“The Magic of Victor Hugo’s Name Will Pack Them In!” So read the headline on a trade-paper advertisement for Paul Leni’s production of The Man Who Laughs, a 1928 release based on Hugo’s eponymous novel of 1869. Can anyone imagine Universal Pictures, or any other Hollywood studio, using such an unabashedly high-art pitch to publicize an aspiring blockbuster in today’s pop-culture climate?
I certainly can't, but the strategy made sense when Leni’s film was opening because Hugo’s moniker had an impressive track record at the time. His name “did it with Hunchback” and “did it with Misérables,” the advertisement continued, capitalizing on memories of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Lon Chaney hit directed by Wallace Worsley in 1923, and the French adaptation of Les Misérables directed by Henri Fescourt, which Universal had profitably brought to the American market in 1927.
Leni’s name had clout as well, thanks to the international fame of his German horror movie Waxworks (Das Wachsfigurenkabinett) in 1924 and the success of his Universal mystery The Cat and the Canary in 1927. The prospects of The Man Who Laughs were also boosted by the popularity of Rupert Julian’s melodrama The Phantom of the Opera, which had debuted to much acclaim in 1925. As film historian Kevin Brownlow notes in his program essay for Flicker Alley’s new Blu-ray/DVD edition of The Man Who Laughs, the one–two punch executed by Leni with The Cat and the Canary and the 1927 hit The Chinese Parrot, a Charlie Chan mystery no longer extant, turned him into “the leading director on the [Universal] lot” and the ideal person to follow up The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera with what studio boss Carl Laemmle hoped would be “a third drama of disfigurement” with handsome box-office returns. Leni did not disappoint, although his subsequent picture—The Last Warning, another 1928 release newly released by Flicker Alley in a restored Blu-ray/DVD edition—had a less enthusiastic reception despite heavy recycling from most of the pictures mentioned so far in this article. Leni died a year later, at age 44, of sepsis caused by an abscessed tooth.
The Man Who Laughs begins in the late 17th century and centers on Gwynplaine, a 10-year-old abducted by evildoers—known as Comprachicos, a word Hugo invented—who turn ordinary children into jesters, clowns, and beggars by surgically mutilating their facial features or body shapes. Gwynplaine was handed over to these malefactors by King James II, who ordered them to carve the boy’s mouth into a permanent contorted rictus as punishment for his father, an enemy of the crown. In the film as in Hugo’s prolix but engrossing novel, little Gwynplaine is abruptly cast off by the Comprachicos, whereupon he becomes the accidental guardian of a blind baby named Dea; joins the meager household of a self-styled philosopher called Ursus; grows to adulthood; and stars with Dea in the philosopher’s traveling show. Complications are provided by Josiana, a loose-living duchess who takes a fancy to Gwynplaine’s bizarre appearance; Barkilphedro, the wicked courtier who engineered his mutilation; Hardquanonne, the renegade Comprachico who tracks Gwynplaine down years after performing the appalling surgery; and Queen Anne, the recently enthroned monarch who learns that Gwynplaine is the rightful heir of lavish property that she has been enjoying since his father was executed. Another significant character is a pet wolf named, for better or for worse, Homo.
Universal was a minor-league studio when Laemmle greenlighted Leni’s adaptation, so he justified the project’s above-average budget by designating it a “Universal Super-Jewel,” the studio’s name for extra-ambitious undertakings designed to elevate the company’s earnings and prestige. This designation notwithstanding, the studio’s first choice to play Gwynplaine turned down the part—an unexpected choice by Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces, who usually relished weird-makeup roles like this—so the assignment went to Conrad Veidt, whose prior roles included Cesare the somnambulist in Robert Wiene’s renowned 1920 shocker The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari) and Ivan the Terrible in Leni’s own Waxworks. The role of Dea went to Mary Philbin, who had starred with Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera, while Josiana, the other main female character, was played by the Russian-trained Olga Baclanova.
Leni was assisted behind the camera by superb technicians. One was cinematographer Gilbert Warrenton, who had recently shot The Cat and the Canary and would soon photograph the exquisite Lonesome (1928) for Paul Fejos, who, like Leni, was an immigrant now at home on the Universal stages. A second was makeup artist Jack P. Pierce, whose later excursions into the bizarre would include Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue and Victor Halperin’s White Zombie, both released in 1932. The third was one of the film’s three art directors, Charles D. Hall, a veteran of The Cat and the Canary whose early sound-film credits range from Lonesome and The Last Warning to Tod Browning’s Dracula and James Whale’s Frankenstein, the 1931 releases that launched Universal’s legendary horror cycle. Whale acknowledged The Man Who Laughs as a powerful inspiration for some of his contributions to that cycle, according to Brownlow, who also cites Brian De Palma’s tribute to Leni’s film in his 2006 thriller The Black Dahlia and mentions the influence of Pierce’s crazy-clown makeup on artist Bob Kane when he created the Joker for the Batman comics in the early 1940s. In addition to its fantastical effects, The Man Who Laughs has a sophisticated visual design, using the motif of enshrouding and concealing—for example, the scarf hiding Gwynplaine’s mouth is echoed by the fabric hiding Josiana’s legs in some voyeuristic scenes. Leni also suggests the kinkiness of Josiana’s appetites by linking her interest in Gwynplaine’s deformity with her affection for the monkey she keeps as a pet.
The Man Who Laughs holds up extremely well in Flicker Alley’s digital edition, which also contains a mildly interesting video essay by John Soister and an unusually strong gallery of production stills and publicity materials, including the trade-paper ad quoted previously. Produced at the dawn of the talkie era, the film was released first as a silent picture and slightly later as a sound picture with a dedicated music score. Flicker Alley includes the original Movietone score as one of two optional accompaniments, and it proves quite effective apart from gimmicky additions of crowd noise and, worse, a soprano who sings a ditty called “When Love Comes Stealing” during two otherwise sweet scenes of romantic rapprochement. The other score on the disc, composed and performed by students at the Berklee School of Music, gets the job done in a slightly more contemporary—and mercifully soprano-free—manner.
Turning to The Last Warning, the hyperactive montage sequence that fills the opening moments is extremely striking. In other respects, Leni’s last picture is less ambitious and less impressive than The Man Who Laughs, and its star, Laura La Plante, has little opportunity to raise its level in her surprisingly small amount of screen time. The warmed-over mystery at the heart of the film—produced as a Universal Jewel, not a Super-Jewel like its predecessor—concerns a stage actor who is improbably murdered in the middle of a performance. The theater where this happened is shuttered for several years, then reopened and apparently haunted by the dead man’s ghost, who appears to be angry about a revival of the very play in which he met his demise. The picture serves up clutching hands, ominous messages, and peculiar plot twists, and eventually a sort of Phantom of the Playhouse scampers around in a malevolent-looking mask. Silly as it is, the film gains a modicum of charm from Leni’s sardonic style as well as the decors by art director Hall and the cinematography by Hal Mohr, who had shot Alan Crosland’s game-changing The Jazz Singer in 1927 and would soon direct The Cat Creeps, Julian’s 1930 remake of Leni’s own The Cat and the Canary.
The Last Warning premiered at the tail end of 1928 in both a silent version and a sound version with dialogue sequences, sound effects, and a Movietone score. Flicker Alley’s release presents only the silent version, with newly composed music by Arthur Barrow that works nicely, apart from a few lapses when the music cutely mimics the visual action. The restored prints and digital editions of The Man Who Laughs and The Last Warning are products of Universal’s very welcome silent-film initiative and Flicker Alley’s growing catalogue of classic cinema. May both enterprises continue to thrive.
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David Sterritt
David Sterritt is Editor-in-Chief of Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He wrote about silent cinema often during nearly 40 years as film critic of The Christian Science Monitor.