Sjöström's astonishing revenge tragedy ranks alongside
The Blue Angel as one of the cinema's most haunting studies of human
degredation. Lon Chaney gives one of his best performances as the
scientist who becomes a circus clown and re-enacts in the ring the
humiliation he received at the hands of his aristocratic patron.
Sjöström, meanwhile, exchanging low-key realism for
melodrama and fantasy, melds his characteristic subtlety of lighting
and framing with a macabre expressionism to supremely unsettling
effect. A real Hollywood art movie, and one of the great silent films.
