The Man Who Laughs

Yes.

So I watched The Man Who Laughs, which I gave five stars.

And this one is really cool because the main character, Gwynplaine, actually inspired the Joker from Batman, which I know I'm late to the party on that one, but I thought that was awesome.

Did you know that that is on the Letterboxd Top 250 Horror List, which I have to bring up every episode?

absolutely.

And, uh, Emil Janning, uh, the man, the man who laughs, uh,

man who laughs.

Sure.

Cause I did some digging to find out why he sounds in German and it's because of Conrad Veidt.

the guy who was in The Man Who Smiles.

Oh,

okay.

Smiles.

The Man Who Laughs, yeah.

The Man Who Laughs, who thought was terrific.

And quite right.

It's an amazingly good, for a film of its era, it's terrific.

And it was Conrad Veidt.

Yeah, and a few years later, he starred in The Man Who Laughs, where he plays a man disfigured with a permanent ghastly grin carved into his face.

And that image is widely credited as a direct visual inspiration for Batman's Joker decades later.

So, interesting.

"Can we get Conrad Veidt? Who we know from Cabinet of Dr.

Caligari, and he was coming off a movie called The Man Who Laughed.

Yes.

The Man Who Laughs.

Ib spoke six languages, and his fascination with movies began when he was only eleven years old.

He saw the 1928 silent film The Man Who Laughs, featuring Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine, whose striking appearance later helped inspire the visual creation of the Joker.

Melchior walked away from the movie knowing exactly what he wanted to do, direct films.

In the late 1950s, Melchior met Sidney W.

It looked more like a clown, but I remembered that Grosset and Dunlap, obviously, formerly issued very cheap editions of classics by Alexandra Dumas and Victor Hugo.

The volume I had was The Man Who Laughs, which is kind of a famous reference photo for Joker.

Mm-hmm.

His face had been permanently operated on so that he will always have this perpetual grin, and it looked absolutely weird.