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Bookmark this pageThe 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
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