Editing Tod Browning (section)

=== ''The Mystic'' (1925) ===
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk | fontsize=100%|salign=center | quote=Although fascinated by the grotesque, the deformed and the perverse, Browning (a former magician) was a debunker of the occult and the supernatural...Indeed, Browning is more interested in tricks and illusions than the supernatural. — Film historian [[Vivian Sobchack]] in ''The Films of Tod Browning'' (2006)<ref name="Sobchack, 2006 p. 31">Sobchack, 2006 p. 31</ref>}}

While Lon Chaney was making ''[[The Tower of Lies]]'' (1925) with director [[Victor Sjöström]] Browning wrote and directed an [[Aileen Pringle]] vehicle, ''[[The Mystic]]''.<ref>Eaker, 2016: "Because of the lack of usual Browning stars, ''The Mystic'' is an interesting, lesser-known film in the director's canon. Not only is it thematically related to his other films, but it also shows the idiosyncratic continuity of his taste in actresses..."</ref><ref>Sobchack, 2006 p. 24</ref> The picture has many of the elements typical of Browning oeuvre at MGM: Carnivals, Hungarian Gypsies and séances provide the exotic ''mise-en-scene'', while the melodramatic plot involves embezzlement and swindling. An American con man Michael Nash ([[Conway Tearle]]) develops a moral conscience after falling in love with Pringle's character, Zara, and is consistent with Browning's "themes of reformation and unpunished crimes." and the couple achieve a happy reckoning.<ref>Eaker, 2016: "Their relationship is reminiscent of the one between Priscilla Dean and Wheeler Oakman in Browning's Outside The Law (1920), as are the familiar Browning themes of reformation and unpunished crimes."</ref> Browning, a former sideshow performer, is quick to reveal to his movie audience the illusionist fakery that serves to extract a fortune from a gullible heiress, played by [[Gladys Hulette]].<ref>Eaker, 2016: "Of course, Zara's clairvoyant act is all illusion and Browning, as usual, lets his audience in on the trickery almost from the outset."</ref>

''[[Dollar Down]]'' (1925): Browning followed ''The Mystic'' with another "crook melodrama involving swindlers" for [[Truart Film Corporation|Truart productions]]. Based on a story by Jane Courthope and Ethyl Hill, ''Dollar Down'' stars [[Ruth Roland]] and [[Henry B. Walthall]].<ref name=":6">Sobchack, 2006 p. 32</ref><ref name=":7">Rosenthal, 1975 p. 63</ref>

Following these "more conventional" crime films, Browning and Chaney embarked on their final films of the late silent period, "the strangest collaboration between director and actor in cinema history; the premises of the films were outrageous."<ref>Robinson, 1968 p. 125: After a more conventional crime film, The Mystic (1925), Browning and Chaney embarked on a series of seven further films: The Blackbird (1926), The Road to Mandalay (1926) The Unknown (1927), London After Midnight (1927), The Big City (1928), West of Zanzibar (1928) and Where East Is East (1929). The premises of the films were outrageous."</ref><ref>Eaker, 2016: The Browning-Chaney collaborations "one of the most unsettling actor/director collaborations in the history of cinema....the strangest collaboration between director and actor in cinema history."</ref>