Wonderland Burlesque's
Let's Go To The Movies:
Face Time
Part XV
That look, that face...
It's all in the face. It can be read like a book. Or so these films would have us believe.
The silver screen has been home to so many beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) faces, lighting up the dark, showing us the way, sharing celluloid dreams. It seems only fitting that we take them at their word and look a these films one face at a time.
Yes, these faces may belong to a bygone era, but in the movies?
A face lives forever.
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The Face Behind The Mask
(1941)
Janos Szabo is a kind, innocent immigrant in America. Just after he arrives, he is caught in a fire and his face is horribly burned and disfigured. Although he is a skilled craftsman, his hideous features make it impossible for him to get work. Driven to despair, he is forced to turn to crime in order to live. He finds himself very proficient at it and soon makes enough money to buy a very lifelike mask to hide his scars. He hates what he does, but is he in too deep to get out?
Adapted from the radio play Interim, written by Thomas Edward O'Connell, this American film noir was directed by Robert Florey and stars Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes Don Beddoe, George E. Stone, John Tyrrell, and Cy Schindell.
In the same year Peter Lorre appeared in The Maltese Falcon over at Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures had him starring in The Face Behind The Mask. In his career, Lorre was far better known for the supporting roles he played opposite big Hollywood marquee names. Other than his starring roles in the German cinema classic Fritz Lang's M and the string of films where he played Mr. Moto, Lorre was rarely the lead. This interesting B film is a glorious exception.
The film's script was specifically written with Lorre in mind for the lead role, with parallels to Lorre's own life written in. According to screenplay co-writer Paul Jarrico, "The script was 'tailored', as I recall, in a sense Lorre had already been cast."
Lorre was cast in this film as the first of a two-picture deal that he was contracted to make for Columbia Pictures.
John Tyrrell and Cy Schindell were familiar faces to the movie going audience, having appeared as major supporting characters in numerous Three Stooges short films.
You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.
Evelyn Keyes career in Hollywood is the stuff of legend. After a handful of B movies at Paramount Pictures, she was cast in the film Say It in French (1938). In her biography, Keyes described being raped by her director Andrew Stone while working on the film. She became pregnant, got an abortion in late 1938, and was fired from the picture. Only weeks later, she was cast as Scarlett's sister Suellen in Gone With the Wind. She married Barton Bainbridge shortly after.
Bainbridge was an alcoholic, and threatened Keyes with a gun on at least one occasion. They separated and in 1940, he committed suicide with a shotgun in her car, leaving a note. Keyes wrote: "The note said it was because I had left him. I never left a man again. I made them leave me."
Later, she married and divorced director Charles Vidor (1943-1945), actor/director John Huston (1946-1950), and bandleader Artie Shaw (1957-1985). Keyes said of her many love affairs: "I always took up with the man of the moment and there were many such moments." While married to Huston, the couple adopted a twelve-year-old Mexican child, Pablo, whom Huston had discovered while filming on location in Mexico for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In her memoir, Keyes claimed that her adoptive son sexually molested her and that they lost contact after only a few years.
Among her many love affairs in Hollywood were those with film producer Michael Todd (who left Evelyn for Elizabeth Taylor), actors Glenn Ford, Sterling Hayden, Dick Powell, Anthony Quinn, David Niven and Kirk Douglas. She also had to regularly fend off Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn's advances while under contract at the studio.
After numerous films, she left it all behind, retiring from film in 1956.
Der Fuehrer's Face
(1942)
A marching band of Germans, Italians, and Japanese march through the streets of swastika-motif Nutziland, singing Der Fuehrer's Face. Donald Duck, not living in the region by choice, struggles to make do with disgusting Nazi food rations and his day of toil at a Nazi artillery factory. After a nervous breakdown, Donald awakens to realize that his experience was in fact a nightmare.
This American animated anti-Nazi propaganda short film was produced by Walt Disney Productions, created in 1942 and released on January 1, 1943 by RKO Radio Pictures. The film was directed by Jack Kinney and written by Joe Grant and Dick Huemer.
Originally called Donald Duck in Nutzi Land, the title was changed after the success of the song Der Fuehrer's Face by Spike Jones and His City Slickers. The song, composed by Oliver Wallace, is a parody of the Nazi anthem, Horst-Wessel-Lied. The recording proved very popular, peaking at #3 on the US chart.
Because of the propagandistic nature of the short and the depiction of Donald Duck as a Nazi (albeit a deeply reluctant one), Disney kept the film out of general circulation after its original release.
It was the only Donald Duck cartoon to win an Academy Award.
You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.
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Pyro... The Thing Without A Face
(1964)
AKA: Wheel Of Fire, Phantom Of The Ferris Wheel
A married man has a brief affair, then goes back to his wife and children. His jilted mistress, believing that if he had no more family he'd come back to her, sets fire to his house, hoping to kill them. The man, unsuccessfully trying to rescue them, is horribly burned. After he undergoes an operation to reconstruct his face, he begins to plot his revenge against his former mistress.
This 1964 American horror film was directed by Julio Coll and stars Barry Sullivan, Martha Hyer and Verna Pierson.
Vincent Price was originally slated for the lead role played by Barry Sullivan.
This film bombed in America, but was a blockbuster overseas with it's alternative title Phantom of the Ferris Wheel.
TV Guide awarded the film 2/5 stars, criticizing the film's script, dialogue, and over focus on the affair between Hyer and Sullivan. However, they did commend the film's make-up effects, and predictable but well handled ending.
You can watch this film in its entirety for free on YouTube.
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Killer Without A Face
(1968)
AKA: Assassino senza volto
A series of murders take place in an old Italian castle. The unknown killer dispatches his victims by shooting them with a pistol. Barbara, the unhinged owner is the chief suspect, but not everything is quite as it seems...
This Italian gialli (horror) film was directed by and stars Mara Berni, Giuliano Raffaelli, Janine Reynaud, and Lawrence Tierney.
Lawrence Tierney, an established Hollywood heavy in the 1940's and 1950's, was hiding out in Europe at this time due to his numerous scrapes with the law in the US. He was noted as a gifted actor with a magnificent screen presence. He'd eventually return stateside, but his career continued to be derailed due to his habit of assaulting civilians and cops while under the influence. During a 1987 interview he said that he "threw away about seven careers through drink".
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They Have Changed Their Face
(1971)
In this allegory on capitalism, the director of a famous car corporation invites one of his employees to his country villa to give him some good news. He has just been promoted. However, the old man is not what he seems, and promotion has a price.
Italian horror film was directed by Corrado Farina and stars Adolfo Celi, Giuliano Esperatiand Geraldine Hooper.
The screenplay was written by Giulio Berruta and director Corrado Farina. They were influenced by German philosopher Herbert Marcuse, specifically his book One-Dimensional Man (1964), a critique of capitalism and communist Russia which provided the film with its thesis that consumerism is a form of social control.
The film won the Golden Leopard award for the Best First Feature at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1971.
And that's all for now, folks!
Tune in next time...
Same place, same channel.
Der Fuehrer's Face - Spike Jones and His City Slickers
