Mad Love

Summary

“You think I’m a cold man. Cold and brutal.”

Warner Archive had an incredible October this year (2021.) In the same month, they released Blu-rays of Mad Love, Children of the Damned, Ghost Ship/ Bedlam, and Night Shift. What an amazing lineup! Many of these have been requested often by fans in the forums, but I couldn’t resist starting off my viewing spree with Mad Love starring the great Peter Lorre. A sensational shocker from 1935, fans of the darker side of Columbia’s noir and Universal’s horror will find themselves right at home watching this MGM film. I watched it the other night and was extremely happy to have it in my collection.

In Paris, at Les Theatre des Horreurs – actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake) takes a letter from her obsessive fan – the talented surgeon Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre.) He had watched her performance for 49 evenings from a box he rented each evening. In the performance Yvonne plays the victim of a grisly torture via a rack and a hot poker. Before the show begins, Dr. Gogol stares at a wax statue of Yvonne with affection. After the show Yvonne listens on the radio to a performance by Stephen Orlack, the talented concert pianist whom she married a year earlier. With the performance done, she plans to go to London so that she may join her husband on a belated honeymoon. Dr. Gogol enters her dressing room to explain that he has become attached to watching her perform. She is grateful but also creeped out by his obsessive nature. At a cast party, they pressure Yvonne to give out a kiss and Gogol swoops in and grabs a kiss from her to her dismay. As he leaves the theater which will be closed for awhile he sees some workers about to cart off the lifelike wax figure of Yvonne to be melted down. Gogol offers 100 francs to drop off the wax statue of Yvonne at his house. At the train station in London, Yvonne is informed that her husband’s train has been in a wreck. His hands have been mangled. Yvonne has her injured husband sent to Paris to Dr. Gogol to operate in order to save his hands. In Paris, Gogol attends an execution of a murderer who had a talent for knife throwing. The murderer is hanged. Dr. Gogol comes back to his practice to find the Orlacs there. He moves to amputate the hands to save the life of the pianist, but he has an epiphany about a possible way to save his hands. He calls the morgue and has the body of the deceased brought to him. Unbeknownst to the Orlacs, he replaces the pianist’s hands with that of the murderer. He begins to treat the hands of the pianist after the surgery. These procedures are so expensive for the couple that they soon find themselves unable to pay their mounting expenses. Stephen also soon finds that his hands are not as capable at piano, but they seem to want to throw knives 

Mad Love is a noir tinged crime picture with elements of horror and mad doctor science fiction. The script itself is pretty far fetched in some of its ideas, but that honestly adds to the appeal of the picture. The film has elements of sly humor with some dark ideas underneath. It explores those dark notions with efficacy, always coasting on the precipice of things naughty enough to rile up the censors. With a slim running time of 68 minutes, the film flies by quickly. 

Peter Lorre is wonderful as the obsessive Dr. Gogol. Lorre was always effective when playing a creep, and this script gives him some real material to sink his teeth into. The script makes the character multidimensional by also allowing Gogol to be an effective healer of children, which gains some unlikely sympathy from the audience (considering he is clearly a madman.) Frances Drake is great as the object of his affection Yvonne, and Colin Clive is a good choice for the somewhat innocuous and plain concert pianist Stephen. This is surely Lorre’s picture, but the other actors work well with him on the film. 

Director Karl Freund had directed two legendary films prior to Mad Love for Universal – Dracula and The Mummy. He never directed another film after Mad Love which is a shame because his work here is very strong. The film is beautifully composed visually with help from Chester A. Lyons and Gregg Toland. Freund went back to his cinematographer roots after this film for the rest of his career. He worked on some major films including Key Largo starring Humphrey Bogart, but his film output was never as influential as during his short directorial career or in his early work as a cinematographer for Fritz Lang.

Overall – Mad Love is an extremely enjoyable and wild film from the darker side of cinema in the thirties. Fans of this type of picture will surely want to check this one out!

Video

Warner Bros. did a fantastic job on the transfer of Mad Love using an MPEG-4 AVC codec of a new 4K restoration in gorgeous Black and White. It looks wonderful. The film benefits from the extremely talented eyes of both the director Karl Freund and photographers Chester A. Lyons and Lyons and Colin Clive. Other reviewers have been quick to point out that the film shows off all the tricks of German expressionism that Freund had honed underneath director Fritz Lang, and I agree with that assessment. The film looks marvelous with great use of light and shadow. Fans of the film should be very pleased with the meticulous attention to detail that this transfer has been given. Clarity and fine detail are as good as could be possible from the source materials (which are in good shape considering their age.) This is essentially a perfect presentation of the film that will please any fan of the picture.

Audio

Warner Bros. have provided a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track that sounds pretty good. Since it is a mono mix, front speakers are used for the entire mix. Clarity is solid. The audio has been cleaned up well, but there is some notable hiss at times (most obviously at the beginning of the film.) This is not the most robust mix imaginable, but the score does benefit from the mix. Fans should be pleased.

Supplements:

Commentary by Dr. Steve Haberman – this is another fantastic commentary track from the reliably great Steve Haberman. Haberman always does his homework and he discusses the film, its actors, and the production in excellent detail.

Overall Scores:

Video – 5/5

Audio – 4/5

Supplements – 3/5

Overall – 4.5/5

Warner Archive’s release of Mad Love is another wonderful addition to their catalog of beautifully restored noir films. Fans of Universal’s horror and Columbia’s noir will have a great time watching Peter Lorre play the obsessive Doctor Gogol. The direction by Karl Freund is above reproach and the film is evocatively lensed. The audio commentary by Steve Haberman is great and the video transfer earns my highest marks. Highly recommended.