The Perfect Man

At an early age, Sandow is bursting with ambition and hope, yet is thrust into the cutthroat world of music hall entertainment where his intrinsic values are challenged by the materialism and cynicism of the era. Sandow’s early-year experiences of rejection from his adoptive father and peers drives him to an obsession with the underground circus: the strongman is just that; a man of brute strength, able to fight and to survive. In the figure of the strongman, Sandow identifies with man as fighter and survivor, which catalyses his career into wrestling and subsequently the circus. After meeting his mentor Professor Atilla in Brussels at the age of nineteen, Sandow is trained as an entertainer, competing in numerous strongman acts, until being crowed the strongest man in the world following a showdown with the then strongest man, Charles Sampson. It is at this mid-point in the film that Sandow marries his sweetheart, Blanche Brooks. Blanche is Sandow’s first love and the mother to his two daughters. She provides the heart of the film and represents the values of loyalty, family, and domestic life in stark contrast to the demands placed upon Sandow as a public, peripatetic entertainer who is confronted with temptation and scandal at every turn. Sandow is a conflicted man, not only torn between his artistic integrity and the commercial pressures of an ever-increasing industrialized society; but torn between his desire for international renown and his need for genuine, familial love. It is the failed relationship between Sandow and Blanche in the third Act that ultimately leads to his downfall: his transformational arc is a tragic one; from a man consumed by an insatiable ambition to change the world, to an alienated bygone without a family, identity, or legacy.