Conrad Veidt (the somnambulist Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) is brilliant as Gwynplaine, delivering a great performance without being able to use the expressions of his mouth, its movement being greatly restricted by the effects makeup. For him the emotion truly is 'all in the eyes' here and he does a fantastic job of making us feel for this character. Paul Leni shows us his talent as a director and storyteller and we are shown a veritable 'cast of thousands' in this big budget extravaganza. You may also recognize the actress playing Dea as Mary Philbin from Universal's 1925 Phantom of the Opera.
The MovieTone soundtrack synchronization made this a step up from old silent film scores as it adds things like sound effects and crowd noises. Jack Pierce may be one of the unsung heroes/saviors of this production. The studio first envisioned this as a talkie, but I think it is lucky for us that they scrapped that idea (as I will explain in the next paragraph).
Pierce's makeup work for surgically disfigured main character Gwynplaine involved a set of dentures with wires holding the smile wide and thereby making delivery of dialogue by actor Conrad Veidt nearly impossible. This helped in two ways: Firstly, even if he could've spoken despite the makeup Veidt would've spoken with a strong Germanic accent and may have still needed to suffer the injustice of his dialogue being dubbed by another actor. Secondly, after reading a seemingly endless excerpt of the original ending from the Hugo novel on the DVD, I would fear trudging through the novel if it is as filled with endless repetitive blathering speeches by the characters. The inclusion of long, repetitive speeches would've dragged the pace of this movie down like an anchor (like some of Terry Goodkind's later Sword of Truth books, which similarly contained speeches where characters basically said the same exact thing over and over for pages upon pages). Without the lengthy tedious speeches, the film moves along better and draws us to the charismatic character of Gwynplaine instead of making us annoyed with him the way the novel excerpt did in my opinion. A really good film or story needs to be able to trust the audience to figure things out and understand without needing to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer or have everything spelled out for them in giant neon signs.
STORY: Gwynplaine was the son of a British Lord who was taken by his father's enemies and sent off to the gypsy Comanchicos who performed cruel surgical work, which involved cutting his face to give him a permanent exaggerated smile. Young Gwynplaine rescues a blind baby from the harsh winter and they are taken in by Ursus. When they grow up, he and the lovely Dea are on the road doing traveling shows with Ursus. Dead has grown to love the gentle and caring Gwynplaine without ever seeing his face. It is soon discovered that Gwynplaine is a rightful heir to his father's position in society, but how will this affect his and Dea's lives and what effect will the royal court and Lords have on his life assuming they would ever accept him as one of their own? INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: Whether or not Gwynplaine's look in this film influenced the character design of (Batman's nemesis) The Joker has been disputed by some, as has the claim that Bob Kane himself created that comic book villain (it may have been the work of one of his assistants), but the similarities are rather striking and the possibility has helped to bring more people to see this great film.
A brilliant film that I highly recommend!
The MovieTone soundtrack synchronization made this a step up from old silent film scores as it adds things like sound effects and crowd noises. Jack Pierce may be one of the unsung heroes/saviors of this production. The studio first envisioned this as a talkie, but I think it is lucky for us that they scrapped that idea (as I will explain in the next paragraph).
Pierce's makeup work for surgically disfigured main character Gwynplaine involved a set of dentures with wires holding the smile wide and thereby making delivery of dialogue by actor Conrad Veidt nearly impossible. This helped in two ways: Firstly, even if he could've spoken despite the makeup Veidt would've spoken with a strong Germanic accent and may have still needed to suffer the injustice of his dialogue being dubbed by another actor. Secondly, after reading a seemingly endless excerpt of the original ending from the Hugo novel on the DVD, I would fear trudging through the novel if it is as filled with endless repetitive blathering speeches by the characters. The inclusion of long, repetitive speeches would've dragged the pace of this movie down like an anchor (like some of Terry Goodkind's later Sword of Truth books, which similarly contained speeches where characters basically said the same exact thing over and over for pages upon pages). Without the lengthy tedious speeches, the film moves along better and draws us to the charismatic character of Gwynplaine instead of making us annoyed with him the way the novel excerpt did in my opinion. A really good film or story needs to be able to trust the audience to figure things out and understand without needing to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer or have everything spelled out for them in giant neon signs.
STORY: Gwynplaine was the son of a British Lord who was taken by his father's enemies and sent off to the gypsy Comanchicos who performed cruel surgical work, which involved cutting his face to give him a permanent exaggerated smile. Young Gwynplaine rescues a blind baby from the harsh winter and they are taken in by Ursus. When they grow up, he and the lovely Dea are on the road doing traveling shows with Ursus. Dead has grown to love the gentle and caring Gwynplaine without ever seeing his face. It is soon discovered that Gwynplaine is a rightful heir to his father's position in society, but how will this affect his and Dea's lives and what effect will the royal court and Lords have on his life assuming they would ever accept him as one of their own? INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: Whether or not Gwynplaine's look in this film influenced the character design of (Batman's nemesis) The Joker has been disputed by some, as has the claim that Bob Kane himself created that comic book villain (it may have been the work of one of his assistants), but the similarities are rather striking and the possibility has helped to bring more people to see this great film.
A brilliant film that I highly recommend!