EVERYBODY’S AND TIVOLI

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 594, 21 February 1929, Page 15

EVERYBODY’S AND TIVOLI

“THE MAN WHO LAUGHS” “The Man Who Laughs,” co-featur-ing Mary Philbin and Conrad Veidt, is now at the Tivoli and Everybody’s Theatres, and will be shown there for a week, commencing this evening. The celluloid translation of the famous Victor Hugo novel has been made under the direction of Paul Deni, who deserves much of the credit for the success of the piece. Mr. Deni knows his “atmosphere” and can imbue a production with a great deal of realism and authenticity. The story’s gruesome opening sequence, in which “The Iron Lady” and the disfigured child are revealed against a background of a conniving monarch’s boudoir and a vastness of snow country dotted with the hanging corpses of a tyrant’s victims, will thrill the most avid seeker of cinema sensations. Yet Mr. Deni does not forfeit story for spectacle and keeps the trials and tribulations of the laughing man uppermost in the spectator’s mind. And even in this horrifying tale there are also lighter and amusing moments, the Queen’s muiscale and the Duchess’ diversions at the Southwark Fair being chief among these. Since most of us have read the Hugo classic, it will not be too much in the nature of divulging a secret to explain that the laughing man had the eternal grin etched on his face by Gipsy traders when a child. When he grows to manhood he suffers more than the usual run of heartbreaks, yet the iaughing expression belies his tortures. Conrad Veidt gives a fine performance in the title role. Here is an actor who is capable of portraying every emotion with one facial expression; his sadness, sufferings and joy being revealed only through the medium oi his eyes. Josephine Crowell makes an interesting and perverse Queen Anne, who “takes care” of people in her own fine fashion; Mary Philbin is a pretty heroine and Olga fiarlanova a tempestous siren.