Dumbo / He Who Gets Slapped

Sunday | July 22, 2007 7:00 pm

Dumbo

Directed by Ben Sharpsteen

He Who Gets Slapped

Directed by Victor Sjostrom

Live Piano Accompaniment by Yakov Gubanov
Screening on Film

In one of Disney’s darkest works, a baby elephant with oversized ears is ostracized by his fellow circus performers until he finds a new talent. The film has often been treated as a minor work in comparison to bigger budget productions such as Bambi and Snow White but this pared down fable (little dialogue, shorter running time) brilliantly combines satire and pathos. Directed by Victor Sjostrom (The Phantom Carriage), He Who Gets Slapped offers an eerily similar portrait of circus life. Lon Chaney portrays a scientist who is betrayed by his wife and his most-trusted colleague. Distraught, he joins the circus as a clown whose role is to be slapped by his fellow performers and falls in love with a bareback horse rider (Shearer).

PROGRAM

Dumbo

Directed by Ben Sharpsteen.
US, 1941, 35mm, color, 64 min.
He Who Gets Slapped

Directed by Victor Sjostrom.
With Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert.
US, 1924, 16mm, black & white, silent, 71 min.