Mad Love (1935)

Mad Love (1935) Karl Freund

MGM

B/W 1:07

Take four people, put them in four separate rooms, show them four different scenes from Mad Love and ask them to tell you what type of movie it is. Depending on which scenes they’re shown, their answers might be horror, suspense, romance, or melodrama. Mad Love is, in fact, none of these, although it certainly contains elements of each. It’s been labeled a horror film for nearly 80 years, but no matter how you classify it, you can’t forget it. 

For all its weirdness, Mad Love’s plot is fairly straightforward. The brilliant surgeon Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre, in his first American film) is obsessed with stage actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), a beautiful young woman who appreciates Gogol’s generous patronage of the theater, but otherwise finds him repulsive. Her heart belongs instead to her husband, concert pianist Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive, infamous for his role as Dr. Frankenstein in Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, who would only make four more films after Mad Love, dying in 1937).   

The train carrying Stephen home from his recent concert engagement derails, crushing his hands to the point that they must be amputated. With no one else to turn to, Yvonne pleads for Dr. Gogol to save her husband’s hands. Gogol, having recently witnessed the execution of a knife-throwing criminal (Edward Brophy), gets the idea that he can surgically attach the knife-thrower’s hands to Stephen’s arms, with the lovely Yvonne in his eternal debt, all the while thinking Gogol has repaired Stephen’s hands.

You can probably guess what happens from this point on, but maybe not the exact details. I think part of the reason the audiences in 1935 didn’t take to Mad Love had to do with a couple of things: 

For most American audiences - unless they’d seen Fritz Lang’s German film M or Alfred Hitchcock’s first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much - Lorre was a new and possibly shocking face (all the more so because he is bald in this film). The movie’s poster also warned “Suitable only for adults,” and with the Motion Picture Production Code just starting to get seriously enforced, audiences may not have known what they were getting into. 

The first third of the film is filled with oddities, starting when the last of the opening credits are shattered by a gloved hand. Then we journey through the Parisian 'Théâtre des Horreurs' and the strange people inhabiting it with Yvonne. (Plus it’s not every day you see a door pushed open by a human bone.) Combine this with the German Expressionism style and cinematography by Chester A. Lyons and a man named Gregg Toland (who a few years later famously photographed Citizen Kane) and you’ve got a very distinctive look. Although the German Expressionism feel never really leaves the film, the second act is more focused on the strange love relationship and Gogol’s obsession with Yvonne. And although we see the ending coming a long way off, it’s still strangely satisfying, if not unbelievable. 

Maybe horror is the correct category for this film after all. As brilliant as he is, Dr. Gogol is a dangerous man, at least to Yvonne. Although he’s strange to look at, Gogol is respected by his co-workers and the community at large. He’s established and trusted, so when he visits Yvonne in her dressing room, no one thinks much of it. Think about how many stalkers and predators have at least an air of respectability, even today. Yet the deeper we get into Gogol’s mind, the more we (and Yvonne) discover the depths of his dark and twisted obsession.   

In addition to Gregg Toland, the film also boasts a musical score by Dimitri Tiomkin and an adaptation of Maurice Renard’s The Hands of Orlac by Guy Endore, who wrote the famous horror novel The Werewolf of Paris. Mad Love also marks only the third credited role for Keye Luke (pictured above left), the Chinese-American actor who became famous as the “Number One Son” in the Charlie Chan films and years later starred as Master Po in the David Carradine TV show Kung Fu. 

4/5

Mad Love is current streaming at Warner Archive Instant.