The Elephant Man

Name: The Elephant Man
Genre: Biography, Drama, Classic
Released: 1980
Duration: 124 min
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller

David Lynch19802h 4mBiography, Drama, Classic

Why we chose it

Lynch’s cult film earned eight Oscar nominations and was produced by the king of comedy, Mel Brooks, though his name isn’t in the credits. Anthony Hopkins looks after a deformed man from a fairground freak show, and John Hurt plays him as someone who turns out to be full of surprises.

Synopsis

In Victorian London, a surgeon pays a penny to go behind the curtain of a travelling fair and see its biggest attraction, a man with a deformed face. Assuming the hooded figure can neither speak nor think, he takes him to the hospital to be examined. Then, at last, someone asks him a question, and John Merrick answers in full sentences and recites a psalm he knows by heart.