Evidence that movies at the beginning could be as bizarre as anything we get today, The Unknown stars Joan Crawford as Nanon, a circus performer caught between the affections of two men: Malabar (Norman Kerry), the circus’ grabby strongman, and Alonzo (Lon Chaney), an armless contortionist whose act involves throwing knives at Nanon with his feet. Nanon has a phobia of being touched by men (Crawford’s recoiling fear at Malabar’s advances suggest real trauma in her past), and so she grows closer to the older Alonzo as a protective, non-threatening father figure. But he has secrets – including a desire for Nanon that isn’t exactly platonic. Chaney, known as the “man with a thousand faces” for his makeup-heavy performances in the likes of The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, mostly works with his own face here, in an astonishing array of expressions so potent you almost don’t need the silent-film subtitles. (He also shows off by regularly smoking a cigarette with his feet.) Crawford, in one of her earliest roles, is mostly required to pose provocatively and play the victim, but she does get to flash her trademark, independent spirit in the confrontational climax. Overall, this is far weirder than I can describe without giving too much away; I’ll just say it also involves murder, extreme surgery, and malformed thumbs. All of that can likely be credited to director Tod Browning, who would go on to make the even more notorious circus film, Freaks, a few years later. The Unknown is missing that effort’s emphasis on humanity (of the two, The Unknown is actually more of an exploitation picture), but as a showcase for Chaney and a curiosity from Crawford’s career, it deserves a wide-eyed audience of its own.
