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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 37 |
 LAUGHS |
 CONRAD VEIDT |
After 75 years, horror
classic finally surfaces
of TheColumnists.com
One of the most precious items in my collection of videotapes and DVDs is that rarest of all horror classics, Universal's "The Man Who Laughs," the 1928 silent version of the Victor Hugo novel about a little boy whose face is carved into a grostequely permanent grin. so he can be exhibited as a sideshow freak.
I bought the tape nearly 20 years ago at Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee in West Hollywood, one of the most eclectic of all video emporiums for both sale and rental of videos. I've never met anyone else who owned a copy of this film, which has developed a mighty cult reputation mainly because of the stunning still photos from the production run in film cult magazines for decades.
Now my time of exclusivity is over. To my great delight, "The Man Who Laughs" is now available on both VHS videotape and DVD at a reasonable price. You can order it from Critics' Choice Video & DVD for $26.96 (DVD) or $22.46 (VHS) by calling 1-800-367-7765.
Though the Critics' Choice catalog claims the movie never has been available on video, that's plainly not true. Like I said, I have it--and not in someone's pirated edition, but from a small, independent video company that used to specialize in rare silent and early talkie films. I'm buying the new DVD version just to have a more stable copy of this wonderful film--plus all the extras the DVD edition has.
This is no more a horror film than Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame" is a horror film, though. At the center of the story is a grotesque human being, but one who gets all your sympathy. Gwynplaine, the hero, is in fact a man of noble birth--a gentle, loving man whose distorted features do not reflect the pure heart that beats within him.
But the opening sequence of "The Man Who Laughs" is plenty horrifying for those of you who wonder why Universal, the horror film factory, was interested in making the film. For political reasons that I'll leave for you to discover in the film, a little boy is taken from his father, who dies in great agony by being locked in an iron maiden where he's penetrated by sharp spikes. Gypsies who specialize in the disfigurement of little children turn the boy over to a surgeon who carves his mouth up so that the growing child's flesh will pull away from his teeth and gums, leaving him with the permanent smile of a madman.
The mutilated boy wanders through the snow until he comes upon a woman clutchiing a baby in her arms, but nearly buried under the snowfall. The woman is dead, but the baby still lives. The boy picks up the baby and struggles through the snow with it until he comes to the horse-drawn wagon of a travelling showman, who takes the children in.
Years later, we find the boy has grown up and is now the popular attraction known as "The Man Who Laughs," an entertaining clown who draws big crowds whenever the wagon pulls into a village or hamlet. With him is the little girl, who has matured into a sweet and innocent young woman of great beauty. But her tragedy is that she is blind.
That, of course, means she can't see the grotesque visage of Gwynplaine. Instead, she knows him for the gentle soul behind the ugliness and loves him dearly. They seemed destined to marry someday, but events conspire to make them the center of an evil plot once the doctor who created "the man who laughs" discovers Gwynplaine is alive--and notifies the rulers of the land.
Universal originally intended this role to be played by the greatest actor of bizarre roles in Hollywood--Lon Chaney, the man of 1,000 faces. Arrangements were being made to bring Chaney back to Universal from MGM, where he had gone after making "Hunchback of Notre Dame," "The Phantom of the Opera" and other classic silent films at the studio.
But those plans fell through and Universal turned to one of Germany's greatest film actors, Conrad Veidt, who had played Cesare the Somnambulist in the original 1919 "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and other grotesque roles. For the blind girl, they hired Mary Philbin, who had been Lon Chaney's leading lady in "Phantom of the Opera." The villainess of the film, a royal beauty who attempts to seduce Gwynplaine, was played by the Russsian actress Olga Baclanova, who would earn horror film immortality a few years later as the female star of Tod Browning's "Freaks" (1932), surely the most grotesque horror film ever made.
To direct "The Man Who Laughs," Universal chose Germany's Paul Leni, who had made one of the studio's greatest horror hits of the silent era, "The Cat and the Canary" (1927) as well as the German horror classic "Waxworks" (1924) with Veidt.
Hollywood already was in the throes of the changeover to talking pictures in 1928, but it was too late to make "The Man Who Laughs" a talkie. Instead, it has a recorded soundtrack with a musical score, background sound effects and a few scenes where you hear voices in crowd scenes.
Believe me, though, this is a marvelous, even beautiful movie. It has plenty of action and a truly great performance by Conrad Veidt. You will never forget the first time you see him as the adult Gwynplaine. His eyes literally ache with sorrow while his mutilated mouth smiles as though he's the happiest man in the world.
I'm really happy that this rarely-seen masterpiece from the very end of the silent era is finally going to get a large contemporary audience, even if it means my videotape is no longer the prize of my collection.
©2003 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo
is courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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