Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Review: 'The Man Who Laughs' and 'The Last Warning' Blu-rays


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.

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