The Show

Cock Robin is the barker of a Hungarian sideshow called the Palace of Illusions. The high point of the show is a reenactment of Salome’s dance of the seven veils. The beheading of Jokanaan is part of it on stage. The performer playing Salome is in love with Cock Robin. The man they call The Greek is jealous and dangerous, and is set on removing that rival. The film uses the world of the sideshow not as decor but as the logic of the story itself. The crossing between the act on stage and what is real behind it is the real idea. It is one of Tod Browning’s works in American silent cinema of 1927. John Gilbert, Renée Adorée and Lionel Barrymore appear in the seventy six minute American film, completed in 1927.