The Mask of Diijon

The year 1946 was one of the best for great movies, giving us such winners as The Best Years of Our Lives, The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers, and Canyon Passage. Unfortunately The Mask of Diijon was not one of these.

Bizarre actor-director Eric Von Stroheim had his triumphs in a long career, which dated back to the early silent era -- as a director, Foolish Wives (1922), The Merry Widow (1925) -- as an actor, The Grand Illusion (1937), Sunset Blvd. (1950). Unfortunately The Mask of Diijon was not one of these.

Showing up in Hollywood just before World War I, Stroheim excelled playing cruel German officers with his trademarked shaved head and monocle. He passed himself off as an Austrian aristocrat and a military expert, claiming he had served as an officer in an elite cavalry regiment. In reality he was from a respectable Jewish lower middle class family, and the closest he got to the cavalry was a brief stint as a mounted mail carrier. Never mind, the self-made legend was born, and it stuck to him all his life. He was billed as "the Hun" and "the man you love to hate." His career as a director was over by the late twenties. After several expensive flops, studio bosses were tired of his extravagant ways and his egotistical, abrasive personality. He continued on as an actor though, on occasion rising out of mediocrity with such as The Grand Illusion (1937) and Five Graves to Cairo (1943), in the latter of which he played German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel!

The Mask of Diijon is a long way down from those days, possibly Stroheim's darkest pit with the light of Sunset Blvd four years distant. This is a very cheap production. No-name actors, except for "the Hun", cheap sets, bad lighting, and awful script. The use of many dark scenes that some people may mistake for arty noir style is obviously just the result of not wanting to spend the dough for bright lights. Murky was the word all the way through. The acting was uninspired but not terrible, especially considering the cast got maybe 20 seconds per scene to rehearse in a budget-minded number like this. The story was the real killer though. Disturbed, paranoid magician uses hypnotism to get innocent victims to do his will, including suicide and murder. His hokey method of hypnotizing these clucks is simply reflecting off a shiny lighter into their eyes and mumbling something like, "You vill do vatefer I say!" And get this -- he learns this evil, occult skill simply by reading some books with self-help type titles something like How to Control People with Your Mind. Puleazee!!! If it were that easy to hypnotize people, I would have my grouchy old wife packed and down the road tonight, and by tomorrow night I would have a half-dozen young babes cavorting about my house! Come to think of it, I would have to hypnotize myself into being able to cavort. Never mind.

There were a few good moments in The Mask of Diijon, but I found myself continually praying the 70 minutes would finally drag to an end (I'm one of those masochist types who can't just turn one off). This movie is a stinker -- only for Von Stroheim devotees or desperate insomniacs.

Erich von Stroheim's acting career often saw him playing some kind of variety-act performer: in THE GREAT GABBO (1929), which I own but have yet to watch, he was a ventriloquist; in THE GREAT FLAMARION (1945), an expert marksman; and here, as in the French-made L'ALIBI (1937; which I have now acquired), he dabbles in mind-reading (though, in this case, he starts out as a magician who 'trips up' in front of an unforgiving audience and is humiliated – to the consternation of his heavy-set promoter, who has no qualms about receiving guests at home while slumped on a bed in his tank top undershirt!). Incidentally, most sources give the film's title as THE MASK OF DIJON, so that I was surprised to notice the extra "i" in the credits! While the script makes no particular exertion on the star's immense talent, his commanding presence and accented delivery of lines is more than enough for him to create a memorable character nonetheless (making good the publicists' dubbing of the former auteur as "The Man You Love To Hate"!); interestingly, just as he had been flanked by Dwight Frye in THE CRIME OF DR. CRESPI (1935), this time around Edward van Sloan is on hand to evoke that distinct Universal Horror flavor (the director having previously helmed THE RAVEN [1935] for that studio, despite the film under review itself bearing the low-rent PRC logo)! The one other strong point here, in fact, is the atmosphere (aided by alternately odd and menacing camera angles, expressive night-time lighting and even fast cuts during an especially tense and paranoid moment for Stroheim's character). While the remaining supporting cast is weak – fatally, the young leads whose innocuous romance sends the unbalanced yet egomaniacal protagonist off the deep end – it does include Denise Vernac, the star's current real-life partner, as another down-on-her-luck entertainer. Throughout, Stroheim hypnotizes a number of people – among them driving Vernac's associate/husband to suicide and a stick-up man at a diner who immediately returns the dough to the befuddled proprietor – but his efforts to dispose of his amorous rival (again, and much like in the afore-mentioned CRESPI!) ends in disaster, and death for himself…here meted out in unforgettable, and most ironic (given the film's opening sequence), fashion: let me just say it involves a guillotine and a playful kitty and leave it at that!

World famous stage magician Diijon (Erich Von Stroheim) has retired, having performed the greatest trick of his career: getting babe Victoria (Jeanne Bates) to marry him. Diijon now dedicates his time to studying the power of suggestion and hypnotism, but treats his wife like dirt, which leads to the poor woman leaving, becoming a singer and teaming up with dashing musician Tony Holiday (William Wright).

Consumed with jealousy, and having finally perfected his powers of mind control (testing his ability by disarming a stick-up artist and commanding a man to commit suicide), Diijon hypnotises Vickie into shooting Tony in front of an audience at the Romany Gardens restaurant.

A poverty-row B-movie from PRC, The Mask of Diijon is a rather routine potboiler lifted somewhat by a commanding performance by Von Stroheim, who lives up to his nickname 'The Man You Loved to Hate': Diijon is dour, cruel, menacing and thoroughly unlikeable, which makes the film's finalé, in which the miserable mesmerising magician meets a grisly fate, suitably satisfying.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Deserves a fairly good rating because it has a very skillfully set up and well done ending. Once in a while a golden nugget of movie brilliance can be found lodged within a cheap forgotten film. The ending of this one is such a nugget.

Most of the cast is lively if not memorable and they are better than the film itself. They keep it watchable despite the drabness of the PRC production values and undoubtedly rushed filming schedule. Von Stroheim is his usual menacing self and does a good job in the title role.

Von Stroheim is effective but the hypnotism techniques used in this film are rushed and not well thought out. Despite many such weak elements "The Mask of Diijon" holds together and moves along in a fairly well paced linear b-movie style. Its not a terrible example of the dark 1940's b-movie creepy murder genre, and certainly worth a look.

Erich von Stroheim stars in The Mask of Diijon from 1945, directed by Lew Landers.

Diijon is a former magician who is studying the power of the mind, to the dismay of his partner and wife Victoria (Jeanne Bates). She can't find a job, and he refuses to work. When her ex-accompanist Tony (William Wright) shows up, he arranges for them to work at his club. It's a disaster, but Victoria stays on as a singer.

Thoroughly jealous of Tony, Dijjon tries a hypnosis technique out, then hypnotizes Victoria so her song will end in a spectacular manner.

Lousy cheap production but von Stroheim is always effective. And of course learning hypnosis from a book and convincing people tondo all manner of things is ridiculous.

However, as others have pointed out, the finale is not to be missed! Total genius. Splendid performance by Sheba the cat.