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THE ELEPHANT MAN
October 23, 2017  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

Tonight’s a marvelous night for movies on television. It begins with this moody, emotional, utterly beautiful 1980 black-and-white drama, starring John Hurt as John Merrrick, the disfigured man who is discovered in, and rescued from, a Victorian freak show. This film was produced by Mel Brooks for his new Brooksfilms company, and he kept his name off all publicity when the movie was released because he didn’t want it incorrectly anticipated as a comedy. (That also, by the way, explains the presence if his wife, Anne Bancroft, in a small but breathtakingly touching supporting role.) And Brooks, as producer, hired as director someone with no major feature-film experience: an unusual, and unusually gifted, young man named David Lynch.

 
 
 
 
 
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