Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre), perhaps the greatest surgeon in France, is obsessed with goth actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake). Her husband (Colin Clive), a concert pianist, has his hands mangled in a train wreck and although Yvonne is frightened by Gogol, goes to him to try and save her husband’s hands. That’s impossible, so Gogol transplants the hands of a murderous knife-thrower onto him.
The Hays office did its best to cut Mad Love off at the knees, but it could only manage to snip away the simple and straightforward. The subtext and metaphor are strong and give the film more power than most horror films of the time. Gogol is the repressed virgin, whose sexual need and self-doubt as a man drive him insane and to violence. Stephen Orlac had previously taken a route no more fulfilling, but far more social acceptable: he’s sexless, with any sexuality he has pumped into his hands and his art. When his hands are cut off, it is equivalent to castrating him, and with his outlet gone, he too slips into insanity, picking up phallic knives and sticking them wherever he can. Yvonne’s sexuality is all fake, a performance. She writhes on stage when the hot irons caress her skin, a sexual goddess, which fades away when she changes to street cloths. There’s plenty to play with in all that if you are of a mind to do so.
This first sound version (of at least 4 adaptations) of the far better titled novel, The Hands of Orlac, smartly switches the focus from Orlac to Dr. Gogol. The part was beefed up when Lorre was cast, hot off his German classic M and recently immigrated to escape the Nazis. And it’s Lorre who powers the film. He’s more impressive here than in M—a great actor who knew how to express insanity and abnormality sympathetically. I found myself rooting for him. But then he has the best character. Yvonne abuses his interest in her to get him to work on Stephen in his home, something he wouldn’t normally do. Stephen Orlac’s mix of weakness and drama creates a personality that is impossible to like, and Colin Clive is an actor prone to turn it up to twelve. His kind of histrionics works only when under control of a very peculiar kind of artist, such as James Whale. Karl Freund was not that kind of director. His genius lay in the look of film. He was the cinematographer on Metropolis, and while he could have easily functioned with a 3rd rate cinematographer, he instead had Gregg Toland working for him here, who would later shoot Wuthering Heights and Citizen Kane. It seems almost silly to point out that Mad Love looks incredible. Freund digs into his German expressionistic roots, giving us arches and strange angles and shadows that seem set to reach out and pull the lost humans into oblivion.
The conventional ending, which feels both hurried and tacked on, as well as Clive, and a reporter that is meant as comic relief but never quite makes it, drags Mad Love down, but there’s enough here to put it on a short list for any fan of classic horror.