Ris donc, paillasse!

"Laugh, Clown Laugh" is another masterpiece from Lon Chaney. Although I didn't like it as much as some of his other work, it is nevertheless considered as one of his best films.

Tito (Chaney) and Simon (Bernard Siegel) are traveling clowns moving from town to town in Italy. One day Tito stumbles upon an abandoned little girl and rescues her. Despite protests from his partner, he names her Simonetta (to appease Simon) and raises her as his own. The grown up Simonetta (Loretta Young) blossoms into a beautiful young lady. Tito and Simon meanwhile, have become successful and now headline the grandest theaters in the land.

One day Simonetta, while out for a walk becomes entangled in a barb wire fence. She is rescued by Count Luigi Ravelli (Nils Aster) and taken to his home. There she learns that he is a womanizer and escapes. Tito suddenly discovers that he is in love with Simonetta when she appears before him in a stylish new dress.

Three Years later, Tito and Luigi meet while being treated by a doctor (Emmett King) for emotional problems. While in the office, Simonetta meets up again with Luigi and after some reservations begin to see each other ultimately becoming engaged. Tito is devastated and becomes distraught. In his sorrow he must continue to make people laugh as the show must go on even though he is being torn apart inside. Finally Simonetta discovers that Tito is also in love with her. Now she must choose.

Chaney returned to the eternal triangle theme time and time again in his films. He usually played the rejected lover and expressed such pathos that one could hardly help but feel pity for him. This film is no exception. The scenes where he must mask his sorrow and continue to play the clown, are classic Chaney.

Loretta Young, who would go on to a successful career spanning many decades was but a sweet sixteen when this film was made. The vast difference between her age and Chaney's made Chaney's character all the more pitiful.

Not only is this the greatest performance I've seen by Chaney, it is one of the great films.

In this, Chaney definitively proves he is one of the greatest actors, perhaps the greatest, in all of film. Although he appears in different make-ups in almost every scene, the make-up is to portray himself as a younger man who slowly grows older as the 25-year span of the film tells the well-known tragic love story more familiarly known as "Pagliacci," the clown who could not laugh.

The film co-stars a radiant 14-year-old Loretta Young, who Chaney supposedly guided to another great performance. Without the director, who was unduly harsh on her, knowing it. When Chaney found out, he made sure he was always with Young whenever the director was. Young's mistreatment ended.

Several times I was near tears because Chaney's performance--watch his eyes, hands and demeanor--is so naturalistic, even though somewhat melodramatic, as all silent performances were.

Almost all of Chaney's films were about unrequieted love, but here he may have reached his apotheosis. I won't know until I see a few more of his non "horror" films, especially, "He Who Gets Slapped."

Don't let what I've said make you think this is some clunky "tear-jerker," It is filled with good laughs, drama, wonder and real pathos. Chaney's final scene is utterly tragic and beautiful.

Even non-Chaney fans will be awed by "Laugh, Clown, Laugh."

"Laugh, Clown, Laugh" is a very sad movie, much like "He Who Gets Slapped", only much more heartrending. There is no horror, and the only special makeup is clown makeup. Lon Chaney finds an abandoned toddler, naming her Simonetta to appease his partner Simon. The movie wastes no time into getting to the main plot, involving a teenaged Simonetta (played by a 15-year old Loretta Young), who the circus coordinator says should look like a woman in order to join Tito's and Simon's act.

Tito (Chaney) has loved Simonetta from the time he finds her as a toddler. When he tells her she needs a rose in her hair, Simonetta goes to the gardens of Count Ravelli (Nils Asther), where they grow. She scrapes her legs over the barbed wire fence, and Count Ravelli sees her and takes her into his house to tend to her. He is a womanizer, and immediately becomes infatuated with her. He verbalizes his love, and says the prophetic "What an alluring woman you could be." Maybe it encourages her, even after she learns to her horror that he is a womanizer, because later that day, she is dressed like a woman and amazes Tito.

Both men are now passionately in love with her, and suffer uncontrollable emotions as a result (the Count's is laughter, and Tito's is crying). Three years later, the two men meet at a neurologist's and decide to cure each other, not yet knowing they are both in love with Simonetta.

After they recover, they learn. Count Ravelli gives Simonetta some pearls, which Loretta and Lon Chaney initially reject--until they read the accompanying note. Then, things get really complicated.

Each performance is excellent throughout. Chaney gives an excellent performance, though his quick transformation from a fatherly love to one that borders on incest. Tito is not the kind of man who is given to that kind of passion, and he doesn't like it, knowing it is wrong. Nils Asther is not dramatic or as convincing as Lon Chaney, but then, who can outshine Chaney? No one. Count Ravelli's transformation is more plausible because Loretta Young makes Simonetta innocent and pure, who by her virtues slowly changes him from a reckless womanizer to a devoted lover. All three deserve praise, and don't be surprised if you want to watch it more than once. It may be sad, but it is also sweet.

A one man special effects unit, Lon Chaney was known as The Man of a Thousand Faces and more than lived up to his nickname. Of course, he is best known for his work The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but his career was loaded with impressive performances of all kinds. Laugh, Clown, Laugh certainly showcases one of the many he did.

Herbert Brenon, known as a despotic director, directs the film. It's a bittersweet romantic melodrama, a film with a similar theme that Chaney did in 1924's He Who Gets Slapped. The fifteen-year-old Loretta Young (only 14 at the time of shooting) is 45-year-old Lon Chaney's leading lady. Young started in showbiz at the age of four as an extra, but this was her first major role. The film proved to be popular; MGM had it shot with an alternative happy ending to its sad ending and let the individual movie houses decide which version they wanted. No surviving copy of the happy ending seems to have survived. It's taken from a 1923 play by David Belasco and Tom Cushing based on the Italian play Ridi Pagliacci by Gausto Martino, Elizabeth Meehan is the screenwriter. The play had a successful run in New York with Lionel Barrymore in the Chaney role. It was shot on location in Elysian Park, a suburb of Los Angeles by the legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe.

The film is simply about Tito (Lon Chaney) a clown in a traveling circus, a performer who once drew in massive crowds with his skills. When he was younger, he found himself in a most unusual situation, however. He and his friend Simon discover an abandoned young girl, who has no chance of survival on her own. Out of kindness, the two take her in and she is raised on the road with the two performers. As time passes and the years roll on, the girl blossoms into a beautiful young woman, known as Simonetta (Loretta Young). Tito's prime has passed, which has him in a depressed state at the outset. He and the self-indulgent Count Luigi Ravelli (Nils Asther) learn to help each other with their problems, but become romantic rivals when Simonetta falls for the rich count. Tito then falls into a spiral of sadness, due his mixed emotions.

Probably the first thing you'll notice about Laugh, Clown, Laugh is how little attempted dialogue there is. The title card is used infrequently. The vast majority of this movie is told in near pantomime: gestures, facial expressions, and stage direction. It is also eloquently plotted, so we understand the situations and dramatics instantly and inherently.

Without Chaney though, this film just would not work. It would seem forced or flashy, almost hyperactive in some ways. Chaney is the anchor, the solid center whose pure motives move quickly over to the mixed when he realizes the emotional bond between Simonette and himself is growing more "physical." Without the seriousness, the emotional concrete that Chaney provides to tie the movie to a core concept, the flighty nature of Loretta Young or the overacting of Simon and Count Lavelli would forever damage the narrative. Chaney is the epitome of a clown laughing on the outside as he is dying on the inside, and Laugh, Clown, Laugh is a classic film.

Certainly the tale of the clown who's laughing on the outside, but crying on the inside, is not a new one. But in this version, Lon Chaney makes it his own through the force of his heart rending characterization.

The story of a clown who falls in love with the little girl he's raised as his daughter stops shy of being incestuous because the clown Tito, (Lon Chaney) tries to hide his feelings from the girl, Simonetta.(Played by a very young and exquisite Loretta Young.) Realizing that it's inappropriate,Tito always holds himself in check, but Simonetta is aware because she knows him so well. His realization that Simonetta is now a young lady, and no longer a child is one of the most touching scenes in the movie.The depth of his feeling for her speaks to the anguish of his inner soul, and produces emotional problems for which he seeks the help of a famous internist. The opposite side of the coin is played with aplomb by Nils Asther, whose emotional affliction is uncontrollable laughing,whereas Tito's is crying. Both men's salvation lies in the love they share for Simonetta.

While this is overall a sad movie, there are moments of lightness as well, especially when Tito is performing as Flik on the stage, and when he's trying to get Simonetta to laugh. Bernard Siegel gives fine support as Tito's partner Simon, who performs in the act as Flok.

By the end of the movie, you'll understand the pathos of Simon aka Flok saying, "Laugh, clown, laugh even though your heart is breaking."