Three Silent Horrors
An article on film by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
I am from the generation of horror film fans that grew up with Forrest J. Ackerman's magazine FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND. It was a magazine of dubious literary merits created by a man of questionable writing talent or cinematic taste, but he did grow up with fantasy films of the silent era and he did give his readers a perspective that the horror film had a long and proud history stretching back into the silent era. These days if you read the electronic bulletin boards you often find someone trying to identify a "really old" horror film that turns out to be eight years old. Readers of FAMOUS MONSTERS knew that eight years did not make a film "really old."
Forry's magazine's illustrations made me familiar with cinematic images than the silent days of film and made me anxious to see the whole film. For a handful of films it turned out not to be a really great effort. Silent films like THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA or METROPOLIS were not very difficult to locate, even in the days before video. They were available. Now advances in video technology have made the seeing of old classic films--and even the owning of copies of those films--far easier than at any time in the past. But even so, some classics have remained out of reach due to low demand. I am certain I will never see many of the classic silent films of which I have heard. Some, like LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, are thought to be completely lost. But there are many others I have never heard were available or were lost. It is a rare pleasure when one of these films surfaces. In the last month or so, three classic silent films have become available to me. Three films that until now have been legendary to me are now showing up in my collection.
Those films are THE HANDS OF ORLAC, WEST OF ZANZIBAR, and THE MAN WHO LAUGHS. WEST OF ZANZIBAR features Lon Chaney (Sr.). The other two feature Conrad Veidt. But Veidt was very much Germany's "Man of a Thousand Faces," just as Chaney was in the United States. The MAN WHO LAUGHS may star Veidt, but it has strong echoes of Chaney. It almost certainly was made to recapture the popularity of the THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. It too is a period piece with a stigmatized and disfigured central character. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is almost halfway a Chaney film, being based on a novel by the same author as THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and using PHANTOM's co-star, Mary Philbin. All three of these films involve men who have been abused or injured. Each in its own way is a study of stigma.
THE HANDS OF ORLAC
It is one of the unfortunate characteristics of film that visual images slow down the story-telling. It takes the camera a lot longer to show you images that can be described in less time. Of course, to describe a scene fully one picture is worth a thousand words, but rarely is it necessarily to describe a scene fully in telling a story. Silent film is even slower at telling a story, since a much higher proportion of the story is told by visual images. For this reason, silent films will often be more simple stories than sound films of equivalent length, though they can be just as much or even more atmospheric. The whole story of THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924) could well be told in six or seven sentences--including plot twists I will not reveal.
THE HANDS OF ORLAC reunites THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI director and its star. Robert Weine directs the vastly under-appreciated horror actor Conrad Veidt in this adaptation of Maurice Renard's novel. The story should be familiar to any who have seen the three other film versions including MAD LOVE (1935), HANDS OF ORLAC (a.k.a. HANDS OF A STRANGLER) (1960), and HANDS OF A STRANGER (1962). Paul Orlac is a great concert pianist who loses his own hands in a train wreck. In their place, a surgeon grafts the hands of a guillotined knife murderer, Vasseur. To Orlac's horror the hands seem to desire to return to their career of crime. It is an idea that would be used many times in film, but this was the first and perhaps the most stylish use of the idea.
Under Weine's direction, Veidt's acting is very effective as a man almost being dragged around by his own hands. Veidt's face shows increasing madness as the film progresses. Perhaps the most effective image of the film shows a crazed Veidt, a mad look on his face, as his half-clenched hand, filmed in the foreground, seems to be leading or even dragging him. Beyond this the film has a gratuitously Gothic feel, the camera making much of taking place in a cavernous old house with its huge bullet-shaped doorways. It is a style that would later be imitated by Universal Studios in their 30s horror cycle.
More could be done with this story, as Karl Freund's MAD LOVE would prove. Still, the film has enough of its share of effective images to make it worth seeking out.
WEST OF ZANZIBAR
Most people who are fans of horror films--and who know a little something of the history of the horror film--respect the name of Lon Chaney. Chaney is the best-remembered horror actor of the silent era, at least for his silent work. (Karloff, of course, had his share of horror parts in the silent era, but he is remembered much more for his sound roles.) Chaney is the American horror actor most associated with the silent era. But oddly, his current reputation is based for all but a few horror fans on only two roles and a few stills from other films. It is relatively easy to find opportunity to see THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923) and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925). But how many of us have seen SHADOWS (1922), A BLIND BARGAIN (1922), THE TRAP (1922), or THE SHOCK (1923)? Films like LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1927) appear to be totally lost. Most of his other roles require some effort to find. Resurrected for Turner cable television is one of his more interesting efforts, Tod Browning's WEST OF ZANZIBAR.
Browning is best remembered as the director of the 1930 film DRACULA, and is a bit less well-remembered for FREAKS (1932), but he has a number of interesting films to his credit. He did several previous films with Chaney including THE UNHOLY THREE (1925), THE BLACKBIRD (1926), THE ROAD TO MANDALAY (1926), and the lost and legendary LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT (1927). He is also remembered for two sound era films: MARK OF THE VAMPIRE, his 1935 remake of LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT with Bela Lugosi and Lionel Barrymore, and his 1936 DEVIL DOLL, again with Barrymore.
The story opens in a London music hall. Phroso the Magician (played by Chaney) is a popular attraction, particularly when he performs the illusion of turning a skeleton into his beautiful wife. How, his wife is more interested in Crane, an ivory trader played by a young and handsome Lionel Barrymore. Phroso gets into a fight with Crane only to have his back broken. The magician has lost both his wife and the use of his legs in one evening. Some years later, Phroso's wife returns from Africa, dying and with Crane's baby. Phroso decides to take revenge on Crane and his daughter. Flash forward eighteen years and Phroso is no more, but in his place is the vengeful mystery man called Dead-Legs. In a cannibal village in the title location, Dead-Legs is hatching a plot to destroy Crane. Using his stage magic to control the superstitious natives, he has Crane's daughter brought to his jungle outpost. There he begins to exact his revenge.
Admittedly, WEST OF ZANZIBAR has a plot that is a bit simplistic and the twists in that plot telegraph themselves well in advance of actually occurring. This makes it difficult to say this is actually a good film by modern standards. But the macabre jungle melodrama is told with more than a little style and the resulting film is surprisingly enjoyable as an artifact.
We see here two of Chaney's claimed thousand faces. Phroso the Magician's stage make-up is obviously played for a laugh, with Chaney even borrowing a gesture or two from Charlie Chaplin. Out of the stage make-up he looks very normal. But Dead-Legs is something very different, something reptilian. His head is shaved so he looks nearly hairless. Out of his wheelchair, he slithers his way lizard-like across the floor not unlike a serpent.
Much of the scripting is dated. Natives have names like King Lunkaboola and Bumbu. There is no Kunta Kinte in Tod Browning's Africa! These are savages who glisten as if they had been laminated. They eat their enemies and have independently invented their own version of Indian suttee. But they are easily fooled by the simplest of stage magic. But underneath everything is a story of deep emotions and Chaney's rubberlike face shows impressive subtlety of expression. In short, this film was worth resurrecting. It does show us more of the range of Chaney's acting skills than has been available previously. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS
When the 1989 film BATMAN was being cast there was a strong opinion in many people's minds that Jack Nicholson was perfect for the role of the Joker. Nicholson seems to smirk very naturally, like the Joker. In my opinion, Nicholson made a very bad Joker having the wrong stature and actually the wrong facial structure. I told friends at the time that, just as a historical fact, there was once an actor who really could have looked like the Joker. In fact, the comic book figure of the Joker was visually based on the looks of Conrad Veidt in the 1928 film THE MAN WHO LAUGHS. Also, the visage was the inspiration for a later horror film, MR. SARDONICUS (1961). Gwynplaine of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, however, was not a villain like his later imitators but like Quasimodo a tragic, noble figure living in a deformed body. THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is, in fact, an adaptation of a lesser novel in which Victor Hugo explored some of the same themes he employed in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.
Gwynplaine was the son of a Scottish nobleman who refused to vow loyalty to James II of England. The noble was given a double punishment of being executed in the Iron Maiden and of having his son have a surgical operation that twisted his (the son's) mouth into a perpetual grin. Whatever Gwynplaine would ever feel internally, to the world his face would always be a broad grin. Gwynplaine is eventually adopted into a traveling show where he becomes a famous clown. There he falls in love with a beautiful blind woman, Dea. Dea is played by Mary Philbin, who seems to attract stigmatized lovers, though here she is spared the unmasking scene she withstood in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. But the royal court of England is not through with the tortured soul with the smiling face.
The plotline of the THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is a bit muddled and confusing. The story features a dog whose intelligence puts Rin-Tin-Tin to shame. There are good reasons why this film was not the success for Universal that two similar predecessors, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923) and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925), were. But none of the film's faults can be attributed to the terrific performance of Conrad Veidt. Given only his eyes for expression over that horrible grinning mouth, he manages to convey a tremendous range of emotion. Most people have seen Veidt at most only as Cesar the Somnambulist in THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI and as Colonel Strasser in CASABLANCA--neither film allowing him much range of emotion. And neither film prepares the viewer for the excellent range of Veidt's acting in THE MAN WHO LAUGHS.
The centerpiece of the film is a scene in which Josiana, a rather sexy and over-sexed duchess, tries to seduce Gwynplaine with the latter wanting the love of a sighted woman, but still trying to hide his mouth from her. Veidt carries the scene masterfully with his eyes only. (Josiana, incidentally, is played by Olga Baclanova, who played the villainous Cleopatra in Tod Browning's FREAKS.) This scene and any scene in which we see Gwynplaine's whole face, requires two interpretations from the viewer. How would others interpret the scene if they did not know the smile was meaningless, and secondly, by looking at Gwynplaine's eyes, can we tell what he is feeling? And Veidt controls both interpretations at the same time--an amazing feat of acting.
THE MAN WHO LAUGHS is also an artifact of the advent of sound into films. It has a complete soundtrack, mostly music, but also with sound effects, occasional voices, and a song repeated twice in the film.
The film heavily abridges the Hugo story and reaches a little too far to place a happy ending where Hugo never intended. But while this is a flawed film, it boasts some of the most impressive acting of the silent era. It certainly has sharpened my interest in Veidt. This may be a hard film to find--it took me several years--but it is a film well worth the wait.
These three films show the ability of two similar actors: Chaney the American and Veidt the German. Veidt, incidentally emigrated with the coming of Naziism to Germany. Apparently he returned to Germany for a short visit in 1930 and was held prisoner by the Nazis until Gaumont British Studios were able to get him out safely. (There is a short account of this in Ephraim Katz's FILM ENCYCLOPEDIA.) Each made major contributions to the pre-sound horror film.
Mark R. Leeper
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Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
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