Of
all the aspects present in Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix’s divisive box
office smash Joker, among the most
striking was the film’s clear and overt homage to the film which inspired the creation
of the character in the first place: Paul Leni’s 1928 expressionist
horror/melodrama The Man Who Laughs. From the first scene right up until the last,
the iconography fueling Bob Kane and Bill Finger’s development and inception of
the legendary supervillain of popular fiction is given center stage as the
guiding spirit of Phoenix’s interpretation more than anything on the printed
page itself, going back to the roots of the character before a single panel was
even drawn.
Rarely
seen yet alive and well in the hearts and minds of cinephiles and Joker fans
alike, this silent romantic period melodrama penned by The Hunchback of Notre Dame author Victor Hugo tells the dark and
disturbing tale of Gwynplaine (Conrad Veidt), an innocent bystander caught in the
crossfire of a fierce medieval political battle between King James II and Lord
Clancharlie. After Clancharlie is
executed via iron maiden, his son Gwynplaine has a hideously frightening grin
surgically carved into his face from childhood to adulthood wearing a fixed
faux smile.
Abandoned
and alone, Gwynplaine rescues an abandoned blind infant named Dea (Mary
Philbin) and together they are taken in and cared for by sideshow performer
Ursus (Cesare Gravina). Soon the blind
Dea and Gwynplaine come to love one another yet Gwynplaine maintains his
distance fearing Dea will reject him if she finds out about his disfigurement. Meanwhile news surfaces Gwynplaine is legally
a rightful heir to a wealthy estate as he finds himself dragged unwillingly
into a political scheme involving forced marriage to the lustful Duchess
Josiana (Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova).
Written
in 1869 before being made into two lower budgeted silent features in 1908 and
again in 1921, the story caught the attention of Universal Studios who fresh
off of their hit adaptation of Hugo’s The
Hunchback of Notre Dame were eager for another box office success. The role was initially offered to Notre Dame lead Lon Chaney but due to
unresolved rights issues to the novel the project was put on hold with Chaney
making The Phantom of the Opera for
Universal instead.
After
Opera became a hit, Universal Studios
founder and then-president Carl Laemmle redirected his attention to The Man Who Laughs, transforming Hugo’s
story into an expensively budgeted film.
Hiring German expressionist horror helmer Paul Leni after his own hit The Cat and the Canary and recasting
with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari star
Conrad Veidt in the role of Gwynplaine, Universal Studios moved ahead with The Man Who Laughs.
A
mammoth superproduction costing an astronomical (at the time) $1 million, the
film sported in addition to the frightening and uncomfortable makeup effects
for Veidt’s frozen grin a brilliant production design by The Phantom of the Opera designer Charles D. Hall. The resulting sets looked somewhere between
17th century England and gothic expressionist Germany, treading a
fine line between period piece and fantasy horror.
Visually
the film prominently features excellent moody expressionistic cinematography by
future Panic in Year Zero photography
Gilbert Warrenton. Largely the film
consists of medium close-ups of the actor Conrad Veidt’s face with the
combination of white makeup and his fixed grin achieving a near demonic gaze. Much of the film is shrouded in darkness and
shadow though the film’s lavish production design coupled with some pioneering
visual effects matte work is captured in twisty wide angled shots, providing
something of a warped perspective on the tragic hero’s outlook.
What’s
striking about The Man Who Laughs is
how it uses something as simple and expressive as a smile to profoundly
disturbing effect while calling attention to an astonishing degree of human
cruelty. The so called ‘Chelsea Smile’
in which facial mutilation within an organized criminal circle occurs is grim
enough, but The Man Who Laughs inflicts
this atrocity unto a small child, abandoned and deformed through no fault of
his own for no reason. The wicked smile
is almost always (including within this film) associated with villainy, which
makes Gwynplaine’s forced smile play against expectations and ordinary readings
of the facial expression. We know there’s
a good man trapped behind that hideous avatar, we just have to work to see past
it.
Much
like Notre Dame’s Quasimodo and the
history books’ own John Merrick, Gwynplaine is a noble, humble figure trapped
with the face of a monster. But unlike
those aforementioned physically-disfigured heroes born with latent birth
defects, Gwynplaine’s affliction is manmade.
Seen now, that infamous image of his surgeon sticking his fingers in his
mouth to form a wicked smile exudes a degree of cruelty not seen even in some
of the nastiest of Lars Von Trier’s films.
Being
a pre-code film also afforded The Man Who
Laughs with a myriad of transgressions later censors would surely have
edited out including the sexually hungry Duchess Josiana and her attempts to
seduce Gwynplaine consist of the half-naked nymphet practically dragging him
into her bed kicking and screaming.
While ostensibly a melodrama about a clown figuratively and literally
crying on the inside replete with last-minute rescues in the form of his German
shepherd coming to save the day, it also includes some still-graphic violence
of said dog viciously tearing a man’s throat out.
Upon
initial release, the film did well enough commercially to engender a re-release
with the then newly introduce Movietone sound-on-film system, incorporating
various musical cues and scattershot sound effects for key sequences including
a crowd chanting Gwynplaine’s name. The
film also marked one of the earliest examples of an original song produced for
the film tacked onto the end as a promotional tool for record sales, with the
song When Love Comes Stealing plays
over the grand finale.
Critically,
however, the reception to The Man Who
Laughs was divisive. Rather
infamously esteemed critic Paul Rotha referred to Leni’s daring and still
disturbing epic “slack, driveling, slovenly”.
This negative perception surrounding The
Man Who Laughs tragically and inexplicably remained present for decades all
the way through the 1970s. It wasn’t
until probably the last thirty or so years, however, that the film began being
reassessed and met with newfound appraisal.
Roger Ebert, in particular, added the film to his ‘Great Movies’ list,
calling it ‘one of the final treasures of German silent Expressionism’.
While
not overtly a horror film like The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Nosferatu,
what The Man Who Laughs manages to do
which neither of those pictures does to the same effect is get under your
skin. Because it doesn’t announce itself
as a horror piece it plays like a waking nightmare with the poor Gwynplaine as
a prisoner within his own body with a grin so creepy it imprints itself into
your psyche the moment your eyes first meet it.
Yes
the finale makes a swan dive for broad melodrama and no there aren’t any over
scares in this, per se. And yet
something in it stays with you and disturbs on an implacable level, touching on
fears of uncharted realms of human cruelty while calling attention to the old
saying ‘not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within’. The impression this flickering, grainy gothic
baroque period piece leaves you with a kind of daylight terror which remains
timelessly difficult to process or shake off.
As the spokesman for Carl Laemmle, Jr. declared before the opening
credits to the eventual 1931 Frankenstein,
‘well, we’ve warned you’.
--Andrew Kotwicki
