Painted Faces

"Painted Faces" is a film best enjoyed by someone who is willing to cut the film a lot of slack. It's a bit old fashioned and dated...plus the story has many portions that are tough to believe. But, it also is entertaining and worth seeing.

When the film begins, there is a murder and a young singer is found with the murder weapon...standing over the body. While it looks like an open and shut case, most of the film takes place in the jury room...where one lone holdout, Hermann (Joe E. Brown) refuses to vote guilty. Why? What secret insight does he have in the case?

This film is in many ways like the classic "12 Angry Men"...though made almost three decades earlier. It might just be the first lone holdout juror film--a familiar theme in some films of the 30s, 40s and 50s...as well as TV shows such as "The Odd Couple" and "All in the Family". But it's also quite strange---especially in having Brown speaking with an odd Dutch accent (IMDB says Scandinavian but in the film one of the jurors refers to him as Dutch). It also was a rare film in that you see Brown perform a lot of acrobatics he learned when he traveled with the circus in his pre-Hollywood days.As for the ending...it's really tough to believe and strange. What also is strange is that despite Brown in the lead, it's NOT a comedy! Odd but worth your time.

PAINTED FACES (Tiffany-Stahl Studios, 1929), directed by Albert S. Rogell, stars comedian Joe E. Brown in one of his early film roles. Though best known for his comedy works, especially those movies produced for Warner Brothers in the 1930s, for anyone familiar with the Joe E. Brown style, would find PAINTED FACES a disappointment mainly because Brown isn't funny. That's not to say Brown isn't funny in a sense of not really being funny, but actually playing a serious role with no comic touches involved.

Set in New York City's theater district, the story begins with backstage preparations for an upcoming show as stagehands work on props along with actors coming in and about their dressing rooms. Entering the theater are Buddy Barton (Barton Hepburn) and Lola Barnes (Dorothy Gullliver), a song and dance team engaged to be married. On the same ill is Wally Roderick (Lester Cole), a fresh actor who has made advances on Lola. At first Buddy decides to leave the theater, but although Lola convinces him to remain, he tells her if Roderick gets fresh with her again, he will "get him if it's the last thing I'll do." Later that night as Lola is performing on stage, gun shots are heard in the background. A crowd gathers backstage with Buddy standing there holding a gun with Roderick in his dressing room dead on the floor. Though Buddy claims he didn't kill Roderick, he is arrested anyway, put on trial and awaits the jury to deliberate his fate. With the foreman of the jury (Purnell B. Pratt) having the jurors place their deciding votes inside the passing hat, all but one juror writes his "Not Guilty" verdict. The lone juror turns out to be Herman (Joe E. Brown), a circus clown by profession, who feels Barton is innocent because this is a crime nobody saw. Five days pass, with Christmas day fast approaching, the eleven jurors still stand on their decision of guilty, while Herman's decision continues to cause the other jurors to become restless and angry. To abide his decision, Herman gets the jurors to sit down and listen to his story as to why he feels Barton to be innocent. Others in the cast are: Richard Tucker (District Attorney); Mabel Julienne-Scott (Mrs. Warren); with William B. Davidson and Jack Richardson in smaller roles. Songs heard in this photo-play include: "Bashful Baby," "If I Had You" and two reprises of "Somebody Like You."

After getting through the film's first ten minutes with plot development and backstage murder story, one tends to forget Joe E. Brown is actually in this movie. He's finally seen after the trial sequence followed by twelve jurors entering the deliberation room. One of the biggest surprises is not that fact that Brown's not the subject matter on trial for murder, but an accented speaking juror of Dutch background. The only scene pertaining to the Brown comedy style comes when he has the angry jurors smiling and laughing a bit while showing what he does professionally. The "painted faces" title only comes through the flashback sequence with Brown in clown attire and facial painting. While the first half of the story set in the jury room holds great interest, the flashback sequence revealing Herman's background as Beppo the Clown slows its pacing a bit with melodrama and pathos with Herman acting as surrogate father to his deceased friend's daughter, Nancy (Helen Foster). She then returns to him after being away in school to get herself involved with a man Herman feels to be all wrong for her.

PAINTED FACES offers a grand mix of two separate stories in one that would make one immediately think about its two sources involved - a 1923 Broadway play or screen adaptation of POPPY (1936) starring W.C. Fields, to the much later 12 ANGRY MEN (United Artists, 1957), a jury drama starring Henry Fonda. As much as Brown was a well-known comedian in his day, after getting adjusted to his accented speaking character in PAINTED FACES, he shows how convincingly he can be as a serious actor without provoking unintentional laughter by contemporary viewers.

With so many backstage themes hitting theaters in 1929, at least PAINTED FACES offers some originality to hold interest, especially with Joe E. Brown in an offbeat role. For being an independent production by Tiffany-Stahl, PAINTED FACES fortunately has survived. Though sources claim this to be 75 minutes at length, circulating prints available on DVD is five minutes shorter. Regardless of length and weak moments, PAINTED FACES is certainly both a rare treat and interesting film from the early days of "talkies." (** clowns)

I'm amazed that a previous reviewer found the sound recording of poor quality. I thought the sound recording was exceptionally good. There was no noise at all on the track and every word came across not only clearly and distinctly but with just as much recording precision as you would expect of any movie made before 1950! But it's certainly right to compare this movie with "Twelve Angry Men". I thought "Painted Faces" came out well ahead. It was brilliantly acted by Brown in an extremely difficult role. If you see the movie twice, you'll know what I mean. The actor actually signals the plot. But I didn't pick it up the first time either. Now that is ACTING! Some reviewers though he overdid the accent, but I found it quite convincing. And what a powerful plot it is! And I thought Albert S. Rogell's directorial work was absolutely brilliant. As the cover notes on the excellent Alpha DVD tell us, Rogell directs this movie with a naturalistic, overlapping style of dialogue that prefigures later works by Hawks and Altman. I haven't praised the other actors yet. ALL are brilliant. And Brown himself gives the performance of his life!

... as in I have no idea why Joe E. Brown plays his part with a (German?) accent here. It just makes him harder to understand and adds nothing to his character.

At first it looks like you are going to get two maudlin melodramas for the price of one. The first maudlin melodrama starts as an entertainment team enter a vaudeville house where they are going to be working and discover that a man who hit on the female half of the team is playing there too. Her partner - they are planning to get married - threatens to kill the guy if he touches her again.

So predictably, one night, the lethario performer is found dead in his dressing room with the man who threatened to kill him standing over him holding the gun that shot him. Now here the poverty row roots yield a little humor. The dead man's dressing room looks more like a utility closet. Oh, and you never see the actual dead man's face when he was alive. The accused claims he picked up the gun and found the man dead, and that he is innocent.

Fast forward to the trial, actually the end of it. Since when is the girlfriend of the accused allowed to sit at the defense table? And why is the judge doing the prosecutor's job for him, with jury instructions that sound like he is telling the jury to convict the guy?

So the bulk of the film is in the jury room - and kudos to the makers of the film for including women on the jury. Almost 30 years later it is still "12 Angry Men" after all. Eleven of the jurors vote guilty on the first ballot. The holdout is of course Joe E. Brown's character. He has no real reason for his objection other than he believes the circumstantial evidence claim by the defense and is adamant in his objection. This goes on for five days. When the foreman says he has had enough and is going to tell the judge that they are hopelessly deadlocked, Brown makes a deal with the jury. He says he wants to tell them a story about circumstantial evidence that will change their minds. If it does not, he says, he will vote guilty with the rest of them.

This must be some story, but all I can say is watch and find out. I will tell you that before this last part of the film I was going to give it a 4/10. This last part raises it to a 6/10. It is very interesting seeing Joe E. Brown so early in his film career. This is right before he begins his six year career with Warner Brothers and makes some of his best films. I think he had the kind of comic career there that Buster Keaton could have had in talking films if only Buster had been lucky enough to join up with an outfit that understood his talents as well as Warner Brothers seemed to get Brown.

I'd recommend this one for those interested in both the comic and dramatic talents of Joe E. Brown.

Antique, static, early talkie, a sort of bad Lon Chaney version of TWELVE ANGRY MEN. Joe E. Brown gives a good performance as Hermann, a clown on the jury (yes, he plays a clown and he is on the jury) who is the lone holdout for acquittal, but between poor sound recording and his stage-Dutch accent, the whole thing turns into a mess. Brown is excellent in the circus scenes (yes, circus scenes) when he is doing his clowning, but otherwise, there is not much here of interest.