{"id":17606,"date":"2018-03-17T00:19:39","date_gmt":"2018-03-17T04:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=17606"},"modified":"2018-03-17T00:21:22","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T04:21:22","slug":"no-laughing-matter-victor-hugos-cruel-romance-lhomme-qui-rit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=17606","title":{"rendered":"No Laughing Matter: Victor Hugo’s Cruel Romance “L’homme qui rit”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in late February I posted an interview with composer Marilyn Lerner, who performed her improvised score for Paul Leni’s unforgettable 1928 version<\/a> of Victor Hugo’s emotionally brutal novel L’homme qui rit<\/strong>, aka The Man Who Laughs <\/strong>at the Revue Cinema on Sunday February 25th, 2018.<\/p>\n

Hugo’s story of a child scarred with a grotesque smile by criminals, and as a young man, forced to perform as a clown under the pretense of terrifying makeup is already the premise for the perfect horror film, but both Leni’s silent classic and Jean-Pierre Am\u00e9ris 2012 version<\/a> aren’t horror per se, but social critiques masquerading as horror, romance, and melodrama – quite a bundle, plus a lead character that poses unique challenges given a wrong interpretation could plunge the drama into bathos.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

The great Conrad Veidt.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conrad Veidt was a marvelous actor, gifted with a slender, malleable physique, a knack for pantomime, and above all, fiery eyes that made the long-suffering Gwynplaine a magnetic, sympathetic character. Yes, the extreme grin is horrific – the makeup reportedly inspired the design of Jack Nicholson’s version of The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman<\/strong> (1989) – but it’s Veidt’s eyes that keep us glued to the wild drama that takes a clown to the heights of Britain’s House of Lords, and back again to the grimy streets in a finale more prolonged and outrageous than The Phantom of the Opera<\/strong> (1925), Universal’s previous shocker that also co-starred Mary Philbin as the heroine \/ ingenue \/ pure-at-heart love interest.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"

Conrad Veidt as the magnetic sorcerer in one of my eternal desert island picks, The Thief of Bagdad (1940).<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

My favourite Veidt performance is still the eeevil sorcerer in The Thief of Bagdad<\/strong><\/a> (1940), one of the greatest Technicolor productions. Co-director Michael Powell exploited Veidt’s fiery eyes in magnificent close-ups, perhaps out of directorial instinct, or maybe having seen the powerful way Veidt conveyed Gwynplaine’s suffering almost exclusively through his eyes.<\/p>\n

Universal recorded a kind of ‘safely’ audio track on disc that featured music & sound effects but no sync dialogue, just in case talkies would take over the film business, but with intertitles and a reliance on performance, Laughs<\/strong> is still a classic silent which provides a composer with a unique set of characters, circumstances, conflicts, and time period to craft an original score. Marilyn Lerner’s music deserves to be married to the film on a needed Blu-ray release, which hopefully is in Kino’s sights as they gradually remaster their silent film catalogue in HD.<\/p>\n

Hugo’s story was remade in 2012, but it’s a very different creature that’s reportedly more faithful to the novel, but does pays homage now and then to the 1928 film. It’s in colour and features a good cast, but director Am\u00e9ris also seemed to borrow a little bit from Burton’s Edward Scissorhands<\/strong>\u00a0(1990) – or perhaps Burton borrowed a bit from Leni’s film, if not Hugo’s tale of a social outcast struggling to find love and happiness in an alien ‘civilized’ world.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Revue’s ongoing series of silents + live music continues Sunday March 25<\/a> with Alfred Hitchcock’s 1927 boxing film (!) The Ring<\/strong>, with music by Tania Gill, and I hope to have a podcast interview with composer \/ performer Jeff Rapsis up by next week, in which we discuss his live performances to silents such as The Golden Clown<\/strong> \/ Klovnen<\/strong><\/a> (1926), which screened at the Revue back in January.<\/p>\n

Coming next:<\/em> the preposterous giallo Eye in the Labyrinth<\/strong> \/\u00a0L’occhio nel labirinto<\/strong> (1972) from Code Red and the neo-giallo What the Peeper Saw<\/strong> (1972) from VCI, plus Larry Peerce’s brutal urban terror drama The Incident<\/strong> (1967) from Twilight Time.<\/p>\n

Cheers,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor
\nKQEK.com<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviews of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs on film: the 1928 silent classic directed by Paul Leni & starring Conrad Veidt + the 2012 Jean-Pierre Am\u00e9ris version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[1665,2562,2563,5573,5579,5571,5554,5569,2249,5556,5572],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ManWhoLaughs_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4zY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17606"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17606"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17630,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17606\/revisions\/17630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}