He's given sterling support from Anthony Hopkins as his mentor Dr Frederick Treves, who is faced with several dilemmas. This is helped by an immensely touching performance by John Hurt in the title role, unrecognisable under Christopher Tucker's elaborate make-up. For all the elements of blood-and-thunder Victorian melodrama, what's most striking about The Elephant Man is its understated good taste. The director was David Lynch, whose only previous feature was the semi-amateur, almost unclassifiably strange Eraserhead (US, 1976), and while the film had an Oscar-winning cinematographer, Freddie Francis had last assumed that role sixteen years earlier.īut the end result was a triumph. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (renamed John here), a man who suffered from neurofibromatosis to such an extent that his body was deformed almost beyond recognition as a human being, the screenplay was optioned by the comedian Mel Brooks, who had long wanted to break into serious subjects. The Elephant Man was a film with an unlikely pedigree. Taking him into care at a London hospital, he tries to improve the quality of his life. The distinguished surgeon Sir Frederick Treves discovers the grotesquely deformed John Merrick in a circus freakshow.
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