All Slights Deserved

Given the high regard in which it's held I perhaps had unfair expectations of The Man Who Laughs . Based on Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, like his more celebrated Notre-Dame de Paris it's a historical melodrama with gothic overtones. In the hands of director Paul Leni it becomes an atmospheric romance that sanitises the German Expressionist aesthetic. Although it's actually one of the earliest Universal pictures to incorporate sound elements it has the opulent production standards typical of silent films during this period, with some elaborate sets depicting 18th century London and the court of Queen Anne. But at nearly two hours the story seems stretched to the point of tedium and the characters lack the depth or complexity to make them engaging. Yet Conrad Veidt, an actor who comfortably ranks amongst my all time favourites, delivers a sensitive performance as Gwynplaine, the unfortunate hero who is disfigured as a child in an act of revenge against his ...

For those who believed that the horror portmanteau format originated with Ealing's Dead of Night in 1945 might be intrigued to discover this entertaining progenitor from Weimar Germany a quarter of a century earlier. Indeed Unheimliche Geschichten , which shouldn't be confused with a 1932 film of the same name also directed by Richard Oswald, utilises many of what became standard devices in this sub-genre. For starters there's a framing device; set in an antiquarian bookshop, where paintings of three archetypal figures - a Harlot (Anita Berber), the Devil (Reinhold Schünzel), and Death (the great Conrad Veidt) - come to life, much to the terror of the shopkeeper. They proceed flicking through the books, whereupon we embark on a series of five short dramatisations starring the same three actors. In the first of these Veidt plays a man who rescues a young woman (Berber) from her lunatic husband (Schünzel). The pair check into a hotel and Veidt begins contemplating havin...