With this poignant second feature, David Lynch brought his atmospheric visual and sonic palette to a notorious true story set in Victorian England. When the London surgeon Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) meets the freak-show performer John Merrick (John Hurt), who has severe skeletal and soft tissue deformities, he assumes that he must be intellectually disabled as well. As the two men spend more time together, though, Merrick reveals the intelligence, gentle nature, and profound sense of dignity that lie beneath his shocking appearance, and he and Treves develop a friendship. Shot in gorgeous black and white and boasting a stellar supporting cast that includes Anne Bancroft, John Gielgud, and Wendy Hiller, The Elephant Man was nominated for eight Academy Awards, cementing Lynch’s reputation as one of American cinema’s most visionary talents.
Technical Specifications
Supplements
- Director David Lynch and critic Kristine McKenna reading from Room to Dream, a 2018 book they coauthored
- Interview with actor John Hurt from 2009
- Interview with stills photographer Frank Connor from 2019
- Jonathan Sanger at the BFI, 2018
- Interview with director David Lynch from 2009
- Audio recording from 1981 of an interview and Q&A with David Lynch at the American Film Institute
- The Terrible Elephant Man Revealed, a 2001 documentary about the film
- Joseph Merrick: The Real Elephant Man
- Mike Figgis and David Lynch, 2006
- Clapper Board: John Hurt (1980)
- Skintricks: Christopher Tucker and John Hurt
- Trailer
- Radio spots
- A booklet featuring excerpts from an interview with David Lynch from the 2005 edition of filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s book Lynch on Lynch, and an 1886 letter to the editor of the London Times concerning Joseph Merrick, the “elephant man,” by Francis Culling Carr Gomm, chairman of the London Hospital at the time