Olga Baclanova is worth watching for the physical force she brings to seductive, dangerous women. Her acting can be too emphatic, and Freaks makes both the attraction and the limits of that approach clear.
Fi1m perspective
Olga Baclanova does not underplay Cleopatra, the scheming trapeze artist in Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932). Her physical force suits the cruelty, though her emphatic acting becomes a problem when the film asks for tenderness. We find her memorable, though not always convincing. The film is worth seeing for its affection for the circus performers, but its central melodrama asks for a naturalness that several members of the cast struggle to provide.
Her late-silent prominence came with Josef von Sternberg’s The Docks of New York (1928), in which she plays Lou, and Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928), which casts her as Duchess Josiana. These supporting parts made use of her intensity and physical expressiveness. They also helped establish the seductive, sometimes aristocratic figures that recur in her work. Sound brought a narrower set of opportunities, as her heavy Russian accent helped restrict her to supporting and character parts.
In Freaks, the contrast with Harry Earles matters. We were moved by his directness as Hans, because he makes the romantic feeling register even when the dialogue sounds rehearsed. Baclanova’s more emphatic playing gives Cleopatra’s cruelty an immediate force, but is less useful when the melodrama needs us to believe in the people. Leon Gordon and Willis Goldbeck’s screenplay does neither of them, nor Daisy Earles as Frieda, many favours. Several performances struggle with those stiff exchanges, and it would be unfair to lay the problem at Baclanova’s feet.
Downstairs (1932), with Baclanova as Baroness Eloise von Burgen, offers another sound-era supporting role, before her film work declined after 1933. She then concentrated on the stage and made her final screen appearance as Madame Daruschka in Claudia (1943). Start with Freaks, then try the two 1928 films before deciding that Cleopatra tells us everything about her acting.
Biography
Olga Baclanova was a Russian-born actress of stage and screen. She trained at the Moscow Art Theatre and first came to the United States in 1925 with a touring production of Lysistrata. She remained in America after the rest of the company returned to Russia.
Baclanova appeared in silent films directed by Josef von Sternberg, including The Docks of New York (1928) as Lou. She also played Duchess Josiana in The Man Who Laughs (1928). She is best known for portraying Cleopatra in Tod Browning's Freaks (1932).
The transition to sound films proved challenging owing to her accent, and she took fewer leading roles thereafter. She worked extensively on stage in New York and London from the mid-1930s and appeared in the 1943 film Claudia.
