening--he'll tell you.)

Karl Freund, one of the few complete geniuses in the history of motion pictures, not only worked with the legendary F.W. Murnau, but was hired by Desi Arnaz years later to supervise the filming of I Love Lucy. Freund pioneered the three camera set-up, making Lucy the first TV show to be shot on 35mm film, thus making it good enough looking for re-runs.

Can't forget cinematographer Gregg Toland who just five years later taught Orson Welles everything he knew about deep focus photography when he shot Citizen Kane.

Clocking in at a breezy 68 minutes, Mad Love is one of the creepiest and most haunting movies on unrequited love and obsession ever made. Run out and rent it now!

[The Actually Does]

The story of my life.

[Listener Kliph]

Did you know that Karl Freund also invented the three camera technique for I Love ... ah, forget it.

I love Mad Love and I love Peter Lorre!

[Goyim in the AM]

Peter Lorre? Austrian.

[woid]

Peter Lorre? Born in Rózsahegy, Austria-Hungary [now Ruzomberok, Slovakia].

Studied in Vienna, came to fame in Berlin.

[Travers Scott]

Just saw this last night in LA on a double-bill with Lorre's other hand-amputation movie, The Beast With Five Fingers. Beast was fun but Mad Love stole the show: tight, atmospheric, funny, and dripping with tension and perversity. Fantastic.