Saw The Man Who Laughs, an amazing, grotesque spectacle. Made in the 20s, it's the extremely theatrical tale of a boy disfigured at a young age by illicit surgeon-gypsies to have a permanent smile on his face. The boy grows into a man and becomes a circus freak. He has some kind of romance with a blind girl and also political machinations whirl about him due to his birth (it's very Dickensian. Money and titles solve everything.) the film is theatrical not only in its plot but in its acting and subject. The smiling man is always surrounded by clowns and freaks. The actors all have these deeply wrinkled, very expressive faces (except for the love interest of course, who is smooth and tiny-featured.) They roll their eyes and shake their heads and carry on so grotesquely, it almost seems like a parody of itself.
This film has all of the best of the silent-era madness. Obvious characterization, telling-not-showing, grotesque facial expressions, those black rings around the eyes, and mobs of dirty, ugly people. Mot of the film takes place on a fairgrounds so there's much ugly madness going on. At one point, a slumming duchess is pawed by a drunken gang of men. They don't hide it either, it's dead centre. There's also the bewildering and freaky opening plot point of the surgeon-gypsies. They're only on screen for a moment, but their existence alone is amazing.
the above makes this film sound very crazy (it is) but it's also very broad and a bit slow by today's standards. The film has no pretensions to high art. It's a fairly straightforward (though overwrought and madcap) morality play. I think this film is best enjoyed as a curiosity, with friends. It's very wild, very weird, very strange. (also, bonus: the Batman villain the Joker is said to have been modelled on the smiling man. Again, the smile is pretty freaky.)
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