Lon Chaney stars as a scientist-turned-clown in Victor Sjöström’s He Who Gets Slapped
HE WHO GETS SLAPPED (Victor Sjöström, 1924)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Monday, February 26, 6:20
Series continues through March 5
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
In conjunction with its Ingmar Bergman Centennial Retrospective, Film Forum is presenting “Victor Sjöström: The Screen’s First Master,” five films by the Swedish master who was Bergman’s mentor and appeared in two of his films, To Joy and Wild Strawberries. The mini-festival continues February 26 with Sjöström’s second English-language film and MGM’s first-ever picture, He Who Gets Slapped, which Sjöström wrote and directed under the Americanized last name Seastrom. Lon Chaney stars as scientist Paul Beaumont, who is excited when he makes a major discovery about the origins of humankind, but his wealthy benefactor, Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott), steals his work and presents it to the Academy, slapping Beaumont’s face to great hilarity and applause when the scientist claims it is actually his theory. After Regnard also steals Beaumont’s wife, Maria (Ruth King), the sad-sack scientist runs off and joins the circus, rising in stature as He, a clown who gets slapped over and over and over as a kind of self-flagellation, much to the delight of audiences everywhere. “Over a hundred slaps last night, He,” fellow clown Tricaud (Ford Sterling) tells him. “You lucky fellow! Soon you’ll be getting famous! But you know what they like — there’s nothing makes people laugh so hard as seeing someone else get slapped!” The distraught clown perks up when Consuelo (Norma Shearer) joins the circus as a bareback rider who will team up with Bezano (John Gilbert), but He — Beaumont doesn’t even exist anymore — gets mad when he finds out that Consuelo’s father, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall), has sold her to the circus because he is nearly broke — and shortly after that the Count is pimping his daughter off to none other than the Baron, something that neither Bezano nor He is about to let happen.
Based on Leonid Andreyev’s 1914 Russian play, He Who Gets Slapped is a taut psychological drama in which Sjöström and cowriter Carey Wilson explore the mind of a smart, talented man who loses his sanity, choosing to let himself be continually humiliated instead of fighting for what’s right. Sjöström (The Wind, The Phantom Carriage) and cinematographer Milton Moore add several cinematic tricks to reveal He’s mental state, including a circle of miniature clowns surrounding a globe as well as an early morphing effect that would be later developed to change Lon Chaney Jr. into a killer beast in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces, would also play a clown opposite Loretta Young in the 1928 silent film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. It is thrilling to see Gilbert and Shearer together, shortly before their stardom took off; they would also both appear in Edmund Mortimer’s The Wolf Man and Monta Bell’s The Snob that same year. Coincidentally, He Who Gets Slapped is the first film introduced by Leo the Lion, and a circus lion plays a key role in the story. Chaney will break your heart, especially when he has to deal with his own fake heart that is part of his act; even if you hate clowns, you won’t hate this one. The film, which asks the question “What is it in human nature that makes people quick to laugh when someone else gets slapped — whether the slap be spiritual, mental, or physical?” is screening February 26 at 6:20 and will be accompanied by live music by pianist Steve Sterner. The series continues with Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter on March 4 and The Outlaw and His Wife on March 5, both also with Sterner.