Aristocrats are eccentric people, though not totally unlike other human beings, and as a result have a fondness for people who are different or bizarre. This is a good reason to spend again a summer night in the Schloss in the company of a whole bizarre gypsy circus, a very strange circus that has as one of its attractions, the harmless armless Alonzo ( Herr Lon Chaney ). Alonzo will gradually become more sinister during the film and finally will rise up in arms when he fails to succeed with his evil intentions.<br /><br />In such a superb oeuvre, silent film fans can find or meet again a variety of freakish people with evil intentions ( the perfect equation ).<br /><br />In this circus nothing is as it seems to be: a man who throws the knives at a beautiful and complicated girl who can't' stand men's hands, a strongman and handsome guy with good intentions, a sarcastic midget, a mad doctor and even a tyrannical circus owner. They share unrequited loves, malicious intentions, strange and unique phobias, and suffer from amputations of body and soul.<br /><br />Summing up, "The Unknown", film directed by Herr Tod Browning during the silent year of 1927, is the quintessential circus silent film, a genre that this German count loves so much. It has a decadent atmosphere but it is the twisted second half of the oeuvre that gives to the film, if it is possible, more boldness, darkness and evil, not to mention that it is always a pleasure to check up again and again on this wonderful and terrible circus troupe, surely a collection of the most hideous, complicated and malicious people found in the whole silent world..<br /><br />And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must join such a strange and perverse circus troupe.<br /><br />Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/