The Man Who Laughs (1928)

"A queen made me a lord, but God made me a man!"

Gosh, what a fittingly republican sentiment that is for this of all weekends. Personally, I'm actually a bit of a moderate royalist these days but I don't really go in for the whole personality cult thing. Is it just me who finds the jubilee a bit scarily conformist, even threatening? This weekend you'll mostly find me battening down the hatches and playing the Sex Pistols very loudly. Anyway…

I first became aware of this film as an influence on Bob Kane when he came up with the character of the Joker back in 1940. Whatever book I was reading (something to do with the fiftieth anniversary of Batman back in 1989, I think) featured a photograph of Conrad Veidt in this film, looking uncannily like the character. And now I've finally seen it. It's tragic melodrama about a man deformed with a permanent grim, with a lot of pathos and a lot of meditating on how, like, all clowns are sad. There's one scene in particular, with Gwynplaine (the eponymous character) on stage in make-up, where it suddenly becomes obvious that this is exactly where the image of the Joker sprang from. In fact, not only does he look exactly like the Joker, he looks exactly like Heath Ledger as the Joker. It's quite uncanny.

This is based on a novel by Victor Hugo, albeit one so obscure that I suspect few people reading this will ever have clapped eyes on a copy, let alone read it. It's exactly what you probably expect, though; a melodrama with tragedy, romance, swordfights and an absurdly virtuous heroine, who in this case is blind. It's an entertaining enough romp, in a melodramatic kind of way, although the depiction of gypsies raises eyebrows, and so does the fact that the only two women in the film are the blind, virtuous Dea and the flighty, flirty Duchess who, in spite of the period clothing, is quite the flapper. Er, virgin / whore dichotomy, anyone? Also, there's a scene where the camera peers through a keyhole at the semi-naked Duchess. It's not so much the male gaze as What the Butler Saw.

It's ostensibly set in England during the reign of Queen Anne, with a flashback to the reign of James II… and these two monarchs are literally the only characters with names which sound remotely English. The setting doesn't remotely convince, costumes aside, as seventeenth and early eighteenth century England, and I suspect a lot of this would be due to the original novel, and Victor Hugo failing to realise that Stuart Britain was not like Louis XIV's France. We have scenes of Queen Anne ordering people to be tortured for information, and aristocrats being forced to live at court and marry at the whim of their monarch. All this is contrasted against a rather cruel world of clowns and freak shows which, while very, very creepy, is much more interesting.

It's also rather odd, even jarring, that this film is in the style of contemporary German Expressionism. It often looks great- there's a particularly eerie scene of hanged bodies swaying on the ropes- but it doesn't really evoke the setting. Still, it's worth watching for Conrad Veidt alone. It's also fascinating in that it isn't quite a silent film but it isn't quite a talkie either: there's no dialogue but there's the odd incongruous sound effect, of bells, wind and the like. We even get crowds shouting.