The Man Who Laughs

The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928) Silent film produced by Universal of the Victor Hugo novel that, in this incarnation, inspired two, maybe three kids working in comics (Bill Finger and Robert Kahn, and Jerry Robinson) to create Batman's Moriarty, The Joker.

Conrad Veidt plays Gwynplaine, the child of a dissident noble, Lord Clancharlie, who is sentenced to death by King James II for his activism against the King. Following his father's execution, to teach the boy to not follow in his path, his face is carved into a hideous smile, An orphan, he and the blind child Dea are taken in by Ursus, an itinerate con-man, until he is cast off to make a wretched existence as a clown in a travelling show. Billed in the carny as "The Laughing Man," Gwynplaine has the ability to make any local rabble laugh at his ghoulishly smiling face. What makes him stay is the love of the blind girl he rescued in the snow, and his own disgust at his ravaged face, which, of course, she cannot see.

As bad as it is, though, it is tolerable. But, what goes around comes around. His past—and his peerage—comes back to haunt him as the circus approaches the lands of the Clancharlie family. At one show, he has the same horrified, bellicose reaction that has become his goal instead of his curse, that he only notices his lack of success: an evil countess (Olga Baklanova) who he encounters in his old home town. This leads to problems with his love, as his heart is torn between the woman who's never seen his face, or the one who's intrigued with him despite his affliction.

The fact that, unbeknownst to him, she's living on his lost estate complicates things even further...especially as he must reclaim his title if he he is to make the countess secure in her current comfortable state of living.

It's high melodrama of the most "melo", and Leni crafts it with an artists' eye for lighting from the German Expressionist style, and a trickster's way with camera movement. It's far more subtle than most films of the silent era, while glorying in the dramatic gestures of the time, and makes for a compelling fusion of the German and American film sensibilities and of the drama, comedy, swashbuckler and horror genres.

The Cameraman (1928)

The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, 1928) The first film of Keaton's production deal with M-G-M (which would ultimately prove disastrous for the filmmaker). Believed lost until a print was found in Paris in 1968, it was co-directed by Keaton (who went without credit) and Edward Sedgwick (an M-G-M regular, who is best known for "discovering" Lucille Ball, a debt she re-paid by hiring Sedgwick as a producer for her company, Desilu). Keaton's control over his movies was slightly less than at his own studio, but he managed to retain his producer function, while giving up the "director" credit. Ultimately, though, he would lose management of business decisions to the studio, who would embark on a misguided effort to change the kind of performer Keaton was most popular as. The film of The Cameraman is an odd little prophecy of what would come later in Keaton's career.

Keaton plays "Buster," a humble tintype photographer ("they make excellent ash-trays!"), scraping together a meager living photographing interested passers-by on the streets of New York. While photographing an attractive woman (Marceline Day), the two are besieged by a crowd of people—a big event is happening on the street and they are crushed by innumerable rubber-neckers trying to get a glimpse of what's going on. This includes a newsreel photographer from M-G-M (meta reinforcement), who the woman, Sally, pays a lot of attention to.

Through the eyes of love, Buster sees the future and it is not seen in tintypes. After being rejected by M-G-M Newsreels (where Sally is the receptionist, hence her interest), he takes his savings from his old technology (tellingly nearly destroying his apartment in the meantime) to buy a newfangled cranking movie camera and prove his worth.

He does some testing, both of his equipment and with Sally, taking her on a date around the city. The first doesn't go too well. Being inexperienced, Buster makes a lot of mistakes, his footage being shaky, over-and double-exposed, and useless, which he only discovers when he screens his footage for the Newsreel brass. The other photographers he'd be competing with have a high old time hooting at his rookie mistakes, while the Boss simply tells him he's no good and won't consider hiring him.

Sally, however, takes pity on the hapless schnook and agrees to go out with him when her planned Sunday date falls through. The sequence begins with an elaborate crane shot that moves up and down the stairwell of Keaton's apartment house as he tries to get time on a shared phone in order to talk to Sally. When she agrees to see him, he's so excited that he runs to her boarding-house arriving there before she can hang up the phone.

The date is a battle of logistics: it seems all of New York is in cahoots to separate Buster from Sally and he must come up with unique and frequently dangerous ways for them to be together. This violation of space is a running gag throughout their date, where folks just impose their will on Buster, and he must come up with ways to regain it, change it, or accommodate it. The most bizarre of these is when he must share his cramped changing room at a public pool with a man (Edward Brophy, the film's unit manager) who insists on occupying the same room—the confusion of clothes and limbs (in one extended take, it should be noted) is hilarious, frenzied and unorganized in an un-choreographed awkward tangle.

The date (such as it is) does not go very well, with the intervention of Buster's news-reeling rival (Harold Goodwin) for Sally's affections driving her home in a torrential down-pour with Buster exposed to the elements in the car's rumble-seat.

But, once again, she takes pity on him and gives him a choice assignment when rumors of a skirmish at a Chinatown celebration reaches her desk. She gives Buster the assignment, and he barely survives being shot, run-over, and arrested while recording the event. Although the footage is spectacular, Buster has nothing to show for it, but a three foot roll of film. He evidently forgot to load the camera.

Well, that's how it appears, anyway. In the midst of the film, Buster somehow manages to acquire a hurdy-gurdy monkey who has more than a monkey's paw in having Buster come away with the plum assignment empty-handed. It should be noted that the on-screen chemistry between Keaton and the monkey is amazing, rivaling the affection between Keaton's character and Sally. Perhaps, the primate found in Keaton a fellow-acrobat and relentless performer.

In one of their attempts to inject formula into Keaton's film, the "real" M-G-M brass insisted that a shot of Keaton smiling be part of the end, but preview audiences expressed a dislike for it and it was taken out. It presaged the studio's forthcoming ideas on how to "improve" Keaton's likability to audiences, forcing him to do "talkies" and even sing when they moved into sound pictures. The Cameraman, with its story of a photographer forced to change, uncomfortably, with the times, is a bit of a reflection of Keaton's uneasy relationship with the studio, which would rapidly deteriorate.

It was, however, added to the National Film Registry in 2005 for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Keaton remembered his move to M-G-M as "the worst mistake of my career."

* Tintype photography still exists, but the process takes 10 minutes per picture and modern life just can't wait that long. But, photographer Victoria Will still makes tintypes, which have the weird effect of looking like someone has been sent back in time.

Spies (1928)

Spies (aka Spione, Fritz Lang, 1928) Based on a novel by his then-wife Thea von Harbou, who had collaborated with the director on his previous film, the more-famous being Metropolis, Spies is a proto-James Bond movie released back when that character's author-creator was a mere twenty years old. Here, agents, given numbers and their names taken away, hunt down the criminal masterminds hiding in plain sight as respected businessmen in Germany.

One such Captain of Industry is Haghi (Rudolph Kleine-Rogge*), who is a financier and is in charge of the huge Haghi Bank. But, his interests are more than just the compounded kind. A master of blackmail, and with a network of duplicitous agents scattered in high places, Haghi keeps track of the weaknesses of his account-holders, and uses them to his own end, infiltrating them in with the more established agents in various high-stakes plots: The Minister of Trade is assassinated from a moving car and condemning evidence is stolen right on the street; secret documents are lifted from the French Embassy in Shanghai; a murderer is saved from hanging to be used as an agent; and the wife (Hertha von Walther) of a prominent politico will have her opium habit exposed, if she does not obtain information about an upcoming treaty with Japan. The web of intrigue is intricate and spreads world-wide.

So, who's around to stop this seemingly endless series of espionage? The police are baffled and the government's Secret Service seems to be caught so flat-footed that they are openly mocked by the press. Why, intrepid Agent 326 (Willy Fritsch), Our Man on the Street as he's been working extremely undercover in the guise of an out-of-work vagrant (which may explain why there's so much hanky-panky going on in the upper strata of Society). He is approached for, and is rather reluctant to accept, the assignment of finding out who the criminal mastermind is behind all these capital crimes. He is initially reluctant, but that may only be a ploy to uncover the enemy agent in the SS ranks, which he exposes right under the chief's nose. Even the Secret Service is not out of reach of the crime network's clutches.

Agent 326—Our Man on the Street

But, Haghi learns of the agent's mission to hunt him down (don't ask how) and enlists one of his own to serve as a "honey trap" for 326, the Russian spy Sonya Baranilkowa (Gerda Maurus), to seduce and distract the agent, and, if necessary, eliminate him. Convinced of his anonymity, 326 never suspects when he comes to the rescue of a distraught woman on the run from the police, that he might be in the process of being set up. All he knows is there's a beautiful woman in trouble and he comes to the rescue.

...but he cleans up really nice.

But, even the best-laid plans of a criminal genius like Haghi's can go awry; he doesn't count on 326** and Sonya actually falling in love after she throws herself at him. This, of course, complicates things—for both sides. Meanwhile, 326, in order to protect Sonya, must keep her hidden from the police (which he knows) and away from Haghi (which he has no clue). But, what he also doesn't suspect is that Sonya has been ordered to betray him, and will do so if Haghi uses his considerable persuasive tactics against her.  

The evil Haghi is not all he appears...

There are complications involving a lover's misunderstanding, an elaborate death-trap for our hero involving a train and an abandoned car in a tunnel, as well as further blackmail schemes, more plots, betrayals, deaths, and a raid on Haghi's secret headquarters inside his bank, as well as one elaborate twist you won't see coming that ends on a darkly ironic note—the sort of not-completely happy ending that Lang preferred (when the studios weren't interfering).

The Haghi Bank and its intricate series of paths, much like a prison.

It's an elaborate puzzle of a movie, with set-pieces that would inspire the humorous intrigue of Alfred Hitchcock in his films (in Germany, Britain, and America), and set a path for sensationally elaborate hokum that would become a tradition of all but the most staid spy films. Lang was a pioneer of such over-the-top fantasy. In his films, threats come from beyond the frame out of nowhere, and the trouble to which the villains go to eliminate any interference would make any normal (evil or non-evil) businessman go running for budget projections.*** At some point, audiences wouldn't be blamed for asking (as they do now) "why don't you just shoot him?" but, even then, the entertainment of the thing keeps the question from burbling to the surface, delaying the logic until after the movie is over. One doesn't want to be a spoil-sport, no matter how much of a megalomaniac one might have the potential to be. The evil plans are ornate, and probably wouldn't pass any forensics examination or test of logic or practicality. They simply are fun (although e-vil) and impressive in the sort of imagery that distracts from the absurdity of the logistics (some of this might be owed to the stunt-work of American silents that were so popular with audiences; there's not an awful lot separating the action work of Lang, and say, Buster Keaton, other than intent). And so, the spy-movie, the thriller runs a long, circuitous and often bumpy line from the early comedians (including Chaplin and Lloyd) through Lang and Hitchcock and on to Bond and Bourne and beyond; it's a century long chase that spans the projected image in an attempt to capture the imaginations of the audience.

The film is presented below.

* Klein-Rogge was Lang's always dependable villain, playing the evil inventor Rotwang in Metropolis, and in a series of films, Lang's master criminal Dr. Mabuse.

** We never do find out his name, although his street-character's name is Hans Pockzerwinski (now, there's a name people will forget quickly)

*** As we all know now, Evil has no budget.  And if they did, they don't care going OVER budget.

Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Charles Reisner/Buster Keaton, 1928) Keaton's last film as an independent (before signing onto an ultimately disastrous contract with M-G-M) is a variation of "Romeo and Juliet," but instead of bickering families in Verona, Italy, it's two riverboat-owning-fathers in the city of River Junction who object to the union of William Canfield, Jr. (Keaton) and Kitty King (Marion Byron) and them finding any happiness together.

At 71 minutes, this one is feature length (for a silent film), with the story revolving around the son of "Steamboat Bill" (Ernest Torrence) coming back from college to spend time with his father, who he never knew growing up.  The rough-and-tumble paddle wheel captain is chagrined to find a slight, mustachioed ukulele player getting off the train, with the two not even recognizing each other for an entire sequence of the film. Bill's hopes of Bill, Jr. helping his lackluster boat business try to stay afloat are soon dashed, and he's even more horrified that junior is fond of the daughter of the rich man, J.J. King, who's latest venture is a fancy riverboat business that attracts riders away from his own.

The two riverboat barons try to keep the two apart, and barring that, try to sink each others' businesses.  King gets Bill's boat condemned, and the flinty steamboat captain's subsequent rage gets him incarcerated, leaving junior to try to spring his father from the grey bar hotel which ultimately fails in execution, and lands the son in the hospital.

Keaton, given a window of opportunity, bringing the house down.

Then, the winds come.  

In one of Keaton's (and cinema's) most elaborate stunt sequences, a typhoon hits River Junction wreaking havoc and destroying buildings, tossing denizens around as they scramble for shelter—all except for young Bill, still unconscious in a hospital...until there isn't one, anymore. It has been ripped from its foundation by the tornado winds that come down upon the town like a deus ex machina to bring the warring parties together in the end.  It's also one of the most elaborate of the Keaton constructions that dominate the last acts of his films, where story is abandoned and the film accelerates to its final resolution by throwing at its hero any number of hurdles and obstacles that he must dance, pivot, and somersault up, over, around and through.  

This one is a marvel, using high-powered wind machines and a massive crane, the river town is calved, halved, blown away and blown down, depending on which direction opposite to it Keaton is propelling through. Even without the abundance of splintering buildings, Keaton's stunt work (against the push of six powerful wind machines) is still thrilling to watch, as he bends, corkscrews and leans impossibly forward in an impossible effort to stay on his feet.

It's thrilling, ingenious, often surrealist stuff, even more amazing when you realize that Keaton did the stunts himself, designed the sequence and directed it, a tour de force of Nature, real and imagined, on all fronts. 

The complete film is below.