The Man in the Iron Mask

Intermittently exciting "Musketeers" tale, highlighted by the "Jekyll-Hyde" performance of Louis Hayward as the King of France and his undiscovered (then, discovered) twin brother. Mr. Hayward does a great job; especially when the "Good" twin confronts the "Evil" twin with his "Iron Mask".

"The Man in the Iron Mask" might have been better as a swashbuckling horror story; and, director James Whale could have delivered the goods. The Iron Mask of the title is designed for Edgar Allen Poe-type horror… it is locked around a Hayward's neck, so that he will slowly be strangled by his own beard. A gruesome death! I expected a little more excitement, and suspense, in this film.

The other characters are enjoyable; Joseph Schildkraut was my favorite supporting character. Joan Bennett is the beautiful love interest, but she doesn't have much of an opportunity to show any acting skills. By the way, her scene in the coach shows her looking very much like Scarlet O'Hara from "Gone with the Wind." After seeing her in this, you can picture her testing for Scarlett.

******* The Man in the Iron Mask (6/26/39) James Whale ~ Louis Hayward, Joan Bennett, Joseph Schildkraut, Warren William

All in all, a solid film with some excellent cinematography, uniformly excellent cast and good direction (except the romantic scenes--James Whale always was a bit stiff in that department). I thought the musical score was just adequate, even though it was nominated for an Oscar that year.

Blink and you miss Albert Dekker (credited) at the opening and Peter Cushing (credited and his first screen appearance) as one of the soldiers in the scene where the soldiers first encounter the musketeers (Cushing has no lines). Dwight Frye (not credited) can be spotted as a valet about 3/4's of the way in. He has a few lines but we are so used to seeing him as "Fritz" in Whale's Frankenstein movies that he's not easy to recognize (he's a little heavier looking in this film for one thing).

Hayward was a good choice for the dual roles. A good actor, there was always something rather unpleasant at times about his looks while at other times he looked quite handsome--I think he was used to great advantage here for that reason.

Almost all the leads were independent artists, not contracted to any particular studio, so it was rather weird seeing Warners' top character man Alan Hale in this (not that they give him a whole lot to do!) I'm guessing that some footage from the 1920s version of this film with Douglas Fairbanks was incorporated into at least one scene--the king showing the newborn prince from his balcony early in the film.

After seeing this, I began to wonder if Stan Lee or Jack Kirby did not draw inspiration for their "Dr. Doom" comic book character from the iron mask shown in this film.

All positive comments are agreed to. This is truly one of the finest ones. The only minor dig that I could come up with is that they could have had more dueling sequences. Louis Hayward was capable of more robust fencing than what was portrayed here and I don't think they utilized his skills to any great degree. Outside of that this is a truly enjoyable film, black and white or not and while I don't advocate doing every B/W film over by colorizing it, I think I would like to see what this one Australia, What Guy Pearce Remake??????? Guy Pearce did Count of Monte Cristo, not M.I.T.I.M. as far as I have been able to determine.

James Whale, when he wasn't doing horror films which set trends, or the occasional musical, went literary with this entertaining adaptation of the famous French novel.

Old hands are involved - Warren William, Alan Hale - as part of the quartet of ageing musketeers, and do the production credit. South-African born matinée idol Louis Hayward plays both the twins admirably and pretty Joan Bennett does her usual turn which she could do in her sleep (as the princess betrothed to the bad twin and in love with the good twin).

The film veers from some very funny moments to some sweet romantic scenes between the good twin and the foreign princess, and the different characters of the twins are well portrayed. There are also a number of excellent performances in the supporting cast. With all this (and Whale's surreal imagination) you can forgive the odd lapse away from Dumas' original vision. Good stuff indeed.

Though The Man In the Iron Mask is swashbuckling adventure at its finest it's hardly an accurate picture of the times. But Alexander Dumas was no more writing history here than he was in The Three Musketeers which in many ways this is the further adventures of.

Twin sons are born to Louis XIII and his wife Anne of Austria and in order to avoid dynastic rivalry, one of them is sent with the King's trusty right hand D'Artagnan to raise in his native Gascony. The other becomes the well known Louis XIV and ascends to the throne as a child of six.

Warren William is the aging, but still very capable D'Artagnan. In his scenes especially the film bares more than a slight resemblance to the version that Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. did as his last silent film. I would not be surprised if a lot of stock footage was incorporated here by producer Edward Small and director James Whale.

Louis Hayward essays the difficult dual role of both Louis XIV and his twin brother Phillip. Hayward's first big break came as Anita Louise's lover and Fredric March's father in Anthony Adverse where he lost a duel to Claude Rains. Hayward never lost too many screen duels after that though his swashbuckler parts that he mostly did after service in World War II never matched up to this.

Joseph Schildkraut and Walter Kingsford are the evenly matched pair of ministers vying for preeminence as Fouquet and Colbert. Colbert did in fact triumph, but not in the way as shown here. And Fouquet was a guy who liked to live high on the hog. In real life that's what actually brought him down.

The Man in the Iron Mask is an often filmed tale here in America, I'm sure the French have done many versions. For adventure and romance you can't beat it and this version is one of the best around.