The Unknown

Featuring Lon Chaney as circus sideshow act Alonzo the Armless, who performs all of life’s functions with his feet, including throwing knives at his beautiful assistant Nanon (Joan Crawford in a pre-breakout role).

Nanon is disgusted at the touch of a man, so she befriends Alonzo, who poses no such threat. Alonzo pines for Nanon, but must compete with circus strong man Malabar (Norman Kerry), who Alonzo sabotages when he can. As Alonzo grows closer to Nanon he goes to extreme lengths to hide a terrible secret.

This special screening of The Unknown includes the 2023 restoration of Browning’s masterpiece to its full length by the George Eastman Museum, with approximately 10 minutes of previously lost shots and sequences taken from a Czech export print in the collection of the National Film Archive in Prague. It will be brought to life thanks to a special score prepared and performed by Harder Than Concrete, Ben Addison’s Leeds based musique concretè and electronic music project featuring vintage test equipment, electromechanical instruments, and DIY fairground organs.

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For this event a score has been composed and recorded using this equipment, and these digital recordings will be manipulated manually following a time sheet. Several custom noise generating instruments are in the process of being built to augment this on stage, which will be triggered electronically as part of the score.

On the opening night of Hyde Park Picture House in 1914 a cellist, violinist, and pianist accompanied the silent programme. These instruments have informed the design of the machines, which will use their components to generate sounds mechanically.

You can watch the build process as it happens before the event here:

https://youtube.com/@harderthanconcrete

www.instagram.com/harder.than.concrete

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Showing as part of our season Too Much: Melodrama on Film – supported by the BFI and Film Hub North.