During his film career Tod Browning portrayed disabled people with sympathy. His trusted star, in effect his alter ego, Lon Chaney, was the master of this art, specialising in disabilities, amputations and borderline conditions. Chaney simulated this to the extent of complete identification, and when he died in 1931, Browning knew that nobody could replace him. Thus, he went on with “real freaks”.
Until then, Browning’s films, even routine assignments, had been commercially successful. Freaks became a financial failure and a fatal turning-point. Portraying the strong and beautiful as cruel and terrible and the malformed and disabled as kind and loving, Browning created a surreal mirror image of society. Browning portrayed his cast free of prejudice and condescension. The unusual circle of circus colleagues expands our definition of humanity, including the undefined territory of gender. It is full of astounding scenes: little Hans in love with a big blonde beauty; strange dialogues between a stuttering man and Siamese twins; a Biblical scene of a bearded lady giving birth – all this in an MGM movie!
Is Freaks a horror film? It is beyond genre, in the intersection between avantgarde, horror and documentary. In 1962, Freaks was triumphantly rereleased. Emile de Antonio admired its indomitable quality and recommended Freaks with far-reaching consequences to a photographer friend, Diane Arbus, who stated: “Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They have already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.” Since then, Freaks has become a part of “the canon of the counter-culture” according to Leslie Fiedler. It has also become a part of the flow of time as the human figure gets increasingly manipulated by cosmetic surgery.

Peter von Bagh, from a finished chapter on Freaks among his posthumous papers (2014). Edited in English by Antti Alanen