THE UNKNOWN / THE UNHOLY THREE | American Cinematheque

Aero Theatre

1328 Montana Avenue,
Santa Monica, CA 90403

Thu, May 19
7:30pm

Tod Browning Double Feature! Live musical accompaniment!

AMERICAN GOTHIC: A TOD BROWNING RETROSPECTIVE

THE UNKNOWN / THE UNHOLY THREE

Live music will accompany these two haunting silent films from early cinema pioneer Tod Browning.

THE UNKNOWN

1927, MGM Repertory, 63 min, USA, Dir: Tod Browning

Armless circus performer Lon Chaney falls for stunning, scantily clad bareback rider Joan Crawford (who, conveniently, is pathologically terrified of men's hands) in this typically haunting Tod Browning melodrama. Burt Lancaster once praised Chaney's performance in this film as the most emotionally compelling work ever committed to celluloid.

THE UNHOLY THREE

1925, MGM Repertory, 86 min, USA, Dir: Tod Browning

One of director Tod Browning's earliest evocations of death, perversity and deformity, this silent masterpiece follows a crime syndicate comprised of a dwarf, a strongman and a ventriloquist (as the latter, Lon Chaney dresses up as a woman in one of the many instances of transvestism in Browning’s ouevre).