The Cinematheque

“Pound for pound, one of the most powerful films I had ever seen. It still is … A masterpiece by the master.”

Robert Eggers (Nosferatu, The Lighthouse)

Following his brilliant DIY feature debut Eraserhead, David Lynch fit his eccentricities into the vitrine of a studio drama for this beautifully imagined portrait of Joseph​“John” Merrick. In London’s 19th-century East End, freak shows are being shamed out of existence by Victorian reformers, a development to the advantage of the medically curious Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), who bargains for the right to study Merrick and his bodily abnormalities. (Treves’s writings inform some of the icily mannered script.) Producer Mel Brooks, who kept his name out of the credits lest audiences expect a comedy, protected the film from studio cuts and surrounded Lynch with master collaborators: cinematographer Freddie Francis (The Innocents), editor Anne V. Coates (Lawrence of Arabia), and, as Merrick, actor John Hurt. Lynch’s surefooted, eight-time Oscar-nominated film is a carefully crafted study of human dignity in the face of industrialized cruelty.