Mad Love (1935)

Country of Origin: USA
Year of Production: 1935
Running Times: 68 mins
Length: 7 reels
Format: black and white     35mm
Ratio: 1.37:1
Sound: mono

CREDITS

PRODUCTION
Production Company: MGM
Producer: John W. Considine Jr

SCRIPT
Script: P.J. Wolfson, John L. Balderston
Translation and Adaptation: Florence Crewe-Jones
Adaptation: Guy Endore
Novel: Les mains d'Orlac by Maurice Renard

DIRECTION
Director: Karl Freund

PHOTOGRAPHY
Directors of Photography: Chester Lyons, Gregg Toland

EDITING AND POST-PRODUCTION
Editor: Hugh Wynn

MUSIC
Music: Dimitri Tiomkin
Musical Director: Oscar Radin

SOUND
Recording Director: Douglas Shearer
Sound System: Western Electric Sound System

MAKE UP AND COSTUMES
Wardrobe: Dolly Tree

DESIGN AND SET CONSTRUCTION
Art Director: Cedric Gibbons
Associate Art Directors: William A. Horning, Edwin B. Willis

CAST
Peter Lorre (Doctor Gogol)
Frances Drake (Yvonne Orlac)
Colin Clive (Stephen Orlac)
Ted Healy (Reagan)
Sara Haden (Marie)
Edward Brophy (Rollo)
Henry Kolker (Prefect Rosset)
Keye Luke (Dr Wong)
May Beatty (Françoise)

PLOT SUMMARY

Parisian surgeon Dr Gogol is infatuated with the beautiful young actress Yvonne Orlac and is deeply jealous of her concert pianist husband Stephen. When Stephen's hands are crushed in a train accident and his career is cut short, Yvonne has Gogol graft on new hands. But they turn out to be the hands of recently executed murderer Rollo - and as Gogol's obsession with Yvonne edges into insanity, Stephen finds himself increasingly possessed by Rollo's hands...

CAPSULE REVIEW

An impressive opening (a fist shatters the credit screen before we cut to a fake corpse hanging outside the Theatre du Horreurs) bodes well for this, the best adaptation of Renard's novel, though it's still an uneasy and troubled film. For all its faults, Mad Love remains a watchable and often impressive film, revolving as it does around a tour-de-force showing from Lorre. Freund was always so much better as a cinematographer than as a director and, had he not had the considerable talents of Lorre to call upon, Mad Love could well have been an unwatchable disaster. For Lorre it was a triumph and he could have asked for no better start to his formidable career in Hollywood. (Full Review)

AVAILABILITY

UK
Theatrical Distributors: MGM

USA
Theatrical Distributors: MGM
Laserdisc Distributors: MGM/UA Home Video (ML 105725 - in box set with The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935) and The Devil Doll (1936))

CENSORSHIP HISTORY

Finland
Rating: banned

UK
Rating: A

USA
Rating: Approved (PCA #1034)

TIMELINE

1935
May
6: USA - production begins

June
Day Unknown: USA - production ends

July
9: USA - copyright granted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp (LP5855)
12: USA - theatrical release
26: UK - rated A by the BBFC

1996
September
11: USA - laserdisc release (MGM/UA Home Video (ML 105725 - in box set with The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935) and The Devil-Doll (1936)))

POSTER TAGS

Dead hands that live... and love... and kill!

ALTERNATIVE TITLES

Amore folle - Italian title
The Hands of Orlac - UK title
Mad love, les mains d'Orlac - French title
Les mains d'Orlac - French title
Las manos de Orlac - Spanish title
Outoa rakkautta - Finnish title

LINKS

REMAKE OF
Orlacs Hände (1925)

REMAKE
The Hands of Orlac (1961)

REFERENCES

OTHER SOURCES

screen
credits

KEYWORDS

actors, actresses, amputees, birds, book into film, cockatoos, detectives, dismemberment, doctors, human experiments, guillotines, hallucinations, hands, insanity, jealousy, knife throwers, mad doctors, museums, musicians, obsession, operations, paris, pianists, police, statues, surgeons, torture, train crashes, trains

Last Updated: 15 October, 2008