L'uomo che ride

As I'm writing this TCM America will be showing 1966's The Man Who Laughs, a French/Italian co-production. I saw this movie when I was boy on the tv on a Saturday afternoon. I knew nothing about the classic novel by Victor Hugo nor the classic Silent movie that starred Conrad Veidt. I was fascinated by this story of a deformed young male acrobat. He wears a leather mask over his lower face to hide the permanent "grin" that was carved into his face as a small boy. The young man is also in love with a blind woman. After a performance with a small circus this young man reveals his deformity setting in motion tragic events. Our "hero" is 'discovered' & seduced by a noblewoman; he is enticed into coming a head henchman of the noblewoman's brother. The blind woman is also 'discovered' by a young nobleman who also falls in love with her. This nobleman is the enemy of the family who our "hero" now serves. You can guess what's going to happen; mostly.

Anyway as a kid I found this fascinating. Going by the previous reviews & what I remember I'm going to say that the people behind this production were inspired by the classic silent film to do their own take on the basic premise. And it seems to me that the director, writer & who else also inspired by the '50's movie version of Scaramouche, which also has a deformed theatre performer. This is Not a Remake.

The setting is moved from 18th c. England to Renaissance Italy where politics were literally cut-throat. And this is mostly like a low to moderate production using costumes, props from other productions and the very plentiful ancient & scenic Italian buildings & landscape giving an authentic atmosphere. This is not a great nor classic movie; there are a few things done, story-wise, that would make an adult viewer scratch their head. This is a B-grade costume drama/thriller that should be appreciated on it's own; associating this movie to better works of literature and cinema with the same title would just ruin the experience. I gave it 5 stars just to be fair.

Jean Sorel stars as the disfigured Gwynplainte (here renamed Angelo, just because) and as some random guy with the same (undisfigured) face in this sort of remake of the classic movie starring COnrad Veidt. It's still about the cruelty of the Borgias, if that means anything.

It looks like director-cowriter Sergio Corbucci decided to turn the Victor Hugo story into one of pure body horror. Kudos to art director Alessandro Dell'Orco, and to cinematographer Enzio Barboni for the beautiful glass shots, but this is just another swords-and-sandal movie with some pretension. With Lisa Gastoni, Edmond Purdom, and Ferdinando Poggi.

This is a new version of famous German classic of 1928 starring Conrad Veidt. The theme is basically the same: a boy, kidnapped by gypsies, has his face deformed to be always smiling and thus become a circus attraction. Sold to company of traveling artists, he knows a blind girl, for who falls in love.

But a great difference exists between both movies: Of England of the king James II, the history was transferred to Italy of the 16º century, in the times of Caesar and Lucretia Borgia. Angelo - the man that always laughs - is a monster, horrendous, much uglier than the character that Veidt interprets in the original film and he will become a killer to service of Borgia.

Besides, the history is very exaggerating and a scene is difficult to believe: the plastic surgery that transforms Angelo in a perfect copy of the Duke is absurd even in the patterns of the year 2000, imagine in the 16º century!

A movie without interest, with a good proposal but very badly developed.

They did not credit Victor Hugo , which was a wise move ; like he did in "the hunchback of Notre Dame ", the writer depicted a human being considered a monster .The movie is one thousand light years from the novel.

There are some similarities though : both disfigured Angelo (Gwynplaine in the book) and blind Dea were adopted by a travelling performer ;and a high-born lady ,a duchess,falls for the ugly man (here represented by Lucrezia Borgia , but the noble was a virgin in the book!).

The rest was written from start to finish by the screenwriters; it does not take place in queen Anne 's reign but under the Borgias' and it is a pretty entertaining swashbuckler , which sometimes recalls "the prisoner of Zenda" ; Jean Sorel plays a double rôle , the "laughing man " and Borgia's enemy, a virtuous noble who fights against his tyranny : French Sorel's good looks went against him in his native country (there was no room for two Alain Delon) and he often worked in Italy ;to play an ugly figure was certainly an act of self-renewal for this rather inexpressive but handsome actor.

With its sudden new developments ,and its hilarious implausibilities ( the reconstructive surgery was far ahead of its time ,at Borgia 's time,if one is to believe the screenwriters; a psychological shock ,and voila, she can see) , the movie is enjoyable ,if you do not take it seriously ,of course. Never a dull moment.

Over the past couple of years, the English-dubbed version of this Italian-French co-production has been shown continuously on TCM UK. However, my unconditional love for Paul Leni's 1928 Silent classic (once one of my top cinematic holy grails) has always kept me away, perhaps not wishing to sully my fond memories of it. Still, now that sufficient time has elapsed and coming hot on the heels of a long list of similar Italian "sword and sandal" epics I've watched recently (a habit which seems to be nowhere near exhaustion!), I decided to give this one a go at long last...

Well, to say that Sergio Cobrucci's remake is inferior to Leni's original would be the understatement of the year. Ever since I've seen him in Luis Bunuel's BELLE DE JOUR (1967), I've always liked having Jean Sorel in a film but here, inexplicably playing a dual role, he's certainly no match for Conrad Veidt's bravura performance. The make-up itself is not particularly effective either and the film-makers' decision to take several liberties with Victor Hugo's text is a mixed blessing, too: not only has the titular character suffered a namechange (from the lyrical Gwynplaine to the more prosaic Angelo) but he even turns villainous (becoming the Court's Executioner no less) when his beloved Dea is cured of her blindness and falls for the dashing figure of a patriotic rebel played by none other than Jean Sorel himself!!

The film's setting is also unaccountably changed from 1700s Britain to Renaissance-era Italy where the hateful Borgias - Cesare (hammily portrayed here by Edmund Purdom) and Lucrezia (played by a sultry Lisa Gastoni, and the film's one undeniable bright spot) - preside over their lands with sinful recklessness. Although Veidt was also seduced by a vampish Olga Baclanova (who, amazingly for its time, does appear fleetingly naked in one sequence), unfortunately for him he wasn't allowed to indulge in any sizzling romps in the hay with her as Sorel and Gastoni do in this version. In a sense, this is also what's essentially wrong with this remake: while certainly a watchable if thoroughly routine historical melodrama, it ends up being merely a vulgarization of the sublime original with Corbucci displaying none of the visual poetry which marked Leni's masterpiece. Luckily for him, however, his luck was about to change as he immediately embarked on the film he is perhaps best-known for - the Gothic-tinged Spaghetti Western DJANGO (1966)...