Mad Love [Blu-ray]

Director: Karl Freund Karl Freund

Overview

In his first American film, Peter Lorre portrays egg-bald Dr. Gogol, a brilliant and highly respected surgeon consumed by a Mad Love. The bald-pated Gogol would give up everything he has in life for the love of Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), star of the Parisian Horror Theatre. But Yvonne is deeply in love with her husband, concert pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive). When Orlac loses his hands in a train accident, Yvonne pleads with Gogol to save her husband. Perversely, he does so by grafting the hands of a recently executed murderer onto Orlac. Not only is Orlac unable to resume his musical career, but he has suddenly developed a peculiar talent for throwing knives; he also has a bad habit of attempting to win arguments by throttling his opponents. Gleefully exploiting his patient's torment, Gogol disguises himself as the executed killer and tries to convince Orlac that he, Orlac, was responsible for a recent murder. In a effort to prove her husband's innocence, Yvonne goes to Gogol's home and switches places with a lifesize replica of herself that the obsessive Gogol keeps in his living room. Only the last-minute intervention of Orlac saves Yvonne from being strangled by the crazed Gogol. The first of several film versions of Maurice Renard's The Hands of Orlac, Mad Love was directed by cinematographer Karl Freund. Its deployment of certain visual elements that would later (consciously or otherwise) be adopted by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane brought Mad Love a surfeit of latter-day attention when Pauline Kael annotated the resemblances in her 1971 New Yorker article on Kane (Ms. Kael's assessment of Mad Love as a "dismal, static horror film" is both unfair and untrue).

Product Details

Release Date:	10/19/2021
UPC:	0883929782369
Original Release:	1935
Source:	Warner Archives
Language:	English
Sales rank:	17,487

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Peter Lorre	Doctor Gogol
Colin Clive	Stephen Orlac
Frances Drake	Yvonne Orlac
Ted Healy	Reagan
Edward Brophy	Rollo,Rollo
Sara Haden	Marie
Henry Kolker	Prefect Rosset
May Beatty	Francoise
Keye Luke	Dr. Wong
Isabel Jewell	Marianne
Rollo Lloyd	Varsac
Clarence Wilson	Piano Creditor,Actor
Sam Ash	Detective Arresting Stephen
Ian Wolfe	Henry Orlac
Sarah Padden	Mother of Lame Girl
Billy Gilbert	Autograph Seeker on Train
Charles Trowbridge	Dr. Marbeau
Frank Darien	Lavin
Carl Stockdale	'The Notary'
Robert Emmett Keane	Raoul
Harold Huber	Thief
Hooper Atchley	Train Conductor
Cora Sue Collins	Gogol's Lame Child Patient
Dimitri Tiomkin	Composer

Technical Credits

Guy Endore

P.J. Wolfson

John Balderston

John W. Considine Jr.	Producer
Karl Freund	Director
Guy Endore	Screenwriter
P.J. Wolfson	Screenwriter
John Balderston	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Produced at the height of Hollywood's 1930s horror obsession, Mad Love (1935) was one of the first psychological horror films, as well as the first American film for German actor Peter Lorre, who accepted the lead after Claude Rains rejected it. Although Lorre shaved his head for the role, the actor did not break from typecasting in his portrayal of a surgeon who enjoys viewing guillotine executions and is becoming mentally unglued over his fixation on a Grand Guignol actress named Orlac (Frances Drake). In the 1970s, film critic Pauline Kael attributed much of Toland's later brilliance in Citizen Kane (1941) to the influence of his earlier work on Mad Love. Oddly, Freund never directed again, though he served as cinematographer on many classic films, not the least of which were The Good Earth (1937) and Key Largo (1948).

All Movie Guide - Karl Williams