Imagine heartbreak pervading your every waking moment, as you're mocked and misunderstood by virtually everyone who sees you.
Then, suppose you're in love with a woman. And, incredibly, she returns your passion. But would she feel the same without her own handicap?
She's blind.
The Man Who Laughs Based on Victor Hugo's L'Homme qui rit
This was the brilliant conceit of The Man Who Laughs, a 1928 masterpiece by director Paul Leni, based on Victor Hugo’s 1869 novel. The Universal production starred Leni’s fellow émigré from the German Expressionist cinema, Conrad Veidt, best known today as the Third Reich’s nasty Maj. Strasser of Casablanca.
As the ill-fated Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs – has any screen hero ever been more alienated? – Veidt’s challenge is to convey with his eyes and body language the genuine anguish masked by his creepy, artificially-created grin.
The stage-trained Veidt was up to the task. Only at moments of utter heartbreak – such as when the mob laughs at Gwynplaine's disfigurement – do we glimpse his soul as he covers his unwanted smile and we see the torture in his eyes.
Gwynplaine Ends Up Carnival Freak
The film takes place in 17th Century England, transferred from the novel’s French setting. We first meet Gwynplaine as a boy. On the orders of a court jester to King James II, the lad – the son of the King's political enemy – is disfigured by traveling gypsies. Moments after they abandon him, the desperate boy staggers through a driving snowstorm to rescue a blind baby girl, Dea, from the arms of her dead mother.
The two youngsters are taken in by a kindly carnival showman who effectively raises them as his own. As adults, the two perform with his traveling troupe.
In effect, Gwynplaine is a sideshow freak – the only “career” option for someone whose face has condemed him to a life of public scorn and cruel curiosity. His predicament is highlighted when a greasepainted clown, wiping away his own makeup, remarks, “What a lucky clown you are – you don’t have to rub off your laugh.”
The bitter irony practically slaps Gwynplaine.
Sexual Element to Gwynplaine's Disfigurement
At this point, the story finds a new path involving a nasty old English queen and her horny young half-sister Josiana, who develops a morbid, fleeting sexual fascination for Gwynplaine. Conveniently, we then learn our misshapen hero is heir to a peerage and thus rightfully due a seat in the House of Lords.
Not a very credible story beat but packing enough conflict to drive the tale to the end.
The love story between Gwynplaine and Dea is sweet enough, despite feeling a bit pat. Because of Gwynplaine's disfigurement, he feels he hasn’t the right to marry the angelic, adoring girl he rescued as an infant. The blind Dea, of course, has never grasped Gwynplaine’s dilemma or his chivalric hesitancy. As she tells him, “God closed my eyes so I could see the only real Gwynplaine.”
Film Predated Chaplin's Similarly-Themed City Lights
The theme of the sad clown recalls Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci. And the film’s familiar premise – blindness as the great equalizer/beauty is only skin deep – was used to great effect by Chaplin three years later in City Lights. But Chaplin’s tramp was only challenged economically; Gwynplaine’s horrifying face places him on an entirely different level of outcastitude.
Veidt’s memorable visage was created by pioneering Universal makeup master Jack Pierce, just three years before he designed Boris Karloff’s legendary makeup as Frankenstein’s monster. Pierce's many tricks included an oversized set of false teeth for Veidt, along with hooks that drew back the actor's mouth into a sinister grin.
Good thing the picture was silent; between the fake teeth and the painful hooks, Veidt couldn’t speak a word, much less move his mouth.
The Man Who Laughs Inspired The Joker
Veidt’s maniacal face directly inspired that of the Joker in the Batman comic books, television series and movies.
The film’s cast includes Mary Philbin as Dea and the great Russian beauty Olga Baclanova as the cruel Duchess Josiana.
Philbin, a protégé of Erich von Stroheim, was the object of Lon Chaney’s obsession in 1925's The Phantom of the Opera. In The Man Who Laughs, she actually received top billing – incredible in retrospect, considering how the picture clearly belongs to Veidt by virtue of performance, scope, screen magnetism and – duh! – the fact he’s the title character.
Olga Baclanova Best Known for Freaks
Baclanova had jumped ship from the Moscow Art Theatre during a U.S. tour and found a new career in American movies. These days, she’s best remembered for a tour-de-force as the wicked trapeze artist in 1932’s Freaks. In The Man Who Laughs, her attempted seduction of Veidt remains powerful and erotic, even by today's standards. The scene almost feels as if dropped into the picture by DeMille, direct from one of his schizophrenic biblical epics in which starchy morality and oozy sex alternate in metronomic counterpoint.
The Man Who Laughs was in development at Universal for three years, originally as a vehicle for Chaney, following his triumph as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And Chaney would have been a great Gwynplaine, too, except that he bolted to MGM, leaving Universal to find another credible laughing man..
Conrad Veidt Starred Earlier in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Studio chief Carl Laemmle then turned to Veidt, known at the time for a remarkable performance in an equally surreal film, the 1919 German Expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Although sound was just coming in, Universal shot The Man Who Laughs as a silent. The studio hedged its bets and released the film with an orchestral Movietime soundtrack plus crowd noises and other sound effects.
There are some unintentional laughs, including the presence of Gwynplaine’s faithful but unfortunately-named dog, Homo. Regardless, The Man Who Laughs is a masterwork of melodrama and mood, helped along by the atmospheric lighting of cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton.
Beyond the bravura style, however, the film really turns on Veidt’s powerful presence. Because of his face, he won't get a conventional redemption; the muted hope at the conclusion is nice enough – but it's not what stays with you.
Rather, it’s Veidt’s haunted, commanding performance that lingers long after the fade out.
The Man Who Laughs. Dir. Paul Leni. Perf. Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin, Olga Baclanova, Cesare Gravina, Brandon Hurst, George Siegmann. Universal Pictures, 1928. Running time: 110 min.
Sources:
- Featurette from the Kino International DVD release produced and written by Bret Wood and John Soister
- TCM.com
- IMDB.com
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
Join the Conversation