Film Review
Tod Browning's place is film history was assured when he directed Universal
Pictures'
Dracula (1931), a landmark
in the horror genre that brought us cinema's most convincing vampire (Bela
Lugosi) and spearheaded a phenomenally successful run of expressionistic
horror films from Universal and its rival studios. As important as
this film undoubtedly is, it is far from being Browning's most accomplished
work. Far more interesting is his subsequent
Freaks (1932), a film that was resoundingly
condemned in its day for deriving entertainment value from human deformity,
but even this is a minor work compared with the great films that Browning
routinely turned out in the silent era, notably his collaborations with Lon
Chaney Senior, including
The Unknown
(1927)
and
West of Zanzibar
(1928). His reputation badly damaged by the failure of
Freaks,
Browning went on to make another notable horror film
Mark of the Vampire
(1935), which he followed with possibly the weirdest film of his career -
The Devil Doll.
Any film that has Lionel Barrymore dragged up as a bent old woman for most
of its duration (assisted by a creepy female hunchback with a
Bride of
Frankenstein hair-do) cannot be described as anything but
weird.
And the fact that Barrymore so evidently relishes the part, so that
he ends up looking like Old Mother Riley's evil twin sister with a penchant
for cross-dressing and shrinking people, makes watching this deranged conflation
of black comedy and horror-tinged thriller an experience that you are unlikely
ever to forget. The B-movie plot - yet another variation on the mad-scientist
theme - was snatched from a 1932 novel by Abraham Merritt entitled
Burn
Witch Burn!, but very little of Marritt's story made it to the screen
as Browning threw himself into yet another opportunity to indulge his love
of the macabre and sadistic. Improbably, Browning roped Erich von Stroheim
into working on the script, just before the failed Austrian director gave
up on Hollywood and headed off to France to resume his career as an actor,
lending his formidable presence to such memorable films as Jean Renoir's
La Grande illusion
(1937) and Christian-Jaques's
Les Disparus de Saint-Agil
(1938). Any collaboration between Tod Browning and von Stroheim has
to be worth the money - it's about as likely as a pact between Hitler and
Stalin.
Strongly influenced by German expressionism, Tod Browning was an incredibly
talented film stylist with a natural flair for using lighting and camera
positioning to create the kind of oppressive, doom-laden atmosphere that
cannot fail to send rivulets of fear down the spine of any spectator.
His films may be trashy if judged solely by their crass, exploitation content
but they are visually compelling, stylish and some of the most beautifully
crafted in Hollywood at the time.
The Devil Doll is hardly an
exception. Admittedly the films does have its shortcomings - some pretty
ropey dialogue and a soppy ending that reeks of low-grade schmaltz - but
it does what so many similar genre films of this era failed to do, which
is to achieve a completely satisfying blend of chills, intrigue, humour and
romance. It even has a cute dance number.
Lionel Barrymore's adept gender-swapping makes him a far more frightening
and interesting Jekyll and Hyde character than his younger brother John ever
was in John S. Robertson's
1920
adaptation of Robert L. Stevenson's famous story, and no matter how 'accidentally'
funny he appears when he is playing the harmless old dear (his audition piece
no doubt for
Arsenic and Old Lace), he always carries an aura of contained
malevolence. Indeed, so persuasive is Barrymore's performance that you'll
never look at an old woman again afterwards without seeing something utterly
sinister beneath the genteel lace-capped exterior.
The film's other
pièce de résistance (an apt phrase
given that almost all the action takes place in Paris and has the central
character adopting an outlandish disguise to evade capture from the French police)
are its special effects, which were exceptional at the time and still hold
up remarkably well to this day. Cleverly constructed sets with enlarged
props and skilful use of matting techniques are enough to convince us that
Lionel Barrymore does indeed have the power to shrink people to the size
of ten-inch dolls and get them to do his bidding, in a way that is both hilarious
and terrifying. Twenty years on, the much-vaunted effects in
The Incredible
Shrinking Man (1957) are only a marginal improvement on what we find
here. Tod Browning made one further film after this - a fairly routine
murder mystery
Miracles for Sale (1939) - so
Devil-Doll is
his horror-fantasy swansong, one of the strangest and most entertaining films
he put his name to.
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
After spending seventeen years in an island prison for crimes he did not
commit, disgraced banker Paul Lavond escapes with fellow convict Marcel and
takes refuge at the latter's house. Here Paul learns that Marcel and
his wife Malita have been carrying out secret experiments to miniaturise
living creatures, with the aim of solving the greatest challenge facing mankind:
the scarcity of food and other natural resources. Using a process
that can shrink atoms, Marcel is able to reduce human beings to one sixth
of their present size, but with the unfortunate side-effect of robbing them
of their autonomy. Marcel's shrunken guinea pigs have no mind of their
own and only move according to his will, like living dolls.
When Marcel dies suddenly, Malita persuades Paul that he should take his
place and help her to fulfil her husband's fantastic dream. Immediately
Paul sees an opportunity to take revenge against those vile associates of
his who had him wrongly arrested for fraud and murder. Returning to
Paris, Paul disguises himself as an old woman, Madame Mandilip, and opens
a workshop to manufacture toys that include his human dolls. As the
police scour the city for the escaped fugitive, the former banker makes ready
to put into operation his merciless plan of revenge, assisted by his deadly
living dolls...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.