Editing Tod Browning (section)

=== ''West of Zanzibar'' (1928) ===
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk | fontsize=100%|salign=center | quote= In ''West of Zanzibar'' Browning bares his carnival showman background not to betray himself as an aesthetic primitive, but to display his complete comprehension of the presentational mode, and of the film frame as proscenium...Browning remains neglected because most of the available English-language writing on his films focuses on the thematic singularities of his oeuvre, to the near-exclusion of any analysis of his aesthetic strategies. — Film critic Brian Darr in ''Senses of Cinema'' (July 2010)<ref>Darr, 2010: Composite quote from two paragraphs, same article.</ref>}}

[[File:West of Zanzibar (1928 film). M-G-M studios. Tod Browning director. Publicity still. Actor Lon Chaney.jpg<!-- Do NOT change the spelling of the image file! -->|thumb|''West of Zanzibar'' (1928). Publicity still. Lon Chaney as the magician Pharos.]]
[[File:West of Zanzibar (1928 film). M-G-M studios. Tod Browning, director. Publicity still. L to R, Lon Chaney, Mary Nolan.jpg<!-- Do NOT change the spelling of the image file! -->|thumb|''West of Zanzibar'' (1928). Publicity still. Lon Chaney as Dead Legs, Mary Nolan as Maizie.]]
In 1928, Browning and Lon Chaney embarked upon their penultimate collaboration, [[West of Zanzibar (1928 film)|West of Zanzibar]], based on [[Chester M. De Vonde]] play ''Kongo'' (1926).<ref>Harvey, 2019: "It surprised many back in 1928 that Chester de Vonde's drama Kongo, which ran for 135 performances on Broadway in 1926, was adapted for the screen at all. It was lurid stuff even for the wicked stage..."</ref>
scenario by [[Elliott J. Clawson]] and [[Waldemar Young]], provided Chaney with dual characterizations: the magician Pharos, and the later paraplegic Pharos who is nicknamed "Dead Legs."<ref>Barson, 2021: "Chaney played "Dead-Legs" Phroso, a paralyzed former magician who raises the daughter of his hated rival in a brothel but does not know she is actually his own, in West of Zanzibar (1928)."</ref> A variation of the "unknown parentage motif" Browning dramatizes a complex tale of "obsessive revenge" and "psychological horror."<ref>Darr, 2010: "...the most lucid arguments for his mastery of visual storytelling are his great silent films, especially those starring Lon Chaney. West of Zanzibar may be the greatest of these."<br />Herzogenrath, 2006 p. 11: "With Chaney, Browning made a number of very successful movies focusing on the themes of obsessive revenge and the sexually charged mutilation of the body..."<br />Rosenthal, 1975 p. 27: "...the unknown parentage motif..." And: p. 19. And p. 44: "West of Zanzibar reaches the peak of its psychological horror psychological horror,,,"</ref> Biographer Stuart Rosenthal made these observations on Chaney's portrayals:

{{blockquote | Dead Legs is one of the ugliest and most incorrigible of Browning's heroes...Chaney demonstrated great sensitivity to the feelings and drives of the outcasts Browning devised for him to play. Browning may well be the only filmmaker who saw Chaney as more than an attention-getting gimmick. While many of Chaney's films for other directors involve tales of retribution, only in the Browning vehicles is he endowed with substantial human complexity.<ref>Rosenthal, 1975. pp. 19, 39: Composite quote.</ref>}}
The story opens in Paris, where Pharos, a magician,<ref>Solomon, 2006 p. 51: "...the prototypical figure of the stage magician is found most clearly in ''West of Zanzibar'', 1928. It is worth knowing that before being crippled in an accident, the music-hall illusionist Phroso (Lon Chaney) resembles not so much the archetypal Mesphistophelian visage of [[Alexander Herrmann|Hermann the Great]], but rather – with his finely waxed mustache – looks much like Browning himself..."</ref> is cuckolded by his wife Anna ([[Jacqueline Gadsden]]) and her lover Crane ([[Lionel Barrymore]]). Pharos is crippled when Crane pushes him from a balcony, leaving him a paraplegic. Anna and Crane abscond to Africa. After a year, Phroso learns that Anna has returned. He finds his wife dead in a church, with an infant daughter beside her. He swears to avenge himself both on Crane and the child he assumes was sired by Crane. Unbeknownst to Phroso, the child is actually his.<ref>Rosenthal, 1975 pp. 30–31: "Dead Legs' wife is stolen and (he believes) impregnated by an adulterous lover..." And p. 57: "</ref> Rosenthal singles out this scene for special mention:

{{blockquote|The religious symbolism that turns up periodically in Browning's pictures serves two antagonistic ends. When Dead Legs discovers his dead wife and her child on the pulpit of the cathedral, the solemn surrounding lend a tone of fanatical irrevocability to his vow to make "Crane and his brat pay." At the same time, Chaney's difficult and painful movements upon his belly at the front of the church have the look of a savage parody of a religious supplicant whose faith has been rendered a mockery. God's justice having failed, Dead Legs is about to embark upon his mission of righteousness.<ref name=":11" />}}

Eighteen years hence, the crippled Pharos, now dubbed Dead Legs, operates an African trading outpost. He secretly preys upon Crane's ivory operations employing local tribes and using sideshow tricks and illusions to seize the goods.<ref>Darr, 2010: "...Chaney's magician character's manipulative schemes..."</ref> After years of anticipation, Dead Legs prepares to hatch his "macabre revenge": a sinister double murder. He summons Anna's daughter Maizie ([[Mary Nolan]]) from the sordid brothel and gin mill where he has left her to be raised. He also invites Crane to visit his outpost so as to expose the identity of the culprit stealing his ivory. Dead Legs has arranged to have Crane murdered, but not before informing him that he will invoke the local Death Code, which stipulates that "a man's demise be followed by the death of his wife or child."<ref>Rosenthal, 1975 pp. 27–28</ref> Crane mockingly disabuses Dead Legs of his gross misapprehension: Maizie is Dead Legs' daughter, not his, a child that Pharos conceived with Anna in Paris. Crane is killed before Dead Legs can absorb the significance of this news.

The climax of the film involves Dead Legs' struggle to save his own offspring from the customary death sentence that his own deadly scheme has set in motion. Dead Legs ultimately suffers the consequences of his "horribly misdirected revenge ploy."<ref name=":10">Diekmann and Knörer, 2006 p. 73</ref> The redemptive element with which Browning-Chaney endows Pharos/Dead Legs fate is noted by Rosenthal: "''West of Zanzibar'' reaches the peak of its psychological horror when Chaney discovers that the girl he is using as a pawn in his revenge scheme is his own daughter. Dead Legs undertook his mission of revenge with complete confidence in the righteousness of his cause. Now he is suddenly overwhelmed by the realization of his own guilt. That Barrymore as Crane committed the original transgression in no way diminishes that guilt."<ref name="Rosenthal, 1975 p. 44">Rosenthal, 1975 p. 44</ref>

{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk | fontsize=100%|salign=center | quote= A Browning hero would never feel a compulsion to symbolically relive a moment of humiliation. Instead of taking the philosophical route of subjugating himself to his frustration, Browning's Chaney opts for the primitive satisfaction of striking back, of converting his emotional upheaval into a source of primal strength. The viewer, empathizing with the protagonist, is shocked at the realization of his own potential for harnessing the power of his sense of outrage. This is one of the reasons why West of Zanzibar, and Chaney's other Browning films are so much more disturbing than the horror mysteries he made with other directors. — Stuart Rosenthal in ''Tod Browning: The Hollywood Professionals, Volume 4'' (1975)<ref>Rosenthal, 1975 p. 20</ref>}}

Dead Legs' physical deformity reduces him to crawling on the ground, and thus to the "state of an animal."<ref>Sobchack, 2006 p. 31: Browning's "fascination of physical deformity (generated, perhaps, by self-consciousness about his own badly scarred leg and limp, the result of a horrific automobile accident in 1915.)..."<br />Rosenthal, 1975 pp. 9–10: "The typical Browning protagonist is a man who has been reduced to a state of an animal. In almost every instance he displays a physical deformity that reflects the mental mutilation he has suffered at some element of callous society." And p. 31: "The incident that prompts the regression [to an animal state] and search for vengeance is, in almost every case, sexual in nature."</ref> Browning's camera placement accentuates his snake-like "slithering" and establishes "his animal transformation by suddenly changing the visual frame of reference to one that puts the viewer on the same level as the beast on the screen, thereby making him vulnerable to it, accomplished by tilting the camera up at floor level in front of the moving subject [used to] accentuate Chaney's [Dead Legs] slithering movements in West of Zanzibar."<ref>Rosenthal, 1975 p. 48: See Photo caption "slithering"</ref> Film historians Stephanie Diekmann and Ekkehard Knörer state more generally "...the spectator in Browning's films can never remain a voyeur; or rather, he is never safe in his voyeuristic position..."<ref name=":9">Diekmann and Knörer, 2006 p. 74</ref>

Diekmann and Knörer also place ''West of Zanzibar'' in the within the realm of the [[Grand Guignol]] tradition:

{{blockquote | As far as plots are concerned, the proximity of Tod Browning's cinema to the theater of the Grand Guignol is evident...From the castrating mutilation of ''The Unholy Three'' (1925) to the sadistic cruelty and bestial brutality intermingled with the orientalising
''chinoiserie'' of ''Where East Is East'' (1929); from the horribly misdirected revenge ploy of ''West of Zanzibar'' (1928); to the no less horribly successful revenge plot of ''Freaks'' (1932); from the double-crossing gunplay of ''The Mystic'' to the erotically charged twists and turns of ''The Show'': on the level of plot alone, all these are close in spirit and explicitness to [[Andre de Lorde]]'s theatre of fear and horror.<ref name=":10" />}}

Despite being characterized as a "cess-pool" by the censorious [[Harrison's Reports]] motion picture trade journal, ''West of Zanzibar'' enjoyed popular success at the box office.<ref>Harvey, 2009: "...Harrison's Report, a self-described advocate for independent exhibitors, remembered Kongo and asked in a front-page editorial, "How any normal person could have thought this horrible syphilitic play could have made an entertaining picture?" The film fueled the crusades of the censorship-minded, who used it as blatant evidence of Hollywood's 'cesspools'", but "''West of Zanzibar'' did quite well at the box office..."<br />Wood, 2006 TCM: "''West of Zanzibar'' was first screened in Los Angeles in November 1928. Its official opening was December 28, 1928 at New York's Capitol Theatre (the palace where MGM premiered its major productions). The response was overwhelming. It earned an unbelievable $88,869 in its first week at the Capitol. Motion Picture News wrote, "If you do not have a S.R.O. (Standing Room Only) sign in your theater... you had better order one immediately before playing this picture."</ref>