Reception
The Elephant Man was generally well received by critics; from 34 reviews collected from notable publications by popular review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 91% "fresh" rating and average score of 8.2/10, with the consensus, "David Lynch's relatively straight second feature finds an admirable synthesis of compassion and restraint in treating its subject, and features outstanding performances by John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins."
Vincent Canby wrote: "Mr. Hurt is truly remarkable. It can't be easy to act under such a heavy mask... the physical production is beautiful, especially Freddie Francis's black-and-white photography. Conversely, Roger Ebert awarded the film 2/4 stars, writing: "I kept asking myself what the film was really trying to say about the human condition as reflected by John Merrick, and I kept drawing blanks."
In her book The Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture, Nadja Durbach said that the film was "much more mawkish and moralizing than one would expect from the leading postmodern surrealist filmmaker", and that it was "unashamedly sentimental". She blamed this sentimentality on Lynch's reliance on Frederick Treves' memoirs as source material.
Read more about this topic: The Elephant Man (film)
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