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The miniaturist's uncanny art, Tod Browning's petites horreurs. A searchlight meets the camera's eye, the escape in the marsh finds fugitives guided by their obsessions, science and hatred. "Have you been locked away from life so long you don't recognize a prisoner of life itself?" The old doctor (Henry B. Walthall) dreams of extending the world's resources by reducing the population to one-sixth its size, his wife (Rafaela Ottiano) continues his experiments by shrinking dogs down to hamster proportions. "We can make the whole world small," the vision suits the ex-banker (Lionel Barrymore) seeking revenge on those who framed him. The Unholy Three figures in the disguise, a hunched matron running the toy shop above the laboratory, an avenger in grandmotherly drag right under the noses of the Paris police. The first miniaturized human reveals the hand of co-screenwriter Erich von Stroheim, Grace Ford as "an inbred peasant half-wit" from a Berlin slum—gifted as a doll, the tiny assassin disentangles herself from a sleeping moppet's grip and approaches the victim with poisonous stiletto in hand. (Another wee zombie awaits orders while dangling from a Christmas tree ribbon, a prime example of the Browning sang-froid in the face of the world's grotesqueries.) The subplot about Barrymore's estranged daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) adduces a note of Hugo, not as poignant as Ottiano momentarily warming her Grand Guignol presence to enjoy an Apache pas de deux between the diminutive subjects across a tabletop. "You might as well kill a person as frighten them to death." The poetic-perverse line of thought flows through Dr. Cyclops, The Incredible Shrinking Man and Attack of the Puppet People, plus an unmistakable flash by Lynch in Mulholland Drive. With Frank Lawton, Robert Greig, Lucy Beaumont, Pedro de Cordoba, Arthur Hohl, Claire Du Brey, and Rollo Lloyd. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |