What the Man who Laughs can Tell us about Masculinity
By Jaylan Salman
Silent cinema is a mystery to generations that have gone way past the missing dialogue and artistic expression. But as the filmmaking process progresses and avant-garde art dominates a rather dull cinematic world after the introduction of online platforms and networks that exist purely in cyberspace, seeking different and more experimental forms of cinematic experiences has become -strangely- more mainstream.
The origin of the Joker character started in the silent film, giving it a hint of popularity. However, the idea of disfiguring men playing roles that hover on the verge of sympathy vs. non-sympathy could tell a lot about modern society when seen through the light of a politically-correct-driven cinema.
Lon Chaney and Conrad Veidt were two actors recognized for their aggressive masculinity that existed between machismo and the dream-pop verse of soft boys. In their roles, they played dark men, haunted and wounded by society’s addiction to normative beauty aesthetics. As part of the interloping male/female gaze, beauty ideals demanded that Lon and Conrad become misunderstood monsters. They had to play the classic man-monster trope in a Classic Hollywood setting without missing the romanticized touch in the later films. To use Conrad in the classic film version of “The Man Who Laughs” is to subvert our vision from his heinous features to what is more or less masculine representation onscreen. Chances are, man-monsters have been a fascination for centuries. In worlds such as Victor Hugo’s novels, man-monsters are deformed masculine figures, usually crossing paths with fragile, rather petulant women who either defy their independent aesthetic “ugliness” or seem undeterred by it.
“The Man Who Laughs” is not an exception to what Hugo considers ugly, encouraging readers or viewers to judge these characters for their looks, even if their qualities usurp the physical. His cruelty in creating the malformed men-beasts of his writings encompasses a more nuanced analysis of the social and political contexts in which his stories existed.
Enter “The Man Who Laughs” L'Homme qui rit, a less popular novel by Victor Hugo which uses the bored French noblemen and the absurd playfulness of the aristocracy as a social critique of classism, aesthetics, and in many ways, ghoulish masculinity which dominated novels of the romanticism era. This essay tries to draw a comparison or rather a constructive analysis of representing the main protagonist Gwynplaine in the silent 1928 film and the 2012 musical version through both actors chosen to play him and what that tells about modern masculinity and bestiality.
In other films where the human monster appears, it’s through the lens of the bizarre, this carrier of a penis wreaks wrath and fear into the hearts of the fine ladies of the black and white (or silent) cinema. He is feared, despised, and “othered”. The monster is the mutant anti-hero to the chiseled chad. For Batman, there’s the Joker and the Penguin. For James Bond, there’s Alec Trevelyan and Le Chiffre. But in the 1928 “The Man Who Laughs” the mutant man-monster is seen through a sympathetic lens, played by Conrad Veidt, a German Lon Chaney who specialized in the physically displeasing characters who reigned the German Expressionist films in the 1920s.
The demonic grin and crazy eyes contrast with the enforced laughter and mirror Gwynplaine’s abstract torture of being forced to live with his expressionist face while using his eyes to try and reveal his internal agony. Veidt could not be a better actor to embody the brutal fragility of Gwynplaine, his eyes trapping a thousand emotions, all suffocated through his emblematic Glasgow smile. As a silent-film performer, Vedit uses extended poses, stalled gestures, muscular control over the fluency of movement, and extreme crookedness in posture followed by sudden, erratically paced movements. His performance is an extreme expression of the character’s inner conflict conveyed through eye contact, body quivers, facial tics, and a body motion that oscillates between the stifled and the frantic.
Veidt’s Gwynplaine is a rare breed of masculinity, one that does not comprise a menace to society. It is neither inviting nor appealing, it off puts rather than revels in the charm of the ugly. His relationship with the female protagonists. In 1928, the love story between Gwynplaine and Dea feels like a gothic dream; bestiality turned into romance. While in the 2012 version, the plotline that involves their love is more nuanced and erotic, using both actors’ sex appeal in their favor, creating a story that is both poetic and earthy.
The 2012 French adaptation has clear Tom Tykwer vibes, although directed by Jean-Pierre Améris. The influence of color and atmosphere, as well as the larger-than-life exaggerated depiction of the English aristocracy, has given it a different dimension than its silent 1928 counterpart. It started with picking the actor who played the main protagonist, Canadian androgynous heartthrob Marc-André Grondin as Gwynplaine, and through the complete transformation of the main protagonist casting choice, the film took a dramatic shift toward an undeniably interesting -if a bit less mystique- angle. Grondin is handsome, dark, gender-bending, and homoerotic.
Jean-Marc Vallée’s c.r.a.z.y, a coming-of-age tale that saw Grondin being the archetypal dreamboy/softboy within an LGBTQ context, solidified his softboy and fluid form of masculinity. Grondin as Gwynplaine had nothing to do with Veidt’s. This 2012 version of Gwynplaine was handsome in an “imperfect way”, taking the film narrative afresh.
The 2012 Gwynplaine was fragile, emasculate, beautiful, and scarred. The movie portrayed his love story with Dea in an ethereal, dreamy sense, unlike the 1928 version where Gwynplaine was fearsome, appearing to emerge from a nightmare, his face a work of art that hid behind it layers and layers of repressed fear, torment, and agony. In the 1928 version, Gwynplaine could barely move a facial muscle. In the 2012 version, Gwynplaine could reveal himself through his semi-deformed face, the spectrum of human expressions “happiness, fear, sadness, and love” evident on his features regardless of his mutated cheeks and lips.
The silent film medium of 1928 created a symbolic meaning of how Gwynplaine was used and abused by the haunting presence of the people around him. It glorified its freakish looks, unashamed of being attacked by a better understanding of the language or depiction of a non-normative person regarding beauty standards and aesthetics.
Using words like “ghoulish,” “freaky,” and “ugly” with liberty to describe this silent version of Gwynplaine in which director Paul Leni reveled in his protagonist’s disproportionate features that defied what it meant to be wholesome and complete. But in the 2012 adaptation of Hugo’s novel, Gwynplaine had a voice and thick luscious black hair and dazzling eyes, his Glasgow smile merely an afterthought, a meditation on what it meant to be freaky and not freaky, as if Gwynplaine walked the thin line between normalcy and bizarre.
To say that one version is better than the other is a mistake or -for better lack of terms - a problematic way of evaluating cinema as an art form. The Man Who Laughs conjures a sense of French cinema with the grimness and intolerable cruelty of Victor Hugo’s politicized commentary on aristocratic society. This separates the art from the artist, the film interpretation and adaptation from the heart and soul of the filmmaker’s intent. The Man Who Laughs might not be a timeless story, but its adaptations are a revelation and necessary for lovers of film and art worldwide.
