In 1927, German director and art director Paul Leni moved to
Hollywood where he began making pictures for Universal starting with the
comedic old dark house prototype The Cat
and the Canary. With that film, Leni proved his merits many times over by
taking a plot as hoary as Cane and Abel and zapping it to life with some of the
most inventive and audacious film tricks ever slapped across the screen. The
picture was a hit and signaled the beginning of a fruitful relationship between
Universal and the German expatriate.
Sadly, Leni’s unexpected demise in 1929 meant that
relationship would not be as fruitful as expected, but he did manage to make
three more films for Universal before succumbing to sepsis. The first of those,
a Charlie Chan picture called The Chinese
Parrot, is lost, but The Man Who
Laughs and The Last Warning are
very available and now making their Blu-ray debuts thanks to Flicker Alley.
By a great degree, the more essential film is Leni’s
penultimate picture. Gwynplaine is disfigured by his father’s political rivals as
a boy, leaving him with a strange and permanent grin, and sentenced to play the
“The Laughing Man” in a traveling carnival as an adult. Political and romantic
intrigue follows as star Conrad Veidt heroically emotes through the infamous immobile
smile Jack Pierce masterminded—the first of many iconic makeups he’d create for
Universal.
The Man Who Laughs
is regularly filed under horror mainly because of Veidt’s somewhat creepy exaggerated
smile, which famously inspired Bill Finger to create The Joker. However, there’s
nothing remotely monstrous about the tenderhearted Gwynplaine, and the film more
legitimately earns its horror credentials with its leering villains, shadowy
and distorted style, and some grotesque images, such as a haunting sequence
depicting gallows victims swaying in a winter wind. The cast flaunts such horror
vets as Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari) and Mary Philbin (The
Phantom of the Opera), as well as Olga Baclanova, who would soon play the beautiful
monster Cleopatra in Freaks. Nevertheless,
The Man Who Laughs is a period melodrama at
heart, and one that has not lost any of its emotional punch 90 years on.
The Last Warning
is closer to true horror than The Man Who
Laughs, though it is ultimately another Cat
and the Canary old dark house type picture. In fact, it nearly plays as a
remake of Leni’s first Universal movie, though the action is moved from a
Gothic mansion to a cosmopolitan theatre. That’s where an actor dies under
mysterious circumstances to apparently reemerge as a ghost who issues written
warnings not to revive the theater’s company. As was the case with The Cat and the Canary, Leni’s movie
magic tricks—creepy shadow play, roaming camerawork; bizarre superimpositions;
wacky, animated intertitles—are much more interesting than the Scooby Doo plot
or caricaturish characters. The utterly charming Laura La Plante, who was the brightest
spot in the cast of The Cat and the
Canary, gets far less to do this time around.
Flicker Alley has performed an extensive 4K restoration on
both The Man Who Laughs and The Last Warning. This is much more
dramatic in the nearly flawless Man Who
Laughs. The Last Warning exhibits
some scratches and other artifacts, but it still looks pretty fabulous for its
age with powerful contrast and sharpness under the occasional scratches. Viewers
have the option of watching The Man Who
Laughs with its original score, but both films boast new ones too. The fine
new score for The Man Who Laughs was
composed by seven students from the Berklee School of Music, and it compliments
the film very well (though I tend to yen for the kinds of tinny, cornier sounds
evident in the original score when watching a silent film). Blending jazz and
classical influences, Arthur Barrow’s score for The Last Warning is a bit more generic though it suits that picture
well enough too. Both discs feature their respective films on both Blu-ray and
DVD and include picture galleries and text essays. Each set also includes one
segment of John Soister’s two-part audio essay on Leni’s brief career at
Universal.
