False Faces

Lowell Sherman is a doctor and surgeon in New York City who gets kicked out -- quietly -- for taking money at a free hospital for promising extras for his patients. He heads out to Chicago, where he sets up, despite no training, as a plastic surgeon. Doctors are not permitted to advertise -- he gets his name in the paper anyway, he lectures nationwide on the radio, he writes a column in the newspaper. Women come flocking to him and it isn't until the real doctors come down on him that he is arrested for malpractice.

The audience at the Museum of Modern Art didn't care much for this movie, because .... well, I thought it was better than most of them did. About eighty years ago, one of my grandfathers opened a butter-and-eggs store. Every morning, the housewives would come in and ask if there was anything special. After a while he put a crate of eggs under the counter and when asked, would produce these. "Double-candled," he would explain. For these, instead of a dime a dozen, he got twelve cents. More recently, I was speaking with a niece about a problem, and noted that not all problems have solutions. "That's pessimistic!" she chided me. I shrugged.

Lowell Sherman's black-hearted Pre-Code scoundrel -- his specialty in the movies at least since Griffith's WAY DOWN EAST -- knows that people believe they can have what they want, and that anyone who tells them they can't is, like all the other doctors in this movie, who decry Sherman's methods, in a conspiracy to deprive them of their just deserts. It's not just medicine; look at cosmetics, or perfumes, or even politics -- if I may bring up the subject -- in which far too many people will believe anyone of expertise who promises them what they want, even if it makes no sense, and blame its unavailability on some malign conspiracy, that the spellbinder will deliver.

Well, best not to get into politics here, given that the people at the Museum would never fall for that line -- just some other. Sherman is good in his role as the stinker, Berton Churchill is fine as his more cautious accomplice and there are plenty of Pre-Code ladies doing things that they could only do for a few years before the Code clamped down.

... either those he directed or starred in or in this case both. Lowell Sherman plays Dr. Silas Brenton, an M.D. who we are told by his superior is a talented doctor, but who has no scruples whatsoever. He's been extracting extra money from his patients' relatives claiming he'll give them extra special treatment. He's quickly caught and discharged. Silas leaves town, moves to Chicago, and decides to set up shop as a plastic surgeon, even though he has no training in that field. He employs a publicist, played by David Landau, to make sure that all of the wealthy people in town know about him. He forgets all about the girlfriend he had back in New York, doesn't answer her telegrams, and takes up with a cutie that he hired as his secretary, that is, when he is not romancing some wealthy patient's daughter in hopes of marrying into real wealth and respectability.

The movie spins an interesting tale, and Sherman's directing and acting are top rate as usual, but you can't help but be struck by the fact that the script gives Silas Brenton no redeeming or humanizing characteristics at all, and that Brenton has no exit strategy from the fraud he is perpetrating and has got to know will eventually be discovered. He starts out doing "false face lifts" - not really doing anything - and telling patients they need to wait six months to see results, but then moves on to bigger and more dangerous surgeries he's got to know he's unqualified to perform. I'll let you track down a copy of this film and see how it plays out.

Berton Churchill plays Dr. J.B. Parker, Brenton's partner as "consulting physician" who, unlike Brenton, seems to know when Brenton has carried things too far. Lila Lee plays Silas' girlfriend from New York who is torn between loving this guy and knowing that he has to be stopped and brought to justice.

Look out for the interesting nightclub scene towards the middle of the film. The M.C. comes out and introduces celebrities in the audience. Among them is Ken Maynard, a western star of the 20's and 30's who, ironically, suffered a professional implosion of his own making just like the fictional Dr. Brenton.

Dr. Silas Brenton (Lowell Sherman) is an extremely unethical surgeon. The story starts with him being discharged from the hospital where he worked due to his spectacularly absent ethics. So, instead of learning from this and behaving more ethically, he moves to another part of the country and sets himself up as a plastic surgeon to the rich and famous. The problem is that he has no training in this and he's more concerned with self-promotion instead of the health and well-being of his patients. As time passes, he becomes more and more audacious and you know that sooner or later his actions are going to land him in hot water.

The DVD cover for this reads: "Scandalous Pre-Code Classic". Well, since it debuted before July, 1934, it is Pre-Code...but scandalous? This makes the movie look like some sort of exploitation film or would at least imply that there's so really salacious content...which there isn't. Sure, it shows a highly unethical man...but the film could have been made and shown after the toughened Production Code was put into force. In other words, if you are looking for sleaze, well, this isn't really what you are going to see...though Dr. Brenton is a real jerk.

Is it worth seeing? Yes. Sherman's performance is enjoyably slimy and the film is never dull. It's a shame that the print on the Alpha Video DVD is so blurry and in need to restoration. Not a brilliant film but one worth seeing.