He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

Originally posted to Facebook on 10/24/2017

Our fifth and final film from 1924 was He Who Gets Slapped, our second film starring Lon Chaney, and our fifth directed by Victor Sjöström, who had relocated to Hollywood since 1921's The Phantom Carriage. This is also the first film in which we've seen John Gilbert or Norma Shearer.

The premise of the film is that Chaney is a scientist, and his patron, Baron Regnard, conspires with Chaney's wife to take credit for his work, publicly slapping him when he confronts the Baron. Chaney then returns home, where his wife reveals her part in the plot, and slaps him as well. The film then jumps forward, and in the intervening time Chaney has become a circus clown, where he has developed a starring act in which he gets slapped repeatedly by other clowns to mass acclaim -- a bizarre development not just because of its fetishistic aspect, but also because of the vertiginous mid-career shift between research scientist and circus clown.

John Gilbert and Norma Shearer are stunt riders, apparently one of the rare non-clown positions in this particular circus. There is a slight love triangle, in that Chaney is in love with Shearer, but he recognizes that she loves Gilbert, who is closer to her in age, and, crucially, isn't a clown with severe and masochistic psychological problems. When the Baron reappears, however, and begins to pursue Shearer, it provokes in Chaney both a protective instinct, and also a desire for revenge. This revenge motive recalls the previous film in which we saw Lon Chaney, 1920's The Penalty, as does his acting style, which is forceful and charismatic in both films, though not exactly naturalistic in either (an approach that would have been difficult in full clown make-up in any case.)

And it is this performance that, I think, makes this more of a Lon Chaney film than a Victor Sjöström film. Sjöström's assured hand is still visible, but the over-the-top luridness feels much more like The Penalty than any of Sjöström's earlier films.

Next week we being 1925 with our first Russian film, a film I've been intending to watch since I saw The Untouchables more than a quarter-century ago: Battleship Potemkin. Additionally, since we are starting 1925, I've added our planned films for 1926. The list, as always, is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT