The Face Behind the Mask (1941)
in that it offers a vision of the American Dream turning ugly and wrong.”
Download full mp3 songs, download free wallpapers and much more. Listen to Juanes online for free.
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Peter Lorre is superb as the skilled craftsman Hungarian immigrant
newly arrived in America, Janos Szabo, in this first-rate and rather classy
low-budget B-film horror/gangster tale that back in the 1960s had a cult
following among film buffs. It’s directed with flair by the prolific Parisian
born Robert Florey (”The Cocoanuts”/”Murders in the Rue Morgue”/”The Beast
With Five Fingers”) and adapted from the story by Arthur Levinson that’s
based on a radio play by Thomas Edward O’Connell. The adequate screenplay
(the dialogue is not so hot) is by Allen Vincent and Paul Jarrico. Florey
shot it in only 12 days, and was saddled with working with the alcoholic
Lorre who would drink Pernod for a long breakfast and by the afternoon
was too drunk to act.
The plotline has Janos’ ocean liner approaching the Statue of Liberty
and he is bubbling over with enthusiasm for his new country, hoping to
land work as a watchmaker and raise enough bread to bring over his fiancée.
In the street, while asking for directions for a boarding house, he befriends
Lt. O’Hara (Don Beddoe) who directs him to a fleabag hotel run by his acquaintance
Finnegan. The first night that Janos sleeps there, the hotel burns down
and he’s facially disfigured with third degree burns. Looking like a monster,
he can’t get work and no one talks to him because he looks so repulsive.
Contemplating suicide on the waterfront, he meets petty thief Dinky (George
E. Stone) who talks him out of it and as the first person to act friendly
since the accident the two become pals. Dinky introduces Janos to his gangster
pals and Janos gets talked into using his mechanical skills to break into
bank vaults and the like, and soon is so gifted a thief he becomes the
mastermind of the gang. He reasons if he gets enough dough he can have
the plastic surgeon give him a new face. Instead he has to settle for an
expensive expressionless rubber-like mask, as the plastic surgeon tells
him he lost too much muscle tissue and it would take grafts every six months
for 15 years to do the complete facial job (Lorre simulated a mask by coating
his face with heavy white makeup and drawing back his skin toward the hairline
with gauze strips glued to his cheeks). Just when Janos is giving up all
hope in living, he bumps into a bubbly sweet blind girl, Helen (Evelyn
Keyes), and becomes romantically involved with her, and will eventually
quit the gang and live with the optimistic gal in the country. But the
vicious gang leader, Jeff Jeffries (James Seay), pulls a diamond heist
without Janos and in the process brings about unwanted publicity when they
also murder someone during the robbery. At the same time, Jeff finds a
letter with money in it from a guilt-ridden Lt. O’Hara in Janos’ pocket
and erroneously believe the masked man is quitting the gang with the purpose
of selling them out to the police. This causes the gang, except for the
always loyal Dinky, to turn against Janos; but their plot for revenge backfires,
as they plant a bomb in Janos’ car and accidentally kill Helen instead.
Then Janos plans his revenge on the gang as they attempt to escape to Mexico
by plane and it turns into a disaster for all, as Janos surprises them
as the pilot and they all meet their maker (ala Greed) in the remote Arizona
desert where Janos landed the plane without fuel.
The film is a horror story in that it offers a vision of the American
Dream turning ugly and wrong. It proved to be a big box-office hit, and
a film that deserves more attention as it’s still under the radar of most
discerning viewers.