Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, it is November,
Speaker 1: so we are celebrating November like a lot of film
Speaker 1: fans out there. So this is our newar November episode
Speaker 1: from last year. It is the nineteen forty one Peter
Speaker 1: Lorie film The Face Behind the Mask. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. In today's episode of
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. We're getting in on the Near November festivities.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with this, this is a yearly,
Speaker 1: month long celebration of near cinema, a concept introduced in
Speaker 1: twenty ten by film critic Maria E. Gates. Film noir is,
Speaker 1: of course, a turn that covers a lot of ground
Speaker 1: and bleeds into a number of different subgenres and adjacent genres.
Speaker 1: I mean it ultimately becomes just sort of a shade,
Speaker 1: you know, and a stylistic flourish that may be employed
Speaker 1: even just in key scenes in a particular picture, but
Speaker 1: in its arguably truest form, we're talking about black and
Speaker 1: white old Hollywood crime dramas, full of cynicism, amoral characters
Speaker 1: and style, heavy dash of German expressionism, plenty of cigarette smoke.
Speaker 1: Throw all that in and you're good to go. There's
Speaker 1: also much to be said about this genre emerging out
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression. Lots of moving parts, so you
Speaker 1: can identify noir in everything from such films as The
Speaker 1: Maltese Falcon from nineteen forty one nineteen forty two's Casablanca
Speaker 1: to stuff like nineteen eighty twos Blade Runner and multiple
Speaker 1: you know, neo noir films from the likes of the
Speaker 1: Cohen Brothers and David Lynch. And we haven't really gotten
Speaker 1: in on this Noirvember thing before. You know, I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I've seen it celebrated at Videodrome, the rental store here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, I've seen it celebrated online in various places,
Speaker 1: and you know, it feels right. November is a really
Speaker 1: choice month for all of this, because wordplay aside, it's
Speaker 1: a month of continued descent through fall and into winter.
Speaker 1: It's a month often typified by things like elections or
Speaker 1: corporate layoffs. It's a bleak time for bleak hearts, so
Speaker 1: what better time than now to dive into the black
Speaker 1: and white world of private detectives and professional criminals. So
Speaker 1: what is today's movie? It is nineteen forty one's The
Speaker 1: Face Behind the Mask, And yeah, it actually comes out
Speaker 1: nine months before The Maltese Falcon, which is sometimes considered
Speaker 1: the first big film noir picture, but it also ultimately
Speaker 1: depends on how you slice it. You can also reach
Speaker 1: back into the thirties for possible examples of forerunners in
Speaker 1: the genre. And also, this is a picture that I'm
Speaker 1: to understand wasn't actually viewed a lot after its initial release.
Speaker 1: It's kind of built up a following over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so your selection this week got me really thinking
Speaker 3: about what is it that makes a movie film noir.
Speaker 3: I don't really know exactly what the primary criteria are.
Speaker 3: It's one of those things where it's defined by a
Speaker 3: number of different sort of plot conventions and stylistic conventions.
Speaker 3: And if a movie has a critical mass, if it
Speaker 3: has enough of these different things in it, then it
Speaker 3: starts to feel like noir. But I don't know what
Speaker 3: the core things are. Though you mentioned a minute ago
Speaker 3: The Maltese Falcon, the Humphrey Bogart movie and I feel
Speaker 3: like that's kind of the prototype film noir, right, Like
Speaker 3: that's or the archetype. I don't know which is the
Speaker 3: right term there. It's like it's the type example that
Speaker 3: you think of, or at least that I think of
Speaker 3: for film noir. So it has a tough, cynical detective.
Speaker 3: It has a lot of people running around chasing after money,
Speaker 3: It has cynical crime themes. It has a maybe somewhat
Speaker 3: gloomy outlook on human nature, but also has a sense
Speaker 3: of humor, a kind of dark sense of humor. And
Speaker 3: in fact, it has an actor in common with the
Speaker 3: movie we're going to be talking about today, because a
Speaker 3: major character actor in the Maltese Falcon is Peter Lourie
Speaker 3: in the role of Joel Cairo, who is the main
Speaker 3: character in the face behind the mask. So I would say,
Speaker 3: almost to the same extent that I associate Humphrey Bogart
Speaker 3: with noir, I also associate Peter Lourie with it.
Speaker 1: That's right. If you're cooking film noir, either during this
Speaker 1: time period or in later decades, Peter Lourie, or at
Speaker 1: least the ghost of Peter Laurie, is very much on
Speaker 1: the spice Rack, as is Humphrey Bogart, as are various
Speaker 1: other elements. Like you can also throw in things that
Speaker 1: are not president in this picture, such as the fem fatale.
Speaker 1: It's very often an employed to some degree in a
Speaker 1: noir picture. So there are, yeah, all these different things
Speaker 1: that may or may not be added to the finished product.
Speaker 1: But when you taste the soup, you know, ah, this
Speaker 1: is film noir.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cigarettes, fried eggs, black coffee, revolvers, Fedoras, trench coats.
Speaker 3: That's what's going on here. And Peter Lourie is part
Speaker 3: of the mix.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So as far as weird House cinema selections go,
Speaker 1: it's notable that this is our This is only our
Speaker 1: fourth selection from the nineteen forties, following Doctor Cyclops, The
Speaker 1: Beast with Five Fingers, and The Devil Bad. It's our
Speaker 1: second picture directed by Robert Florey, and our third Peter
Speaker 1: Lori picture. It's also one of our infrequent picks to
Speaker 1: not feature a speculative element, though I would say it's
Speaker 1: weird enough in its own way for our purposes. I
Speaker 1: also want to stress that this film is also very
Speaker 1: strongly a melodrama, so it's not subtle in its manipulation
Speaker 1: of the heart strings. You know, it's a bit of
Speaker 1: a morality play. Well, so it's yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good picture. I was really pleased with. It is
Speaker 1: one that's kind of been on my short list for
Speaker 1: a long time. Often held up as one of Laurie's
Speaker 1: best performances. A picture where he is the lead and
Speaker 1: gets to bust out a number of his tools and
Speaker 1: you know, not just be the villain or a side
Speaker 1: villain or a side quirky character. He is the main
Speaker 1: event here.
Speaker 3: This, this really is a look at my range movie
Speaker 3: for Peter Loriie. There are some scenes where he is
Speaker 3: so wholesome and so precious, He's just cute, adorable, wonderful,
Speaker 3: other scenes where he is the creepiest creep and he
Speaker 3: gets to do both in the same film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for like an absolute Peter Lourie picture, it's
Speaker 1: like this and Mad Love or I think Neck and Neck.
Speaker 1: You don't, they don't, But each film hit slightly different notes.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get the same array of Peter
Speaker 1: Lourie in both films, but added together, I mean you
Speaker 1: get to see so many different colors from him.
Speaker 3: But you're also right in saying that this is not
Speaker 3: a subtle film. I mean, this is not a film
Speaker 3: where the drama takes place reading between the lines. It's
Speaker 3: all on the lines here. So there are extremely overt
Speaker 3: monologues in which the themes of the film are pretty
Speaker 3: explicitly stated, and we get like swelling music while they're delivered,
Speaker 3: and they're delivered in almost kind of a stage performance way.
Speaker 3: You know, characters kind of borderline shout their lines and
Speaker 3: they're full of overt passion. But if you know, if
Speaker 3: you know that's what you're in for, it's not really
Speaker 3: a bad thing. It's just a different way to tell
Speaker 3: a story.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Another point about this picture we'll keep coming back
Speaker 1: to is that it's a pretty fast ride. This film's
Speaker 1: only sixty nine minutes long, and I think it's the
Speaker 1: rare weird house cinema selection where I have to say
Speaker 1: I don't think it is long enough. I feel like
Speaker 1: I needed a little bit more from it. I mean,
Speaker 1: what we have is tremendous, but you know, I wanted
Speaker 1: to see scenes that are alluded to but not shown
Speaker 1: to us. And yeah, it doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: time to even necessarily further explore some of the ideas
Speaker 1: that it brings up, which you know isn't necessarily a
Speaker 1: bad thing.
Speaker 3: Many of the most pivotal scenes in the plot happen
Speaker 3: off screen. They're like the big turning points are like
Speaker 3: you see what's leading up to it, and then you
Speaker 3: see the characters talking about it afterwards, but you don't
Speaker 3: see the thing itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, so it's like Frank Herbert would
Speaker 1: dig that. But it's like, it's not battle scenes that
Speaker 1: are left out, you know, it's not like big budget
Speaker 1: things that I don't know, you know, maybe it was
Speaker 1: a budgetary decision to not show some of like the
Speaker 1: key heists that become important later on, but you know,
Speaker 1: they make a lot out of the time they have here.
Speaker 3: Do you think they left out the safe cracking scene?
Speaker 3: Like it was it cut for content that was just
Speaker 3: like too spicy for audiences at the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I really Yeah, we'll talk about when
Speaker 1: we get to that point in the plot, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I really wanted to see this first big heist that
Speaker 1: that Jagosh is involved in. But more on that in
Speaker 1: a bit. Now.
Speaker 3: I am, by no means an expert in film noir,
Speaker 3: but I associate several different plot types with this genre.
Speaker 3: The most common, I would say, is the private detective story.
Speaker 3: You know, somebody shows up with a strange case for
Speaker 3: a private detective, and the detective goes down the rabbit hole,
Speaker 3: you know, figuring out all the twists and turns and
Speaker 3: all that. Maltese Falcon is of that sort. But if
Speaker 3: there is a second type of plot structure I most
Speaker 3: associate with film noir, it is the plot that we
Speaker 3: get in the face behind the mask, which is an
Speaker 3: originally good hearted person is lured or forced into a
Speaker 3: life of crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fallen angel, breaking bad, yes, you know. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about it is that this
Speaker 1: is of course also an immigrant story, and so the
Speaker 1: good person at the heart of this is someone who
Speaker 1: is entering America for the first time and has all
Speaker 1: these ideas and all these dreams, dreams that he has absorbed,
Speaker 1: you know, from Afar, the American dream, and so his
Speaker 1: fall is also about realizing the flaws and the American
Speaker 1: dream and the things that you know, that he had
Speaker 1: built up in his head that just aren't part of
Speaker 1: the reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that his hopes are sort of crash against the
Speaker 3: rocks of reality and of circumstances beyond his control, and
Speaker 3: that just happens over and over until he is forced
Speaker 3: into becoming the gang story that he once feared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Now, I don't have any trailer audio
Speaker 1: for this one, but if you want a little dash
Speaker 1: of the trailer audio, look up Joe Dante's Trailers from
Speaker 1: Hell feature on it. It's pretty fun. It's just, you know,
Speaker 1: Joe Dante talking a little bit about this picture and
Speaker 1: then sharing some audio and video from the trailer. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't find that trailer anywhere else for us to sample,
Speaker 1: so I'll just say go ahead and check out what
Speaker 1: Joe Dante has to share about that trailer. Now you
Speaker 1: might be wondering at this point, Hey, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: Face behind the Mask. I'd like to before continuing on
Speaker 1: with the episode. Well, fair enough. I support that. This one, however,
Speaker 1: is not, to my knowledge, currently available in the US
Speaker 1: on disc, but it is currently part of the streaming
Speaker 1: options over at the Criterion channel. That's the streaming platform
Speaker 1: and app brought to you by the Criterion Collection. The
Speaker 1: Face behind the Mask is currently featured as part of
Speaker 1: their Noir November Essentials collection. We don't champion a lot
Speaker 1: of streaming options on stuff to blow your mind. But
Speaker 1: the Criterion Channel is, in my unpaid four opinion, here
Speaker 1: a great streaming option for film fans. You can try
Speaker 1: it for free for a week, you know that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But you can watch everything from Brida Frankenstein
Speaker 1: and Scanners to the Story of Ricky and Raising Arizona.
Speaker 1: And they have some really tantalizing playlists of films, including
Speaker 1: I was just looking at it this morning. There's one
Speaker 1: that's just synth scores, so all sorts of cool electronic
Speaker 1: scores for the pictures selected. And then they have one
Speaker 1: that's just hopping vampires, so it's like, I think it's
Speaker 1: all just mister Vampire pictures. And of course we talked
Speaker 1: about the first Mister Vampire film on the show a
Speaker 1: while back.
Speaker 3: Yes, also in my unpaid for opinion, I greatly enjoyed
Speaker 3: the Criterion Channel, though I should issue a warning to
Speaker 3: people because I was confused by this at first. You
Speaker 3: can't assume just because a movie has a Criterion Collection
Speaker 3: release that it will be featured streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Speaker 3: Some movies have a disc from Criterion, but they're not
Speaker 3: on there. But it's still a good channel.
Speaker 1: Right, and likewise, there are plenty of pictures on there
Speaker 1: that I don't think have discs on Criterion, but it's
Speaker 1: just it's a great selection, and a number of weird
Speaker 1: house cinema pictures are in there as of this recording.
Speaker 1: All right, let's run through some of the people involved here.
Speaker 1: The director is, of course Robert Florey, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength French American director
Speaker 1: who worked from the twenties through the sixties, amassing one
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen credits and just really cranking out pictures
Speaker 1: during the nineteen thirties. His early career was apparently more
Speaker 1: avant garde expressionism, but he became one of these kind
Speaker 1: of like cinematic workhorse types of guys from a purely
Speaker 1: horror standpoint. He's perhaps best known for directing Murders in
Speaker 1: the Rue Morgue in nineteen thirty two, based on the
Speaker 1: Edgar Allen post story and starring Hungarian American film legend Lagosi,
Speaker 1: as well as ape suit legend Charles Goemora. Also of
Speaker 1: note was the noir film Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven.
Speaker 1: That one featured a female Chinese American elite in the
Speaker 1: form of Anime Wong, another legendary name from a lot
Speaker 1: of noir pictures, as well as Korean American actor Philip An.
Speaker 1: Flori is also noted for having been the initial director
Speaker 1: on nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein with Lego we see attached
Speaker 1: to play the monster during those early stages before Legosi
Speaker 1: like leaving the picture because he didn't want to play
Speaker 1: like this. You know what we might think of is
Speaker 1: just like a killing machine Frankenstein monster. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course Flories ends up being replaced by James Whale,
Speaker 1: and we get the nineteen thirty one Frankenstein that we
Speaker 1: all know and love. Florie later directed a lot of
Speaker 1: TV and his last film credit is an episode film
Speaker 1: or TV credit is an episode of the original Outer
Speaker 1: Limits series titled Moonstone. He also did three Twilight Zone episodes.
Speaker 1: All right, now, as far as the story and screenplay
Speaker 1: here goes, there are four different names, some of which
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of information on. Apparently the
Speaker 1: story is based on a radio play called Interim by
Speaker 1: Thomas Edward O'Connell who lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out much about this. The screenplay for
Speaker 1: the film, however, was apparently very much put together with
Speaker 1: Peter Lourie in mind for the lead. Let's see author
Speaker 1: Levinson has a story credit note relation obviously to I
Speaker 1: think there's a contemporary author Levinson who's involved with like
Speaker 1: Apple computers or something different. Guy. There's Alan Vincent who
Speaker 1: has a screenplay credit, who lived nineteen oh three through
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, actor and screenwriter who appeared in such
Speaker 1: films as nineteen thirty three's Mystery of the Wax Museum.
Speaker 1: This is his first screenplay credit. And then we also
Speaker 1: have a screenplay credit for Paul Jericho, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: fifteen through nineteen ninety seven. OSCAR nominated American screenwriter here
Speaker 1: for nineteen forty two's Tom Dick and Harry, who was
Speaker 1: later blacklisted during the McCarthy era for his ties to
Speaker 1: the Communist Party and alleged subversive content. During this time, though,
Speaker 1: he produced the nineteen fifty four film Salt of the Earth,
Speaker 1: which was a project that entailed a handful of other
Speaker 1: blacklisted filmmakers and was well received and I think it
Speaker 1: continues to be well received. Often worked uncredited or under
Speaker 1: a pseudonym his other and it's also included nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: two's All Night Long, All Right, But of course our
Speaker 1: star playing Janosh Johnny Zabo, we have Peter Lorii. Yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen oh four through nineteen sixty four. Austro Hungarian actor
Speaker 1: of Jewish descent who made it big in Fritz Lung's
Speaker 1: Im Back in thirty one, sometimes singled out as an
Speaker 1: early noir picture, are certainly very influential on noir films
Speaker 1: to follow, before he ended up fleeing the rise of
Speaker 1: anti Semitism under the Nazi regime. A legendary character actor who,
Speaker 1: of course appeared in one of our first Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema episodes covering nineteen thirty five's Mad Love. He is
Speaker 1: best remembered for his various roles in such noir mainstays
Speaker 1: as Casablanca, Maltese Falcon thrillers like nineteen thirty four's The
Speaker 1: Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as such horror
Speaker 1: films as nineteen sixty three as The Raven, and even
Speaker 1: such big budget productions as nineteen fifty four to twenty
Speaker 1: thousand Leagues under the Sea. He wrote and directed a
Speaker 1: single film, nineteen fifty one's the Lost One, and he
Speaker 1: was technically the first actor to play a Bond villain,
Speaker 1: appearing in the nineteen fifty four TV adaptation of Casino Royale.
Speaker 3: This is the Thing that was an adaptation of Casino
Speaker 3: Royale that had Barry Nelson as James Bond. Barry Nelson
Speaker 3: is the guy who plays the hotel manager at the
Speaker 3: beginning of the shining. He's like the guy hiring Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 1: This is back when James Bond was played by an
Speaker 1: American and presented as an American character.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so good, But man, I would watch Peter
Speaker 3: Laurie as La Chief that that'd be good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm whatever else is going on, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Peter Laurie is such an intriguing icon, you know,
Speaker 1: like iconic in ways that are hard to overstress, you know,
Speaker 1: like he becomes this like you go ack and you
Speaker 1: watch old Bugs Bunny cartoons and they'll have a Peter
Speaker 1: louri character. I think plenty of people still like doing
Speaker 1: like if you have I have a Dungeons and Waggin's
Speaker 1: character that uses a Peter Lorrie voice. I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of other people haven't leave even Dungeon Masters
Speaker 1: have probably done some version of a Peter Lourie voice
Speaker 1: at some point. You know, he's just he's that iconic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's so iconic that my Christoph Lambert voice is
Speaker 3: actually a Peter Lorrie voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's just tremendous, you know. And
Speaker 1: he was frequently typecast as sinister foreigners, and his career
Speaker 1: has some real ups and downs, absolutely, but especially during
Speaker 1: his prime here, he's always there's always something about his performance.
Speaker 1: It's a treat. And this is a film much like Madlove,
Speaker 1: where we get to enjoy him as the star of
Speaker 1: the picture. He gets to play a lot of different
Speaker 1: notes in his performance that we don't otherwise get to experience.
Speaker 1: I want to point out too, that he was thirty
Speaker 1: six when they filmed this, and he looks thirty six.
Speaker 1: But there are different points where they would call him
Speaker 1: like kid or are they talking about him as if
Speaker 1: he's like this young boy who just in America. It's
Speaker 1: like he's clearly a grown man, but fair enough.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I don't know. Early in the film, he's
Speaker 3: so full of hope. He almost has a kind of
Speaker 3: newborn quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he is totally bought into the American
Speaker 1: mythology that he's been presented with, and yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: overflowing with optimism and it is a bit naive, as
Speaker 1: we'll discuss, all right. So that's Peter Laurie. More on
Speaker 1: his performance as we proceed. The love interest here, the
Speaker 1: eventual blind love interest for our protagonist is the character
Speaker 1: Helen Williams, played by Evelyn Keyes who lived nineteen sixteen
Speaker 1: through two thousand and eight. She was an American actress
Speaker 1: who played supporting roles in some pretty big films, including
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine's Gone with the Wind and nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: five's The Seven Year Itch. Other credits include nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: one's The Prowler and then much later in her career,
Speaker 1: Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: So we were just mentioning there's a part of the
Speaker 3: movie where where Peter Lourie is full of hope and optimism,
Speaker 3: but the character of Helen appears later in the film
Speaker 3: after all of Peter Laurie's hope and optimism is gone,
Speaker 3: and she's sort of like the energy beat. She's like
Speaker 3: an energy weapon of happiness, just blasting into the film
Speaker 3: from orbit, and you know what it's like. She really
Speaker 3: does completely change the tone of the movie when she appears.
Speaker 3: But of course, you know, this is film noir, so
Speaker 3: they're gonna have to play this romance for tragedy ultimately.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean she's great in this. She's delightful,
Speaker 1: you know, totally buy into this, this light of optimism
Speaker 1: you know that she brings. But also like obviously she's
Speaker 1: a doomed angel, you know, like, yeah, you know where
Speaker 1: this is going. Too good for this world, all right.
Speaker 1: We also have Don Beto playing Lieutenant James Jim O'Hara.
Speaker 1: He lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a sympathetic New York police officer who helps Janosher
Speaker 1: early on. Played by an American character actor whose credits
Speaker 1: include nineteen fifty five Is the Night of the Hunter
Speaker 1: and nineteen forty six is The Best Years of Our Lives.
Speaker 1: He performed on Broadway prior to this movie and prior
Speaker 1: to his going into film and television. According to Joe Dante,
Speaker 1: he's an actor known for a lot of milk toast rolls,
Speaker 1: but he thinks this is one of his best performances,
Speaker 1: and then we have the character of Dinky. Dinky. This
Speaker 1: is the character that really surprised me because I came
Speaker 1: into this expecting the great Peter Lorrie performance. But I
Speaker 1: really think George E. Stone is terrific here as Dinky,
Speaker 1: the criminal with a heart of gold.
Speaker 3: He's the guy who he just can't he can't stop
Speaker 3: doing crime, but he's actually a really nice guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he didn't want to do crimes, but like, things
Speaker 1: keep happening and he keeps falling back down the ladder,
Speaker 1: and then he has no choice, you know. Yeah. Stone
Speaker 1: lived nineteen oh three through nineteen sixty seven. Published born
Speaker 1: American actor of vaudeville, Broadway, film, and TV. Played a
Speaker 1: lot of scrappy Prohibition era New York characters often described
Speaker 1: as runyon esque. This is not really terminology I was
Speaker 1: familiar with, but this is a reference to the writings
Speaker 1: of author Damon Runyon, who invoked a lot of colorful
Speaker 1: New York City slang in his writings.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so like when we very first meet Dinky,
Speaker 3: he comes out of the shadows to pick up the
Speaker 3: wallet that was dropped by like a wealthy you know,
Speaker 3: Wall Street trader who gets scared by Peter Lorii's face
Speaker 3: in the middle of the movie scene and Dinky he
Speaker 3: picks up the wallet and he goes like, hey, let's
Speaker 3: see what Sandy Claus left for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I didn't know what runyon esque was beforehand,
Speaker 1: but now that I've seen this performance and I have
Speaker 1: heard the word, now I can recognize runyon esque elsewhere
Speaker 1: in pictures, Like there are definitely characters in Santa Claus
Speaker 1: Conquers the Marsh that are runing esque. Yeah, even though
Speaker 1: they're Martians. I don't know why they're runying esque, but anyway,
Speaker 1: but yes, Stone is terrific in this his film roles.
Speaker 1: Other film roles include nineteen thirty one's Little Caesar, nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty fives Guys and Dolls, and nineteen fifty nine Some
Speaker 1: Like It Hot. Yeah, it's a great performance. Like, he's
Speaker 1: very likable and he has a lot of heart, and
Speaker 1: he is a characters will discuss that very much saves
Speaker 1: Janosh at a very dark point in his life. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: to the extent that this movie has a villain, like
Speaker 1: a centralized individual villain, it is jeff Jeffries. I guess
Speaker 1: his full name would be Jeffrey Jeff jeffries a man
Speaker 1: so Jeff they named him twice, played by James c
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 3: I was banging my head trying to figure out where
Speaker 3: I recognized this guy from because he was very familiar,
Speaker 3: and I finally realized it was from a Miracle on
Speaker 3: thirty fourth Street.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, who does he play in that?
Speaker 3: He's like, I think there are two psychiatrists in it,
Speaker 3: and there's like the one mean one who's sort of
Speaker 3: the antagonist, and then there's the one nice one. And
Speaker 3: I think he's the nice one. I could be remembering
Speaker 3: that wrong, but I know he's in the film.
Speaker 1: He has a very memorable chin, and in this picture anyway,
Speaker 1: has very memorable shoulders, Like Jeff's suit has shoulders so
Speaker 1: broad that they made me think of the Dick Tracy
Speaker 1: villain shoulders, Like it's basically the same dimensions. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's absolutely towering over all the shorter character actors in
Speaker 1: the picture. Like, his shoulders are as broad as Peter
Speaker 1: Laurie is like long if you laid him out, you know,
Speaker 1: Like that's how broad these shoulders are. It's ridiculous. It's
Speaker 1: laugh inducing at least from our modern perspective.
Speaker 3: The effect created by his outfit. And it's a standard forties,
Speaker 3: you know, gang member outfit. So it's a suit with
Speaker 3: a black fedora, you know, big shoulder pads, the vest
Speaker 3: of the tie. And if this makes any sense, it
Speaker 3: has the effect of like he's in football pads. He's
Speaker 3: fully suited up. He's suited up for game time.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I end up having this like real reaction
Speaker 1: to him too, because like Laurie is obviously like, you know,
Speaker 1: he was a much shorter guy. You know, he's he's
Speaker 1: not leading your typical leading man material, you know, like
Speaker 1: he really I attached to Peter Laurie more is like
Speaker 1: he is like a nerd, you know, he's one of us.
Speaker 1: And Jeff Jefferies is total jock here. James c is
Speaker 1: like total jock mode, and like it's instantly I identify
Speaker 1: him as a danger to our our hero and our
Speaker 1: icon here.
Speaker 3: But there's there's a scene where Peter Lourie like beats
Speaker 3: him up.
Speaker 1: Yeah and makes us believe it. Like I like we
Speaker 1: build up to that encounter and I'm like, Okay, how
Speaker 1: are you gonna make me believe this? Like this dude
Speaker 1: is enormous, but you know, Laurie does it. But uh yeah,
Speaker 1: See See pops up in a number of different things,
Speaker 1: so you might have seen him in things like fifty ones,
Speaker 1: The Day the Earth Stood Still, fifty four's Killers from
Speaker 1: Outer Space, and I think I probably recognize. I don't
Speaker 1: know who he was in this because I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it forever because nobody will put it out on disk,
Speaker 1: But nineteen fifty seven is the amazing Colossal Man. Also
Speaker 1: features a James ce.
Speaker 3: Roll Oh and Rob you had this note. He was
Speaker 3: also in the Beginning of the End, which is a
Speaker 3: Burt Eye Gordon film. This is the one with the
Speaker 3: giant grasshoppers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another one. I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen that one in full. And he's not the
Speaker 1: star in that one. He's like, you know, mid cast.
Speaker 1: That one stars Peter Graves.
Speaker 3: I think See Here was known for often playing like
Speaker 3: a military commander or some government bureaucrat. He's like somebody
Speaker 3: you would cut away to and they're just giving orders. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so he's got a more substantial role in this movie.
Speaker 3: But it does turn out because I've seen Beginning of
Speaker 3: the End and I've seen some of these other sci
Speaker 3: fi movies, so it's not just Miracle on thirty fourth Street.
Speaker 3: I know him from him, but that is what was
Speaker 3: in my mind when I was seeing him here in
Speaker 3: his crime uniform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Two more behind the scenes credits to mention.
Speaker 1: Franz Planner, who HAVED eighteen ninety four through nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: is the cinematographer Austria, Hungarian cinematographer and five time Oscar nominee.
Speaker 1: His other credits include nineteen fifty threes The five Thousand
Speaker 1: Fingers of Doctor t that is one that has been
Speaker 1: recommended for Weird House numerous times, also Roman Holiday, as
Speaker 1: well as nineteen fifty fourth twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,
Speaker 1: which of course has Peter Lourie and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: vast ensemble cast. And then finally, Sidney Kuttner is credited
Speaker 1: with music on this nineteen oh three through nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: But this is all pretty much stock music, I'm to understand,
Speaker 1: and there are some other music credits in there that
Speaker 1: are clearly labeled as stock. So you know, there's nothing
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary as far as the music for
Speaker 1: Face Behind the Mask, but it's effective it does the job.
Speaker 3: It's nice and melodramatic, all right, So I guess we're
Speaker 3: doing the plot now. So the movie opens with some
Speaker 3: text gives us the setting, and it says it's set
Speaker 3: just a few years ago, when a voyage to America
Speaker 3: an adventure, not flight, when a quota was a number,
Speaker 3: not a lottery prize to be captured by a lucky few.
Speaker 3: I guess the contrast between adventure and flight there being
Speaker 3: that this movie was released during World War Two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, it's already kind of like calling back
Speaker 1: to the inter war period here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we see a boat streaming into harbor in
Speaker 3: New York City, passing in front of the Statue of Liberty,
Speaker 3: and on the musical track, the orchestra plays a couple
Speaker 3: of bars of my country tis of thee when we
Speaker 3: see the statue. So again, this movie is not subtle.
Speaker 1: No, it lays it on pretty thick.
Speaker 3: And then on the boat, two passengers gaze out over
Speaker 3: the water. So there's one man who's sort of taller
Speaker 3: with a mustache, looking a little bit hopeful, but his
Speaker 3: expression is more tempered and he walks away, leaving only
Speaker 3: the other guy there. The other guy in the background
Speaker 3: is Peter Lourie looking out at the scene with wide eyed,
Speaker 3: almost childlike giddiness. And this is our protagonist Janosh, a
Speaker 3: watchmaker by trade who is a new arrival to America
Speaker 3: from Hungary. Yanosh approaches a crew member on the deck
Speaker 3: of the ship with excitement and he asks him for
Speaker 3: a match, and the kindly man offers him a match,
Speaker 3: and then Janosh says, no, thank you, I don't smoke.
Speaker 3: And then he asks for the time. The man tells
Speaker 3: him it's a quarter past ten. Yanosh checks his own
Speaker 3: watch and agrees that is indeed the time. Janosh then
Speaker 3: reveals with an infectious giggle that he is simply practicing
Speaker 3: his English and again, I can't drive home enough. How
Speaker 3: sweet Peter Lourie is at the beginning here.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, he really is. There's a childlike innocence here.
Speaker 3: So he points out over the water at the Statue
Speaker 3: of Liberty and he says, look, she's beautiful, and the
Speaker 3: boat worker agrees, says, yeah, I'd love to see it
Speaker 3: every time every time we come into port here, and
Speaker 3: Janosh then shows him a picture of a woman folded
Speaker 3: in his wallet in his wallet and says, she is
Speaker 3: very beautiful too. This is his beloved Maria. Yanosh explains
Speaker 3: that after he establishes himself in America, she's going to
Speaker 3: make the journey to join him, and then they will
Speaker 3: be married when she arrives. So Yanosh arrives on the
Speaker 3: streets of New York and we see him walking around.
Speaker 3: He stops a stranger to ask him where he can
Speaker 3: find a good hot and cold water hotel, and the
Speaker 3: stranger gives him directions to the Carlton Plaza. He's like,
Speaker 3: go six blocks up, one block over, two blocks to
Speaker 3: the left, and then he says, they're waiting for you.
Speaker 3: I think this went over my head a bit, but
Speaker 3: I assume the joke is that this is a ridiculously
Speaker 3: fancy hotel and they're waiting for you, as like their
Speaker 3: their advertising slogan or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the dig here.
Speaker 3: But then up the street, Janos stops to buy a
Speaker 3: juice from a street vendor and discovers that all of
Speaker 3: his money is gone. The fifty nine dollars he arrived
Speaker 3: with it's all missing from his wallet. So he runs
Speaker 3: to a nearby policeman for help.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and at this point he's like he's begging
Speaker 1: the policeman to help him, and again we have more
Speaker 1: of this like over the top a naivety and an
Speaker 1: optimism from Janosh. But he has this line though, that
Speaker 1: is so dumb that it does actually succeed in being
Speaker 1: really funny. He's like, I've been gangstered. But but then
Speaker 1: he like calms down a bit like the This is
Speaker 1: where we meet O'Hara for the first time, and O'Hara
Speaker 1: is here to sort of talk him down, and it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, buddy, when when did you last see
Speaker 1: your money? And then he's able to get Janos to
Speaker 1: calm down enough to realize, oh, I still have the
Speaker 1: money on me.
Speaker 3: I have it under my shirt, that's right. So I
Speaker 3: was afraid in this scene. Oh no, he's going to
Speaker 3: run into a crooked cop who's going to double skin him.
Speaker 3: But fortunately the detective he meets is friendly and helpful,
Speaker 3: so O'Hara talks him through it, and then he remembers
Speaker 3: he was listening to a man on the boat talk
Speaker 3: about gangsters in America and he became afraid. And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if the like Tommy Gunn Gangster was
Speaker 3: as big a media sensation at this point in American
Speaker 3: history as it had been like a decade earlier. I
Speaker 3: think of like the early thirties as the heyday of
Speaker 3: the you know, the big gangster stories about John Dillinger
Speaker 3: and so forth. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's sort of what they're playing on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, at any rate, we're all familiar with
Speaker 1: the sort of chewed up by the big city trope,
Speaker 1: which of course is reflected in that wonderful Simpsons episode
Speaker 1: where Homer has to come back to New York City
Speaker 1: to pay for to get a boot off of his car. Right, yes,
Speaker 1: And it's just you know, absolute I d in his
Speaker 1: mind that this is a hell city that will you know,
Speaker 1: that will come at you. So yeah, I was afraid
Speaker 1: too that Yanosh was about to run into another scam
Speaker 1: and just be all the worse off for it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because in that Simpsons episode there's a scene
Speaker 3: where he gets his camera stolen, then he goes to
Speaker 3: complain to a police officer, and then the police officer
Speaker 3: steals his suitcase. But anyway, like you said, he remembers
Speaker 3: that he just hid his money in the shirt he
Speaker 3: finds it again. So everything's okay. Then the policeman takes
Speaker 3: Yanosh for a cold drink of some kind. It looks
Speaker 3: like they're having like an ice cream float. They're at
Speaker 3: a soda shop and Janosh tells O'Hara about all of
Speaker 3: his hopes and dreams. He wants to get a job
Speaker 3: and make money, then bring Marie over the ocean with
Speaker 3: him to get married, and then have children. He wants
Speaker 3: to have his sons follow him into his trade, which
Speaker 3: is watchmaking and watch repair. And Ohara tries to help
Speaker 3: Yanosh by telling him, Hey, I know of a hotel
Speaker 3: that's clean, comfortable and cheap. You go to the Excelsior.
Speaker 3: It's run by a guy named Finnegan. So he gives
Speaker 3: him directions sends him on his way.
Speaker 1: Now, at the.
Speaker 3: Hotel, Yanosh not only rents a room, but he gets
Speaker 3: a job washing dishes at the cafe on the ground floor,
Speaker 3: where it seems like he does extremely good work. We
Speaker 3: see a scene of him efficiently drying off plates and
Speaker 3: teacups while singing to himself. The gist is that Yanosh
Speaker 3: is a machine. He's a real good worker, and he's
Speaker 3: friendly to boot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now at this hotel, we learned from the manager. There
Speaker 3: are a couple of rules if you're a guest. First
Speaker 3: of all, no ironing for some reason. I think he
Speaker 3: says it overloads the circuits or something. But then the
Speaker 3: other thing is no cooking your own food. And the
Speaker 3: reason given is explicitly that the cafe is not making
Speaker 3: enough money and the hotel needs the business from the guests,
Speaker 3: so you can't make your own food. Well, one night,
Speaker 3: we see Yanosh relaxing in his hotel bed after a
Speaker 3: long shift at work. He's sort of chattering away lovingly
Speaker 3: to his photo of Maria, and then meanwhile, in another room,
Speaker 3: a guest is doing such wickedness. He is breaking one
Speaker 3: of the two amandments. He is cooking in his room,
Speaker 3: and we get a close up of his little hot plate,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately, the black and white photography is not kind
Speaker 3: to whatever he's cooking in this spot. It's some gleaming,
Speaker 3: wretched slop. It looks like he's boiling glass beads in
Speaker 3: a broth of nail polish. It does not look good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can figure out what this was. It was like,
Speaker 1: is he doing like some sort of reduction of marachino
Speaker 1: cherries or something. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like tasting it. He's stirring it with a
Speaker 3: fork and tasting yum, yum yum. Well, old man Finn again,
Speaker 3: the guy who runs this place. He's roaming the halls,
Speaker 3: sniffing around at the doors for illegal cookery, and he
Speaker 3: detects He detects the cooking, so he zeros in on
Speaker 3: the culprit, pulls up a ladder and tries to snoop
Speaker 3: through the transom over the door to the room. But
Speaker 3: the guest wises up real quick. He realized he hears
Speaker 3: something outside, and then he hides his hot plate and
Speaker 3: the pot of stew in the drawer of his wooden dresser.
Speaker 3: Seems like a predictable outcome from this, so the guest
Speaker 3: like he hides it in the dresser and then he
Speaker 3: puts on a hat and coat leaves the room. He
Speaker 3: gives a wink to the old man that the manager.
Speaker 3: He's like, ah, I thought you could catch me, huh. Now,
Speaker 3: as you might guess, putting the hot plate and the
Speaker 3: pot inside the wooden furniture starts a fire, and the
Speaker 3: fire grows out of control and then rages through the hotel.
Speaker 3: So this scene turns horrifying. Yano should have been having such
Speaker 3: a sweet time earlier. He was doing well at work. He's,
Speaker 3: you know, dreaming about his beloved. Suddenly he's awoken to
Speaker 3: find himself in a crumbling inferno. He tries to escape
Speaker 3: the hotel, but he is hit by falling debris and
Speaker 3: he ends up badly injured, very badly burned. By the way,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to point out rob there's one part
Speaker 3: where he's like coming down the stairs and he's hit
Speaker 3: by burning debris that falls from above and then tumbles
Speaker 3: over the staircase railing. I just thought this was a
Speaker 3: pretty impressive and dangerous looking stunt. I don't know how
Speaker 3: they pulled this off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure. Like the stunt double of they
Speaker 1: have for Lori here, I assume it's a stunt double
Speaker 1: and looks just like him, And yeah, very terrifying. I
Speaker 1: tend to find most fire effects terrifying in films these days,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it absolutely feels like a raging inferno here.
Speaker 3: So Yanos survives and he's taken to the hospital, but
Speaker 3: he has suffered extensive third degree burns over his face
Speaker 3: and head, and we see him in his hospital bed
Speaker 3: with his head wrapped up completely in bandages like a mummy,
Speaker 3: and his policeman friend O'Hara comes to the hospital showing concern.
Speaker 3: He says he feels responsible for Yanosh's injuries because he's
Speaker 3: the one who sent him to that hotel, and he
Speaker 3: pays for some of his care. I think he gives
Speaker 3: five dollars to pay for his hospital care, and then
Speaker 3: he leaves a business card for Yanosh, writing a note
Speaker 3: on the back that he should call him when he's recovered.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or I think the wording is something like when
Speaker 1: things are okay. It's a little bit more vague, and
Speaker 1: that's going to be important later on. That's right.
Speaker 3: I think it says call me when okay. So Janosh
Speaker 3: retains the use of his hands, but as the healing
Speaker 3: process goes on, it becomes clear that he's going to
Speaker 3: have extensive scarring on his face and he will never
Speaker 3: look the same. The scene where the doctor removes his
Speaker 3: bandages is extremely dark and it's played like a horror film.
Speaker 3: The doctor draws the shades on the window and then
Speaker 3: covers the mirror in the corner of the room before
Speaker 3: he takes the wrappings off. And while the doctor is
Speaker 3: removing everything. Yanosh is still his friendly, optimistic self. He's
Speaker 3: going on and on about how he's excited to go
Speaker 3: back out and look for work. He's talking about how
Speaker 3: he's saying, I'm very skilled with my hands. I have
Speaker 3: experience as a watchmaker, but also in other mechanical jobs.
Speaker 3: I once worked in an airplane factory. I even flew
Speaker 3: airplanes when I was in the Armed Forces. And so
Speaker 3: he's going on about the future. He's very hopeful. But
Speaker 3: once his face is revealed, the nurses in the room
Speaker 3: shut their eyes and WinCE. One nurse even walks into
Speaker 3: the room and screams in horror.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this scene instantly made me think of a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine Batman, the Tim Burton picture. We have that
Speaker 1: great scene with the removal of the bandages on Jack
Speaker 1: Nicholson's joker in that and you know it's not you know,
Speaker 1: one to one here. But I can't help but ponder
Speaker 1: to what extent like this picture and what other pictures
Speaker 1: may have influenced that scene.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, I see strong similarity. I would agree
Speaker 3: it's a likely influence. But of course, you know, these
Speaker 3: reactions they start to alarm you and ocean he becomes upset,
Speaker 3: so he runs to the mirror, pulls away the towel
Speaker 3: that's hiding the glass, and is confronted with his new face.
Speaker 3: Every inch of it is scarred and it has sort
Speaker 3: of a melted texture, And it's interesting that this is
Speaker 3: basically the only time the movie actually gives you a
Speaker 3: good look at his injuries after this scene. For a
Speaker 3: long time, until there's another plot development, his face will
Speaker 3: be always turned away from the camera or otherwise hidden.
Speaker 3: At a certain point, he's going to acquire a customized
Speaker 3: mask that makes him look like Peter Lourie again, but
Speaker 3: a sort of altered lory, like Uncanny Laurie, And I
Speaker 3: don't unless I'm forgetting it. There's really not any other
Speaker 3: time they show him with his injuries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they we get, we get some pretty solid glances
Speaker 1: of it, like in the mirror and so forth. But yeah,
Speaker 1: for the most part, they they don't show it to
Speaker 1: us directly. It's focused more on him becoming a creature
Speaker 1: of the shadows and people, you know, having this terrible
Speaker 1: reaction to seeing him. And then once the mask is acquired,
Speaker 1: it is quite interesting because it gives it ends up
Speaker 1: giving Janosh this kind of weird, almost otherworldly beauty. You know,
Speaker 1: he's like like an angel, like a fallen angel certainly,
Speaker 1: you know, but this clearly this being that's caught between realities,
Speaker 1: Like it's smooths out Peter Laurie's face. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he takes on this strange but not like, you know,
Speaker 1: monstrous appearance. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after seeing his face, Janosh temporarily loses his mind.
Speaker 3: He starts screaming where is my face? And he thrashes about,
Speaker 3: shouting and attacking the doctor until finally he is forcefully sedated.
Speaker 3: So after this, some time passes and we see things
Speaker 3: continuing to go bad for Yanosh. He goes out looking
Speaker 3: for work, dressed in a black fedora and a dark
Speaker 3: coat with the collar pulled up around his face to
Speaker 3: hide himself. So he's dressed kind of like a cross
Speaker 3: between your standard hard boiled PI but also a bit
Speaker 3: of Dracula in there, somewhere in between the two. And
Speaker 3: everywhere he goes, including a watchmaker shop and an airplane factory,
Speaker 3: he asks for work, but he is turned away once
Speaker 3: the boss sees his face. And there's some very gloomy
Speaker 3: atmosphere in this part of the film, like I'm thinking
Speaker 3: particularly of the scene where he goes to the watchmaker's shop,
Speaker 3: or it seems to be nighttime outside and the windows
Speaker 3: are illuminated from inside, so he goes in to talk,
Speaker 3: but once the watchmaker sees him, he's like, sorry, I
Speaker 3: forgot to take the sign out of the window. We
Speaker 3: don't have any positions and sends him away, and we
Speaker 3: see Peter Lorie walking off down the sidewalk where he's
Speaker 3: illuminated by like he should be illuminated by this lamp
Speaker 3: that we see in the foreground, but it's like none
Speaker 3: of the light touches him somehow, like he's just a
Speaker 3: pure shadow from head to toe. Yeah, we see him
Speaker 3: becoming increasingly desperate when he goes to talk to the
Speaker 3: manager of the airplane factory, like he's turned away from
Speaker 3: the camera, but he says, please, my face makes no
Speaker 3: difference to how I can work with my hands, and
Speaker 3: he's showing the manager his hands, but the manager just says, sorry,
Speaker 3: there's nothing doing here, and then we get maybe the
Speaker 3: most heartbreaking scene in the entire film, a scene where
Speaker 3: Janosh writes a letter to his love back home to Maria,
Speaker 3: which we see part of it translated into English. And
Speaker 3: the part we see says, I must hurt you, dear Maria,
Speaker 3: just once, then you can forget me forever. I have
Speaker 3: met a girl, a very pretty girl. We are going
Speaker 3: to be married. Goodbye, Maria, forgive and forget Janosh. Obviously
Speaker 3: this is not true, but he can't face her now,
Speaker 3: so he lies to make her move on with her life.
Speaker 3: And this part was so.
Speaker 1: Sad, absolutely heartbreaking. This one legitally made me tear up
Speaker 1: when I was watching the picture.
Speaker 3: But then we're going to get another slight reversal of fortune.
Speaker 3: So here we come up on the scene where Yanosh
Speaker 3: meets Dinky. Now, the setup to this scene visually is
Speaker 3: very moody and beautiful. Yanosh is standing in his dark costume,
Speaker 3: covered by the coat and the hat, at the railing
Speaker 3: of a concrete walkway overlooking the ocean, and the moonlight
Speaker 3: reflects off of the water and casts these white ripples
Speaker 3: across the whole scene. It seems to imply Yana is
Speaker 3: thinking about jumping from the railing and ending his life,
Speaker 3: but hope comes through a series of unusual events. So
Speaker 3: a well dressed man approaches Janosh to ask for a
Speaker 3: match to light his cigar and This is kind of
Speaker 3: interesting in how it plays on the very first thing
Speaker 3: we ever heard from Yanosh, when he walks up to
Speaker 3: the guy working on the boat at the beginning and
Speaker 3: asks for a match to practice his English. This guy
Speaker 3: comes up to ask for a match, and then Janosh
Speaker 3: tries to give him one, but when the man sees
Speaker 3: Janosh's face up close, the cigar falls out of his
Speaker 3: mouth and he runs away, screaming. Suddenly, from out of
Speaker 3: the shadows behind a bunch of crates and barrels comes
Speaker 3: a third man, and this is Dinky, who's going to
Speaker 3: become a major character. Dinky notices that the well dressed
Speaker 3: man dropped his wallet as he was running away, so
Speaker 3: he approaches Yanosh without fear. He picks up the wallet
Speaker 3: and he's like, you know, oh, hey thought I was
Speaker 3: a cop, didn't you. Well, let's see what Sandy Claus
Speaker 3: left for us, And he starts going through the wallet,
Speaker 3: and Dinky is a but he's also instantly likable, Like
Speaker 3: he gets the cash out of the wallet and he's like, ah,
Speaker 3: what a cheap skate, only twelve bucks, but he splits
Speaker 3: the cash with Yano. She gives him half, so they
Speaker 3: introduce themselves to each other, and Dinky is a little squirrely,
Speaker 3: but unlike everyone else, he doesn't react with horror at
Speaker 3: Yanosh's face. Instead, he treats him like a friend, like
Speaker 3: when Yanosh is like, aren't you afraid of me? And
Speaker 3: Dicky says, what your face? Ah, that's nothing, And they
Speaker 3: start talking about Yanosh's apparent thoughts of jumping from the wall,
Speaker 3: and Dinky has has a kind of casual way of
Speaker 3: bringing some cheer to the situation. He says, what do
Speaker 3: you get out of being dead lying around in a grave?
Speaker 3: Ain't my idea of a good time? And he's a
Speaker 3: sympathetic ear. Yanos starts to tell him about his troubles.
Speaker 3: No one will give him work and no one will
Speaker 3: look him in the face or talk to him, and
Speaker 3: Dinky says like, Hey, I'm looking, I'm looking at you,
Speaker 3: I'm talking to you. Let me take you out for
Speaker 3: a hot meat. So he takes him to eat and
Speaker 3: takes him back to the hotel where he's crashing, and
Speaker 3: they start to become fast friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dinky almost has kind of a what a run
Speaker 1: and ask zen quality to him? You know he lives
Speaker 1: very much in the moment that's right.
Speaker 3: So back at Dinky's place, Dinky's like having a bath
Speaker 3: and sermonizing to Yanosh about his life philosophy.
Speaker 1: Oh and by Dinky's place, we mean a hotel room
Speaker 1: that they were able to pay for for just one night,
Speaker 1: you know, because again Dinky lives in the moment is
Speaker 1: one night at a time, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, So Dinky says, I've been on
Speaker 3: my own since I was fifteen. I learned my lesson early.
Speaker 3: You got to go for the free rides in this world.
Speaker 3: You got to grab everything you can for yourself before
Speaker 3: somebody else grabs it first. Only don't get too greedy.
Speaker 3: I grabbed one thing too many once and got free
Speaker 3: room and board in a reform school. And Yano says,
Speaker 3: what you stole? And Dinky says, well, that's what they
Speaker 3: called it. And Yanosh just like, but Dinky, it is
Speaker 3: wrong to steal. You can't do wrong and find happiness
Speaker 3: in life. And here there was big like Lupita from
Speaker 3: Santa Claus energy.
Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. The morality play aspects of this
Speaker 1: picture very interesting because it's like the police in this
Speaker 1: picture are absolutely good. Criminals can go either way, and
Speaker 1: then of course, Gianos, at least at this portion. In
Speaker 1: this portion of the picture, is very much of the
Speaker 1: idea that like there is an absolute right and wrong,
Speaker 1: there is a firm line between the two, there is
Speaker 1: no gray area, and you cannot cross over that line.
Speaker 3: Really, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The cops in the movie are good, even though I
Speaker 3: expected them to be crooked. The criminals are a mix.
Speaker 3: The really like bad lot are hiring managers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And they cast a bit of
Speaker 1: shade too on the guy who dropped the wallet. I
Speaker 1: think they were they were They prefer to him being
Speaker 1: like a Wall Street guy or something. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dinky's attitude is like, what is he going to
Speaker 3: come back for this money? He's not gonna miss it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: But Dinky also explains it's not like he really wants
Speaker 3: to be in a life of crime the way he
Speaker 3: thinks about it. He says, what do you get out
Speaker 3: of going straight? I tried to go straight six or
Speaker 3: seven times, but something always went wrong, something always happened.
Speaker 3: So we sort of get the picture forming that Dinky
Speaker 3: is a small time crook, but he's not really malicious.
Speaker 3: He's kind of a sweetheart, and he keeps trying to
Speaker 3: set things right, Like you find out that he's got
Speaker 3: a mother living out on a farm in the Midwest,
Speaker 3: hoping he'll come home sometime, and he keeps meaning to
Speaker 3: save up some money so he can take some money
Speaker 3: and go back to her and help her buy a
Speaker 3: chicken ranch she's always dreamed of and work on the
Speaker 3: ranch with his mom, And it seems it's a really
Speaker 3: sweet intention, but he just never manages to get it together,
Speaker 3: often because of stuff outside of his control, like he
Speaker 3: They never say exactly what it is, but it's implied
Speaker 3: that Dinky has some kind of chronic disease that occasionally
Speaker 3: flares up, and then he gets sick and has to
Speaker 3: go to the hospital, which in the past has caused
Speaker 3: him to lose whatever legitimate job he had at the time.
Speaker 3: So then when he gets out of the hospital, he
Speaker 3: has to do crime again. So they compare their attitudes.
Speaker 3: Janosh is is now very hopeless and fatalistic about his
Speaker 3: situation in life. Dinky is relatively carefree. He says, Yanosh Is, like,
Speaker 3: what's going to happen when we run out of the
Speaker 3: money that we got tonight? Dinky's like, you know, something
Speaker 3: else always comes along he mentions that he has an
Speaker 3: associate named Jeff. This will be Jeffrey, Jeff Jeffries who
Speaker 3: is doing a stretch up the river, like doing time
Speaker 3: in prison, and when he when he gets out, he
Speaker 3: will have plenty of jobs for the both of them. Janosh,
Speaker 3: not fully understanding the criminal implications here, is like, oh
Speaker 3: boy jobs, and he goes to sleep, dreaming that things
Speaker 3: will turn up. So Dinky and Yano, who Dinky calls
Speaker 3: Yanosh Johnny. They go on living in cheaper and cheaper motels.
Speaker 3: You see a kind of montage of the like four
Speaker 3: rent signs getting lower and lower prices, until finally they
Speaker 3: get thrown out of a real fleabag and they're living
Speaker 3: in a junkyard. And Dinky at this point he's had
Speaker 3: some kind of health flare up. He's sick and in
Speaker 3: need of a doctor. And here is where the plot
Speaker 3: takes a turn. Dinky is supposed to go out on
Speaker 3: a job tonight, but he's too sick, and he sends
Speaker 3: Janosh off to tell his associates that he's not going
Speaker 3: to be able to be there to do the job.
Speaker 3: Instead of that, Yanosh goes to his associates and pulls
Speaker 3: the job off in Dinky Stead, and we learned that
Speaker 3: the job was straight up crime. It was cracking into
Speaker 3: a safe and pulling off a jewel heist. I think
Speaker 3: we're to assume, you know, they talked multiple times before
Speaker 3: about how Yanosh has skilled hands. He has mechanical skill
Speaker 3: with his hands, So I think we're to assume that
Speaker 3: these skills transferred, you know, his watchmaker skills were transferable
Speaker 3: to opening a locked safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got that eighteen dexterity, so he's able to
Speaker 1: get in there and break into some safe. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't see this heist, this this safe cracking scene
Speaker 1: at all. It's alluded missing. Yeah, scene absolutely missing it.
Speaker 1: I would have loved to have seen it, like I
Speaker 1: wanted to. I wanted to see like the gears turning
Speaker 1: in Yanosh's head as he realizes like what this job is,
Speaker 1: as he you know, actually you know, gets the determination
Speaker 1: together to go ahead and pull it off, like this
Speaker 1: seems like a great dramatic sequence that I guess it
Speaker 1: was just never filmed, And I don't know what the
Speaker 1: full story is here. If they never intended to, it's
Speaker 1: just that's not the sort of picture it is, or
Speaker 1: if it's something they were going to film and didn't
Speaker 1: have the funds for. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I would have liked to see
Speaker 3: it too. But anyway, Janosh makes so much money from
Speaker 3: the job he is able to take Dinky to the
Speaker 3: doctor and get medicine to make him better. So Dinky's
Speaker 3: recovering now. But while he's he's in bed and Ianosh
Speaker 3: is there by his side, some tough guys show up
Speaker 3: to demand money that Dinky owes them, and they're like, Hey,
Speaker 3: this new guy's real good. Let's put him to work.
Speaker 3: Just another note, This doesn't feel like a comment on
Speaker 3: their character, or at least not an intentional one. But
Speaker 3: I should note that the other criminals also do not
Speaker 3: seem phased by Janosh's scars the way that like anybody
Speaker 3: who's offering a legitimate job does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is interesting, isn't it. I hadn't really thought
Speaker 1: about this as much, But they they just see the
Speaker 1: dollar signs. They're like, Oh, this guy can crack a
Speaker 1: safe and in no time. Well, yeah, of course we
Speaker 1: want to keep doing business with him. Yeah, but in
Speaker 1: ways that other legitimate businesses refuse to consider. On all
Speaker 1: these job interviews he was going for and so forth.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so the path is now on offer. They can
Speaker 3: keep lining up more jobs for yan Ocean. He can
Speaker 3: make them all filthy rich. Now Yah There's initially does
Speaker 3: not want this. He still thinks it is wrong to steal,
Speaker 3: but Dinky knows how to make the appeal to him.
Speaker 3: He's like, Janosh, I know what you want more than
Speaker 3: anything else in the world. You want your face back.
Speaker 3: And there are these people out there called I think
Speaker 3: he calls them plastic doctors. He's talking about plastic surgeons.
Speaker 3: He says, if you have enough money, they can they
Speaker 3: can give you your old face back. And Yanosh is
Speaker 3: entranced by this idea. He's like, really, I didn't even
Speaker 3: know that was possible. So he says, could they fix
Speaker 3: my face so that people can look at me? And
Speaker 3: Dinky says, all you need is money. So it's impossible
Speaker 3: for Janosh to resist. Now, a new face would be
Speaker 3: a new life. So he's like, okay, crime me up,
Speaker 3: I will do crime.
Speaker 1: This bit of dialogue between Dinkie and Janosh it really
Speaker 1: feels like the heart of the picture, and it's the
Speaker 1: part of the picture that I feel like gives us
Speaker 1: the most to chew on and figuring out what its
Speaker 1: message is. You know this bit where he's saying it's
Speaker 1: being done every day. Yeah, all you have to have
Speaker 1: is money, you know, buying yourself a new face and
Speaker 1: so forth. Yeah, it's a lot to chew on. It's
Speaker 1: really it's as if Dinky is really opening Janosh's eyes
Speaker 1: to the real American dream, Like here is the real
Speaker 1: America and this is how you climb here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there's a scene where Yanosh goes to visit
Speaker 3: the plastic surgeon, but unfortunate, once he gets there, the
Speaker 3: answer isn't as straightforward as Dinky led him to believe.
Speaker 3: It's interesting the surgeon isn't presented as giving him giving
Speaker 3: him impossible promises. Instead, the surgeon seems to be fairly
Speaker 3: measured in his initial analysis. He's like, well, I'll need
Speaker 3: to consult another doctor from the practice and compare notes,
Speaker 3: but we think full reconstructive surgery would be expensive and protracted,
Speaker 3: might not be possible at all. In the meantime, I
Speaker 3: can make you a rubber mask of your old face
Speaker 3: based on your passport photo, and the mask will serve
Speaker 3: until we can do a full rundown. And see what
Speaker 3: the prospects for surgery are.
Speaker 1: Yep. So Janosh is like, mask me up. Let's go
Speaker 1: with the mask and then I'll come back for that
Speaker 1: next apploytment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the mask will also be expensive. So Janosh does
Speaker 3: have to do more crimes. So he goes from reluctant
Speaker 3: safe cracker to just NonStop crime boss. He not only
Speaker 3: it becomes a safe cracker, he takes over the gang
Speaker 3: like he all the you know, the tough guys who
Speaker 3: were showing up at Dinky's plays, Now they're all working
Speaker 3: for Janosh. And he pulls off highest affter heist. We
Speaker 3: get the newspaper headlines, scenes of the police getting chewed
Speaker 3: out by their superiors because they can't catch this criminal mastermind.
Speaker 3: In fact, it seems like the main detective on the
Speaker 3: case is Yanosh's old friend, Lieutenant O'Hara.
Speaker 1: Of course it is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also somewhere along this process, Yanosh ends up not only
Speaker 3: with a lot of money, but ends up with an airplane,
Speaker 3: or at least flying an airplane like he They mentioned
Speaker 3: multiple times that he goes out flying an airplane.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so he's he has become the boss. He's
Speaker 1: running this entire operation, and we'll get some more of
Speaker 1: crime boss yanovsch But this is another part of the
Speaker 1: picture where it's like I really wanted more. I needed
Speaker 1: like another solid twenty minutes of Yanov's just being the boss,
Speaker 1: you know, enforcing his will, being a little scary with people,
Speaker 1: and so forth. We get all that, but you know,
Speaker 1: it just leaves you wanting.
Speaker 3: More now next to I'm sure we're all dying to
Speaker 3: see the mask. Well, we do get to see it,
Speaker 3: and of course when we finally see it, it is a
Speaker 3: bit creepy, because I guess a realistic mask sort of
Speaker 3: always is. But I'll also say it's not bad for
Speaker 3: a nineteen forties mask, Like I can tell that it
Speaker 3: is supposed to be Peter LORII.
Speaker 1: It looks better than some decapitated head effects I've seen,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 3: Yes, And then when he puts it on. You were
Speaker 3: talking about this earlier, rob So when he puts the
Speaker 3: mask on, we go back to the cameras showing Peter
Speaker 3: Lourie's face again, but now his skin looks tight and
Speaker 3: sort of pinched up and unnatural. I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: how they accomplished this effect. I guess it's some kind
Speaker 3: of makeup effect, because ironically, the mask we're now seeing
Speaker 3: I believe is just Peter Lourie's real face, but with
Speaker 3: some makeup and manipulations.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Like I say, it kind of like smooths
Speaker 1: him out a bit more and gives him this slightly
Speaker 1: uncanny appearance.
Speaker 3: It's like Peter LORII with an intense facelift.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: After this, there's this one sequence where they pull off
Speaker 3: some kind of opera robbery. I'm not sure I didn't
Speaker 3: fully get the details here, but it involves an opera
Speaker 3: and then like going to the opera and like looking
Speaker 3: at each other during a certain time in the show,
Speaker 3: and then we just see like I think an orchestra
Speaker 3: conductor tied up and they've got a bunch of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess so they didn't have access
Speaker 1: to montage technology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, But anyway, while the gang is counting up
Speaker 3: all their money from the opera heist, they are interrupted
Speaker 3: by a real nasty customer. Remember old Jeff we heard
Speaker 3: about earlier, Jeff Jeffrey Jeffreyes. Well, anyway, he's out of
Speaker 3: prison now, and he wanders into the to the gang's
Speaker 3: counting room with a gun and insists he's in charge now.
Speaker 3: Jeff says, we're going to live just as swell. Only
Speaker 3: one thing will change. We don't need him appointing at
Speaker 3: yanosh Ooh. But then twist. I didn't see this coming.
Speaker 3: Peter Lourie like muscles this much bigger guy. He slaps
Speaker 3: him around. He's like, I'm in charge now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is great. It's very much like little dog
Speaker 1: putting a bigger dog in its place. Sort of energy here,
Speaker 1: and you know, Laurie brings it like he makes you
Speaker 1: believe it, like seconds before it to Kurt. You feel
Speaker 1: like something like that is going to have to happen
Speaker 1: in order to put Jeff in his place. But you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if LORI can do it. No, he
Speaker 1: totally did it. He pulled it off. I believe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I think the line he says is
Speaker 3: these were your boys, their mine. Now we can all
Speaker 3: be friends. If you want to play friendly, it's up
Speaker 3: to you. So Jeff cools his attitude and he gets
Speaker 3: absorbed into the gang. But you can see in this
Speaker 3: scene that's he's swallowing his pride for the moment, but
Speaker 3: it might not be going away. He's still hanging on
Speaker 3: to a grudge.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this this is a great scene. So this
Speaker 1: Yanosh in his villain era here, it's tremendous.
Speaker 3: So some more plot developments. Yanosh goes back to a
Speaker 3: follow up appointment with his plastic surgeons, and during this
Speaker 3: appointment they explain, you know, after really looking at things,
Speaker 3: we cannot in good conscience recommend an operation to you
Speaker 3: because your burns are too extensive, too severe to be repaired.
Speaker 3: They say, you know, if it's possible at all, it
Speaker 3: would take like thirty operations over fifteen years to even
Speaker 3: really give you a chance of looking like your old self.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we get that great bit of that great line
Speaker 1: from janoshras just repeats that. He just says fifteen years.
Speaker 1: You know, is it really sinks in that this path
Speaker 1: that he's chosen for himself, that he's picked up is
Speaker 1: a temporary change to get back on track is a
Speaker 1: long term track apparently, and potentially the rest of his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to him, it means fifteen years of crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Janos's furious, but on his way out of the
Speaker 3: building he has a chance encounter that will change his life.
Speaker 3: Yet again, we keep having these reversals of fortune here.
Speaker 3: So he bumps into a woman on the sidewalk and
Speaker 3: makes her drop all her things. And this is the
Speaker 3: romantic meat cute in the middle of the film noir
Speaker 3: about a good man's desperate and hellish descent into crime.
Speaker 3: It's a strange change of tone, but this character is
Speaker 3: the one we mentioned earlier. Helen, played by Evelyn Keys.
Speaker 3: Helen is blind and works as a jewelry maker, stringing necklaces.
Speaker 3: I think she does. She string them for a department store.
Speaker 1: I believe so. Yeah, yeah, and she was.
Speaker 3: Transporting project boxes when they ran into each other on
Speaker 3: the sidewalk. Helen is friendly, and she's funny and optimistic,
Speaker 3: and her positivity just cut through the gloom of the
Speaker 3: story like a laser. Janosh is instinctively rude to her
Speaker 3: at first because he's feeling so bad, but he quickly
Speaker 3: softens and he helps her pick up her things. And
Speaker 3: in this scene, I don't know if you notice the
Speaker 3: same thing, Rob, but you can hear in Peter Lourie's
Speaker 3: vocal performance, his voice changes as as he became the
Speaker 3: crime boss. His voice changed to become very tight and
Speaker 3: gruff that he uses this tight gruff voice with his
Speaker 3: gangster accomplices, but when he talks to Helen, he quickly
Speaker 3: starts to sound more like he did at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the movie when he first arrived in America, with
Speaker 3: a softer, higher pitched voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah. It reawakens the old Yanos.
Speaker 3: Heare, so Yanosh offers to walk with her and carry
Speaker 3: her things, and she accepts, and so they go back
Speaker 3: to her apartment and they get to know one another.
Speaker 3: Helen talks about how she enjoys living independently. She likes
Speaker 3: keeping up her apartment and listening to music on the
Speaker 3: radio from the neighbor's next door. And she's so charming
Speaker 3: it is easy to see why Janosh's crime boss heart
Speaker 3: is melting. Will probably come as no shock that this
Speaker 3: is the beginning of a romance story. He asks if
Speaker 3: he can come back and visit her sometime, and she
Speaker 3: says she'd like that. So the two of them get
Speaker 3: to know each other, they become friends. The love story blossoms.
Speaker 3: They spend lots of time together and one day they
Speaker 3: go out walking in the country among the oak trees. Here,
Speaker 3: Helen gives this monologue sort of sharing her perspective on life.
Speaker 3: Why she's so optimistic and has such a sense of
Speaker 3: good humor about everything, And she explains from her point
Speaker 3: of view, being blind, she's able to find beauty in
Speaker 3: things more easily, so she says, like, you know, when
Speaker 3: I feel the fur, even of a scrawny alley cat,
Speaker 3: I can imagine it's the most regal beast. Or just
Speaker 3: by putting one fresh flower in a jar in my apartment,
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm living in a spring meadow. Kind
Speaker 3: of interfaces with stuff. She said earlier about how much
Speaker 3: pleasure she gets in listening to the radio.
Speaker 1: Yano.
Speaker 3: She gave her her own radio as a gift sometime earlier,
Speaker 3: and she loves the music, of course, but she even
Speaker 3: finds pleasure in the advertisements, even if she's not interested
Speaker 3: in the product they're selling. She just likes listening to
Speaker 3: the enthusiastic appeals of friendly strangers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she likes her work. It's mentioned in one
Speaker 1: of these bits from her where she talks about like
Speaker 1: she enjoys listening to the radio and beating you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yano, she's so taken with her way of seeing
Speaker 3: the good and everything, And he says he wishes he
Speaker 3: could see the world the way she does, he would
Speaker 3: imagine himself as a noble king. But she's like, dude,
Speaker 3: you are a king. You are unselfish and thoughtful, and
Speaker 3: that's the most noble thing of all. And during the scene,
Speaker 3: Yanosh breaks down, he starts to cry, and he says
Speaker 3: that if she were able to see his burned face,
Speaker 3: the face behind the mask, the title of the film,
Speaker 3: she would run away and terror like everybody else else.
Speaker 3: But she rejects this. She wants to know what he's
Speaker 3: been hiding, what's troubling him, and invites him to tell
Speaker 3: his story.
Speaker 1: So he does.
Speaker 3: He relents, and he tells her his whole history, everything
Speaker 3: that happened, though he tells her off screen, as many
Speaker 3: pivotal scenes they do take place off screen. Though I
Speaker 3: guess this is a common this is a fair thing.
Speaker 3: We don't want to see a character recap the entire
Speaker 3: film so far, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: But there would have been some really emotional moments in
Speaker 1: that that we miss out on. But we know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. She is going to accept him for
Speaker 1: who he is, and she sees the true face behind
Speaker 1: the mask, She sees his heart.
Speaker 3: That's right, and I guess that's the play on the title.
Speaker 3: There are two different kinds of face behind the mask.
Speaker 3: When Yanosh thinks of the face behind the mask, he
Speaker 3: thinks of his scars, his physical face, And when she
Speaker 3: thinks of it, she thinks of the real hymn, his
Speaker 3: good heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Yanosh's conscience is now awakened again by his love
Speaker 3: for Helen, and he goes back to his gang and
Speaker 3: is like, boys, I'm out. I'm going to clean my
Speaker 3: whole act up, and he is. He is out of
Speaker 3: the life of crime for good.
Speaker 1: This always works. You can always walk away from a
Speaker 1: life of crime. We know that from so many pictures.
Speaker 3: Well, it's funny because he tries to tell Jeff like, hey,
Speaker 3: you're going to get what you always wanted. Now, boys
Speaker 3: are yours again. You're in charge now. But you get
Speaker 3: the sense that Jeff maybe has enjoyed coasting on Yanosh's
Speaker 3: crime skills and just sniping from the sidelines. Now that
Speaker 3: he's in charge, he's mad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, now Jeff will have to deliver as
Speaker 1: the boss of this crew that has become accustomed to
Speaker 1: a higher level of success. So, yeah, good luck, Jeff.
Speaker 1: Let's see how this works. Out for you.
Speaker 3: It's what he wanted, but now that he has it,
Speaker 3: he's not happy. He's just doing, but he can't stop
Speaker 3: Yanosh from leaving. Yanosh has a house out in the
Speaker 3: country and plans to move there with Helen. Yanosh gives
Speaker 3: his new address to Dinky in secret and says, if
Speaker 3: you ever you know, you ever need me, you ever
Speaker 3: want to get out of the life, look me up here.
Speaker 3: So Yanosh and Helen make their plans. They pack things up,
Speaker 3: They make plans to move out to a house with
Speaker 3: green shutters. They talk about this detail and Yanosh oh
Speaker 3: he buys a secondhand car, one with a radio because
Speaker 3: he knows Helen likes to listen to the radio so much. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: at crime headquarters, Jeff is stewing again. He got what
Speaker 3: he wanted, but he's still angry. He starts digging around
Speaker 3: through Yanosh's old things and he finds something curious. He
Speaker 3: finds the business card of a police detective. This is
Speaker 3: the card that O'Hara left for Yanosh in the hospital
Speaker 3: way back when. But not understanding what it is, Jeff
Speaker 3: jumps to a conclusion, and that conclusion is Janosh wanted
Speaker 3: out of the business because he is ratting the gang
Speaker 3: out to the cops, and Jeff says, I figured it out.
Speaker 3: We got to get revenge against Janosh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, the cryptic nature of that original scrawl message,
Speaker 1: now out of context, is interpreted to me, oh, Yanosh
Speaker 1: is in a league with the police.
Speaker 3: That's right. And here's where the potential happy ending turns
Speaker 3: to tragedy, as it must in a movie like this.
Speaker 3: Jeff and the gang find Dinky and they torture him
Speaker 3: for information about where to find Yanosh. Finally they threaten
Speaker 3: to burn his feet in the fireplace, and he tells
Speaker 3: where yan Osh and Helen are hiding. So the next
Speaker 3: day yan oshan Helen and an adorable scruffy dog by
Speaker 3: the way, really old dog, big cute dog. They move
Speaker 3: out to their house in the country you never you know,
Speaker 3: and they like settle in and everything's so happy. You
Speaker 3: never want to be a movie character saying it's all
Speaker 3: so perfect unless you're in the last like two minutes
Speaker 3: of the film and I say, we have another fifteen
Speaker 3: twenty to go here.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, not good. But yeah, they seem like the
Speaker 1: this seems to be the dream, right, the dog, the house.
Speaker 1: There's a scene though, where Janosh tells Helen that she
Speaker 1: doesn't have to do her bead work anymore because she'll
Speaker 1: have this house to run, and part of me was
Speaker 1: kind of like, yeah, no, she know. She had this
Speaker 1: whole bit where she talked about how much joy she
Speaker 1: derived from her work. But I likes it. It's a
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one film. It's supposed to be well intended
Speaker 1: by it. But yeah, I think she can still do
Speaker 1: her beadwork.
Speaker 3: So everything is beautiful until knock on the door and
Speaker 3: it's Jeff. Jeff arrives and he makes menacing comments to Yanosh.
Speaker 3: They have a confrontation, but it does not escalate to violence.
Speaker 1: He leaves.
Speaker 3: He says like, I won't even waste a bullet on you.
Speaker 3: But when he gets back to the car, when Jeff
Speaker 3: gets back to the car with his boys, they revealed
Speaker 3: that they had planted a bomb in Yanosh's car. It's
Speaker 3: wired to the radio. And then the gangsters are driving
Speaker 3: away and they conclude that they're done with Dinky, so
Speaker 3: they throw him out of the moving car onto the highway.
Speaker 3: It's unclear if they thought they had killed him or
Speaker 3: if they meant to leave him alive. I wasn't sure
Speaker 3: there did.
Speaker 1: They shoot him first in the back.
Speaker 3: Think, so do you hear like a you don't see
Speaker 3: a gun, but you hear a gun sound effect? And
Speaker 3: then they throw him out of the side of the car.
Speaker 3: But Dinky manages, despite his injuries, to get to a
Speaker 3: nearby service station and place a phone call. And then
Speaker 3: the logistics of this climax scene get really complicated. Dinky
Speaker 3: calls a neighbor of Janosh's. I guess Janosh and Helen
Speaker 3: don't have a phone yet. He calls the neighbor. The
Speaker 3: neighbor cranks his car up, drives to Yanosh's house, picks
Speaker 3: up Yanosh drives him back to his house to take
Speaker 3: Dinky's call, only for the call to be like, don't
Speaker 3: start your car, Yano, she don't use your radio, And
Speaker 3: unfortunately it's a it's a Godfather scenario, you know, it's
Speaker 3: Apollonia in Sicily. Janosh rushes back home to stop Helen
Speaker 3: from using the car. But Helen, she's been loading things
Speaker 3: into the car. She wants to listen to the radio.
Speaker 3: She turns it on and there's a terrible explosion and
Speaker 3: she dies. So it's incredibly.
Speaker 1: Sad, and the dog dies too. Like that makes it
Speaker 1: even more heartbreaking, obviously, because she's in the car with
Speaker 1: the dog and she's like, all right, scruffy, let's turn
Speaker 1: on the radio. I love listening to the radio. And yeah, explosion.
Speaker 3: So now Janosh's only hope of love and happiness is gone,
Speaker 3: and he decides there is only one thing left for
Speaker 3: him and it is revenge. This leads to the final
Speaker 3: sequence of the movie, which is the airplane revenge plot.
Speaker 3: So Jeff and the gang have plans to fly an
Speaker 3: airplane somewhere for some are they doing Are they trying
Speaker 3: to get to a job or are they trying to
Speaker 3: do it get away?
Speaker 1: I thought it was more of a getaway, like we
Speaker 1: got to flee to Mexico. Boys, that's the desert. But
Speaker 1: I mean, they probably have some jobs lined up there.
Speaker 1: They got to keep working, gotta stay busy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't remember. But they're in a plane for
Speaker 3: some reason. And Yanosh, remember he's a pilot, he can
Speaker 3: fly a plane. He impersonates the pilot and he takes
Speaker 3: the role flying the plane that all the gang is
Speaker 3: in except Dinky's left behind. But all the bad guys
Speaker 3: in the gang, they're in the plane and he flies
Speaker 3: them out to the middle of nowhere in the desert,
Speaker 3: landing the plane when it has no fuel left, and
Speaker 3: then he explains to them their predicament. He's like, there's
Speaker 3: no fuel, there's nowhere to go. I just want you
Speaker 3: to know I have my revenge.
Speaker 1: And I believe they actually filmed the sequence out in
Speaker 1: the Arizona desert, so this is like real desert. I
Speaker 1: think we get some stock footage some desert from when
Speaker 1: they're flying around, but then yeah, we're out here on
Speaker 1: the sands.
Speaker 3: So the gang is furious, but they have nothing to do,
Speaker 3: you know, they can't get out of the situation. So
Speaker 3: they tie Yanosh to the plane. They start exploring in
Speaker 3: different directions, but they just get you know, beaten down
Speaker 3: by the sun. They find no not a hint of
Speaker 3: civilization anywhere nearby. They start fighting over water rations, turning
Speaker 3: on each other, shooting at each other, and it's a
Speaker 3: real desperate scene. Now, finally, there's a thing we established earlier,
Speaker 3: which is that Yano sent a note to O'Hara, to
Speaker 3: the police, to his old friend saying, hey, if you
Speaker 3: want to find the gang who's been doing these robberies,
Speaker 3: come to this place in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 3: Here are the coordinates at this time on this day.
Speaker 3: And so the police take him up on that. I
Speaker 3: guess they're like, surely, yeah, let's believe this anonymous tip.
Speaker 3: So they arrived by plane several days later, finding all
Speaker 3: of the gang and Yanosh dead. And when they find
Speaker 3: to Jeff in the desert, collapsed in the sand, they
Speaker 3: observed that he was trying to escape, but they say
Speaker 3: he just kept walking in one big circle. It seems
Speaker 3: thematically loaded.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and leading up to this moment we get
Speaker 1: some great desert sand and hour glass imagery which I
Speaker 1: also really like tickets a little artsy here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So when O'Hara finds Janosh's body, there's a note
Speaker 3: waiting for him explaining explaining who he is and saying like, hey,
Speaker 3: remember me when we first met, you were kind to me.
Speaker 3: Wanted to thank you that for that, and also to
Speaker 3: repay you the five dollars that I owe you. And
Speaker 3: you know, however long ago that was. I don't know
Speaker 3: if they make explicit how long how much time has
Speaker 3: passed in between, but O'Hara is reminded and he he says,
Speaker 3: it says you were kind to me. These men here
Speaker 3: they were not, and he says, I have forgotten either,
Speaker 3: And so the music swells on a scene of the
Speaker 3: men standing in the shadow of the airplane in the
Speaker 3: middle of the desert, and it's a it's a very
Speaker 3: bleak ending. Though there is one happy element to it,
Speaker 3: which is that I don't remember if if we get
Speaker 3: an indication whether Dinky survives in the end or not.
Speaker 3: But he does. Janosh does have a big pot of
Speaker 3: money and he oh no, wait, no, there's reward money
Speaker 3: for the capture of the gang.
Speaker 1: He arranged it to go to Dinky's mother.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yes, so he has the reward money sent
Speaker 3: to Dinky's mother.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there is this sense, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: take it. I'm going to assume it works out that
Speaker 1: Dinky's mom is going to get to fix up the
Speaker 1: chicken farm. He gets to go out there and settle down,
Speaker 1: support his mother, live there, and in his own way,
Speaker 1: live happily. Ever after, you got to take your victories
Speaker 1: where you can find him.
Speaker 3: Yes, no, that's it. That's there is a glimmer of
Speaker 3: happiness in this mostly bleak ending.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, yeah, that's the face behind the mask. You know,
Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, Columbia Pictures B movie, but it
Speaker 1: has as has a great look, has some very nice performances,
Speaker 1: and it great Peter Lori performance at the center of
Speaker 1: everything obviously, uh, and you know it it it's it's
Speaker 1: very much uh, you know, it's very much on the rails.
Speaker 1: And like I say, it's a short run time, but
Speaker 1: it does give you some stuff to chew on it.
Speaker 1: It does, in its own way examine some fairly complex
Speaker 1: issues and uh, you know, morality and uh and and
Speaker 1: ambition and and even the American dreams. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's a much better film than I was anticipating. Like
Speaker 1: I was, I was expecting something that was just gonna
Speaker 1: mostly be centered in the Lori performance, you know, where
Speaker 1: I might just be appreciating it for its own sake.
Speaker 1: Is this is sometimes the case with great character actors,
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes it's just a gem in the
Speaker 1: rough and you appreciate that gem for what it is.
Speaker 1: But I think as a whole, the picture's quite good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 3: Can I actually revise my judgment about something we said earlier?
Speaker 3: We said we said that the movie is not subtle,
Speaker 3: and I think that that's true about a lot of
Speaker 3: things about it, but there are elements that are subtle.
Speaker 3: I think actually what I would say is that some
Speaker 3: things about it are incredibly unsubtle, Like it has very
Speaker 3: overt themes and very overt use of the tools of cinema,
Speaker 3: music and you know, and you know heavy like visual
Speaker 3: foreshadowing and things like that. Some of that stuff is
Speaker 3: not subtle. But there is also some subtle stuff that
Speaker 3: you know, you get by implication, the death of Jeff
Speaker 3: at the end, you know, walking around in circles. They
Speaker 3: don't state that connection to the theme too overtly. And
Speaker 3: also some things about Peter Laurie's performance, like in some
Speaker 3: scenes he is just very overtly like stating his emotions
Speaker 3: and motivations and performing them very forcefully. But in other scenes,
Speaker 3: I think there is some subtlety. There's some subtlety about
Speaker 3: like exactly what is so beautiful to him about Helen's attitude.
Speaker 3: You know, that's not all stated explicitly, like he mentions
Speaker 3: her optimism, but the stuff about like the way that
Speaker 3: she finds the best in everything that seems to kind
Speaker 3: of like remind him of his earlier self. But like
Speaker 3: he never says that explicitly, So I don't know, I
Speaker 3: think there's some good subtle stuff.
Speaker 1: Actually this is interesting because we might in a way
Speaker 1: be getting back into the idea of what is noir.
Speaker 1: You know, and you know, you think about these black
Speaker 1: and white pictures with you know, deep midnight blacks and
Speaker 1: you know, contrasted by the white, and you know, we
Speaker 1: think about like, you know, good and evil, but then
Speaker 1: all of these like areas of ambiguity in between, even
Speaker 1: though you know, obviously noir pictures often also play with
Speaker 1: severe absolutes as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some stuff is very heavy handed and some stuff
Speaker 3: is more subtle. In fact, I wonder to over extend
Speaker 3: the metaphor perhaps I wonder if you could almost think
Speaker 3: of this as kind of like a stage magician, that
Speaker 3: a stage magician is going to be through misdirection, being
Speaker 3: very flamboyant with what they do with one hand in
Speaker 3: order to you know, sort of keep your attention off
Speaker 3: of what they're doing with the other hand. Could that
Speaker 3: could that be the case with some noir storytelling like
Speaker 3: we see here, that it makes the subtle elements all
Speaker 3: the more the more emotionally resonant, that they're kind of
Speaker 3: hidden by this heavy handed, overt storytelling style in some
Speaker 3: of the other choices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a pretty solid way to look
Speaker 1: at it. And obviously we'd love to hear what listeners
Speaker 1: have to say about all of this, you know, think
Speaker 1: about it in terms of your favorite noir pictures, be
Speaker 1: it you know, old timey noir or neo you know,
Speaker 1: the various noir elements that you'll find in various works
Speaker 1: of science fiction, anime, and so forth. Right in, we'd
Speaker 1: love to have that discussion with you and think about
Speaker 1: it as we proceed through the month of November. Is
Speaker 1: there another or neo noir picture you would like for
Speaker 1: us to consider on Weird House Cinema, you know, in
Speaker 1: the future, right in, and let us know. For instance,
Speaker 1: I was my backup for this one was going to
Speaker 1: be a Coen Brother's picture, and at some point I
Speaker 1: think I would like to come back and do a
Speaker 1: Cohen Brothers picture. Some of my favorite filmmakers and a
Speaker 1: number of those films are very close to my heart.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think I know exactly what movie you have
Speaker 3: in mind. Yeah, we could come back to the Coen
Speaker 3: Brothers in a number of ways.
Speaker 1: Actually, Oh yeah, yeah, just a reminder to everybody that
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 1: culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
Speaker 1: on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: And if you want to see a full list of
Speaker 1: the films we've covered over the years, and sometimes a
Speaker 1: peak ahead what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot
Speaker 1: com look for our username there it is weird House
Speaker 1: and you'll find that list. Likewise, if you're on Instagram,
Speaker 1: follow us at STBYM podcast. That's another way to keep
Speaker 1: up with what we're doing in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind feed in general, be it Core episodes or
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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