The Elephant Man

David Lynch's moving true-life tale of the severely deformed Joseph Merrick and his rescue from the hell of a Victorian circus sideshow.

John Hurt, unrecognisable beneath the make-up, delivers a tender performance as the severely deformed Joseph Merrick (renamed John Merrick for the film), rescued by Anthony Hopkins' kindly surgeon from the hell of a circus sideshow to a more genteel world of scientific enquiry. Lynch's sensitive study of disability and difference was shot in lustrous black and white by veteran cinematographer and ex-Hammer director Freddie Francis.