cinema history class: mad love

Session: Beastly Black and White, Week 2
Movie 2: Mad Love (1935)
Directed by Karl Freund
As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
An brilliant but obsessed doctor agrees to repair the hands of the husband of the woman he loves. But such devotion has a price. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:
In this adaptation of the 1920 French novel, The Hands of Orlac, Peter Lorre proves himself as one of the great silver screen's great madmen. His nervous manner made him constantly seem like he was just one twitch away from a violent eruption.

One of the sequences I found most interesting was one particular bit of misdirection. After Gogol transplants the hands from the beheaded criminal, we see the criminal explaining it to Orlac. I, watching the film, was thinking "hey...wait a minute...he'd dead!" But then I rationalized it by figuring that maybe Gogol was just so good he could reattach a head and bring the victim back to life. That kind of confusion kept me into the film.

It's kind of interesting to watch an old movie that had such an effect on things that came later but that I saw earlier. Every time Orlac threw a knife, I was thinking Frankenhooker, and somehow the plot kept reminding me of a specific episode of M*A*S*H.

In retrospect, maybe I should have given this a higher rating...

Ratings:
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.96 -9.7
Sean 4 out of 4