Alonzo then learns that Malabar and Nanon have been practicing a new act, where the strongman's arms seem to be pulled in opposite directions by two horses who are actually running on hidden treadmills.

“That The Unknown (1927) was made at MGM borders on the miraculous, but then this was an era of exploratory boundaries, even at the big studios...” Biographer Alfred Eaker in Tod Browning (2016).

I then asked myself what are the most amazing situations and actions that a man thus reduced could be involved...”[9][10]Actor and collaborator Chaney developed his characterization of Alonzo on the same premise: “I contrived to make myself look like an armless man, not simply to shock and horrify you but merely to bring to the screen a dramatic story of an armless man.”[11] Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer originally sought to pair new Swedish property Greta Garbo with Chaney, “the man of a thousand faces”, who was emerging as the studio’s top box office draw in 1927, but the female lead went to eighteen-year-old MGM starlet Joan Crawford.

[15][16] In the original screenplay, Alonzo murders both the doctor and Cojo to eliminate them as witnesses before he returns to claim Nanon, but these scenes never made it to the final print.

The Unknown is widely regarded as a masterpiece of the late silent film era and the most outstanding of the ten Browning-Chaney collaborations,[17][18] eight of them at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

[19][20] Browning's rendering of Alonzo and the horrific self-mutilation he endures to win the love of Nanon is reminiscent of the theatre of the Grand Guignol.

)[25] It is listed in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, which says, "Drawing a remarkable and haunting performance from Chaney and filling the plot with twists and unforgettable characters, Browning here creates a chilling masterpiece of psychological (and psychosexual) drama.

The manner in which he is shown using his feet as normal persons do their hands is remarkably well done and his facial expressions are wonderful--he uses no eccentric make-up in this role."

It is gruesome and at times shocking, and the principal character deteriorates from a more or less sympathetic individual to an arch-fiend...Mr. Chaney really gives a marvelous idea of the Armless Wonder, for to act in this film he has learned to use his feet as hands when eating, drinking and smoking.

If you wince at a touch or two of horror, don't go to The Unknown....It has a finely sinister plot, some moments with a real shock and Lon Chaney."

---Harrison's Reports Based on a story by director Tod Browning and a scenario by Waldemar Young, this tale of sexual obsession involving physical and emotional disfigurement unfolds in a circus setting—a setting that comports with Browning’s penchant for “the lower forms of spectacle and theatrical performance.”[28] Illusion and deception: Browning, demonstrating his delight in “demystifying the spectacles of show culture” opens The Unknown with the exposure of a simple carnival illusion: The Gypsy knife-thrower “Alonzo the Armless” masquerades as a double amputee who expertly hurls his projectiles with his feet.

Browning quickly disabuses moviegoers of his deformity, as Alonzo, a fully intact man, uses a corset to bind his arms during performances to appear as a freak.

Alonzo’s faux disability has a more sinister and practical purpose: as a criminal on the run from the law, his “armless” condition places him above suspicion by authorities.

[30] Sexual Frustration and Self-mutilation: The object of Alonzo’s tender and secret affection—Nanon (Joan Crawford) his dare-devil partner— harbors a neurotic phobia, an obsessive, hysterical revulsion to the embrace of a man’s arms.

[33][34] The logic of Alonzo’s dilemma serves as the rationale for Browning’s and Chaney’s most outrageous literary conceit: Alonzo, in order to make himself appealing to Nanon and eliminate the tell-tale bifid thumb, has both his arms amputated by a back alley surgeon, an act of symbolic self-castration, satisfying Nanon’s need for a “sexless” man.

Biographer Stuart Rosenthal points out this theme in The Unknown: "Having a characterization in mind, Browning built his films by generating an elaborately interlocking structure of frustration around that individual.

In almost every instance he displays a physical deformity that reflects the mental mutilation he has suffered at some element of callous society...Alonzo, in The Unknown, is among the most rabid and instinctual of Browning's protagonists...”[39]Lon Chaney’s simian-like use of his feet is directly linked to his physical deformity, anticipating the primal ferocity of his reaction to Nanon’s betrayal in marrying circus strongman Malabar (Norman Kerry).

[43] Restored shots/scenes include: the original opening scene of a boy watching the circus tent from a church tower and his father or grandfather giving him a coin so he can pay his way into the circus; audience reactions during Alonzo’s show; the fight between Alonzo and Costra after the show; and a scene of an old fortune-teller warning Nanon that something terrible is going to happen.

[44] This restoration of The Unknown made its home video debut in October 2023 as part of The Criterion Collection in a boxset that also includes Freaks and The Mystic.