Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Director: Paul Leni, Carl Laemmle
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
The production set-up must be unique: a French novel with an English setting filmed by a German director in an American studio. Victor Hugo's sentimental horror comic, featuring a rightful heir kidnapped by gypsies, a blind orphan and so on, becomes a riot of expressionist detail in Leni's forceful handling, his camera tracking Hugo's various grotesques and innocents through rabbit-warren sets (Southwark Fair, the London docks). The whole farrago is anchored by Veidt's sensitive rendering of the title character, so called because his mouth has been carved into a hideous grin by one of the story's numerous villains. Baclanova is amusing as a decadent duchess, but it's Leni's pictorial genius - aided here by what must have been an enormous budget - that marks the film as one of the most exhilarating of late silent cinema.Author: BBa
Cast & crew
Director: Paul Leni, Carl Laemmle
Producer: Paul Leni, Carl Laemmle
Cast: Conrad Veidt, Mary Philbin, Cesare Gravina, Olga Baclanova, Brandon Hurst, Josephine Crowell full cast
Genre(s): Horror
Duration: 111 mins
Most popular on this site
Features
To the letter
Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.
Mind over matter
David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.
Fool's gold
Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.
We are the championed
Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."
A history of violence
Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.
True romantic
James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.
Playing in the dark
MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.
Junk bonds
Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.
What do you think?
Post your review now