Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: In today's episode of Weird House Cinema. We're getting in
Speaker 2: on the Noir November festivities. If you're not familiar with this,
Speaker 2: this is a yearly, month long celebration of noir cinema,
Speaker 2: a concept introduced in twenty ten by film critic Maria E.
Speaker 3: Gates.
Speaker 2: Film noir is, of course, a turn that covers a
Speaker 2: lot of ground and bleeds into a number of different
Speaker 2: subgenres and adjacent genres. I mean it ultimately becomes just
Speaker 2: sort of a shade, you know, and a stylistic flourish
Speaker 2: that may be employed even just in key scenes in
Speaker 2: a particular picture. But in its arguably truest form, we're
Speaker 2: talking about black and white old Hollywood. I'm dramas full
Speaker 2: of cynicism, amoral characters and style, heavy dash of German expressionism,
Speaker 2: plenty of cigarette smoke. Throw all that in and you're
Speaker 2: good to go. There's also much to be said about
Speaker 2: this genre emerging out of the Great Depression. Lots of
Speaker 2: moving parts, so you can identify noir in everything from
Speaker 2: such films as The Maltese Falcon from nineteen forty one
Speaker 2: nineteen forty two's Casablanca to stuff like nineteen eighty two's
Speaker 2: Blade Runner and multiple neo noir films from the likes
Speaker 2: of the Cohen Brothers and David Lynch. And we haven't
Speaker 2: really gotten in on this Noirvember thing before. You know,
Speaker 2: I've seen it. I've seen it celebrated at Videodrome, the
Speaker 2: rental store here in Atlanta, I've seen it celebrated online
Speaker 2: in various places, and you know, it feels right. November
Speaker 2: is a really choice month for all of this, because
Speaker 2: wordplay aside, it's a month of continued descent through fall
Speaker 2: and into winter. It's a month often deified by things
Speaker 2: like elections or corporate layoffs. It's a bleak time for
Speaker 2: bleak hearts. So what better time than now to dive
Speaker 2: into the black and white world of private detectives and
Speaker 2: professional criminals. So what is today's movie? It is nineteen
Speaker 2: forty one's The Face Behind the Mask, And yeah, it
Speaker 2: actually comes out nine months before The Maltese Falcon, which
Speaker 2: is sometimes considered the first big film noir picture. But
Speaker 2: it also ultimately depends on how you slice it. You
Speaker 2: can also reach back into the thirties for possible examples
Speaker 2: of forerunners in the genre. And also, this is a
Speaker 2: picture that I'm to understand wasn't actually viewed a lot
Speaker 2: after its initial release. It's kind of built up a
Speaker 2: following over time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so your selection this week got me really thinking
Speaker 4: about what is it that makes a movie film noir.
Speaker 4: I don't really know exactly what the primary criteria are.
Speaker 4: It's one of those things where it's defined by a
Speaker 4: number of different sort of plot conventions and stylistic conventions.
Speaker 4: And if a movie has a critical mass, if it
Speaker 4: has enough of these different things in it, then it
Speaker 4: starts to feel like noir. But I don't know what
Speaker 4: the core things are though you mentioned a minute ago
Speaker 4: the Maltese Falcon, the Humphrey Bogart movie, and I feel
Speaker 4: like that's kind of the prototype film noir, right, Like
Speaker 4: that's or the archetype. I don't know which is the
Speaker 4: right term there. It's like it's the type example that
Speaker 4: you think of, or at least that I think of
Speaker 4: for film noir. So it has a tough, cynical detective,
Speaker 4: it has a lot of people running around chasing after money.
Speaker 4: It has cynical crime themes. It has a maybe somewhat
Speaker 4: gloomy outlook on human nature, but also has a sense
Speaker 4: of humor, a kind of dark sense of humor. And
Speaker 4: in fact, it has an actor in common with the
Speaker 4: movie we're going to be talking about today, because a
Speaker 4: major character actor in The Maltese Falcon is Peter Laura
Speaker 4: in the role of Joel Cairo, who is the main
Speaker 4: character in the face behind the mask. So I would say,
Speaker 4: almost to the same extent that I associate Humphrey Bogart
Speaker 4: with noir, I also associate Peter Laurie with it.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: If you're cooking film noir, either during this time period
Speaker 2: or in later decades, Peter Lourie, or at least the
Speaker 2: ghost of Peter Laurie, is very much on the spice rack,
Speaker 2: as is Humphrey Bogart, as are various other elements. Like
Speaker 2: you can also throw in things that are not president
Speaker 2: in this picture, such as the fem fatale is very
Speaker 2: often employed to some degree in a noir picture. So
Speaker 2: there are yea all these different things that may or
Speaker 2: may not be added to the finished product. But when
Speaker 2: you taste the soup, you know, Ah, this is film noir.
Speaker 4: Yeah, cigarettes, fried eggs, black coffee, revolvers, Fedoras, trench coats.
Speaker 4: That's what's going on here, and Peter Laurie is part
Speaker 4: of the mix.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So as far as weird house cinema selections go, it's
Speaker 2: notable that this is our This is only our fourth
Speaker 2: selection from the nineteen forties, following Doctor Cyclops, The Beast
Speaker 2: with Five Fingers, and The Devil Bat. It's our second
Speaker 2: picture directed by Robert Florey and our third Peter Lorii picture.
Speaker 2: It's also one of our infrequent picks to not feature
Speaker 2: a speculative element, though I would say it's weird enough
Speaker 2: in its own way for our purposes. I also want
Speaker 2: to stress that this film is also very strongly a melodrama,
Speaker 2: so it's not subtle in its manipulation of the heart strings.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a morality play as well. So
Speaker 2: it's Yeah, it's a good picture. I was really pleased with.
Speaker 2: It's one that's kind of been on my short list
Speaker 2: for a long time. Often held up as one of
Speaker 2: Laurie's best performances, a picture where he is the lead
Speaker 2: and gets to bust out a number of his tools,
Speaker 2: and you know, not just be the villain or a
Speaker 2: side villain or a side quirky character. He is the
Speaker 2: main event here.
Speaker 4: This really is a look at my range movie for
Speaker 4: Peter Lourie. There are some scenes where he is so
Speaker 4: wholesome and so precious, He's just cute, adorable, wonderful, other
Speaker 4: scenes where he is the creepiest creep and he gets
Speaker 4: to do both in the same film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so for like an absolute Peter LORII picture, it's
Speaker 2: like this and Mad Love or I think Neck and Neck.
Speaker 2: They don't, but each film hit slightly different notes. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't get the same array of Peter Lourie in
Speaker 2: both films, but added together, I mean, you get to
Speaker 2: see so many different colors from him.
Speaker 4: But you're also right in saying that this is not
Speaker 4: a subtle film. I mean, this is not a film
Speaker 4: where the drama takes place reading between the lines. It's
Speaker 4: all on the lines here. So there are extremely overt
Speaker 4: monologues in which the themes of the film are pretty
Speaker 4: explicitly stated, and we get like swelling music while they're delivered,
Speaker 4: and they're delivered in almost kind of a stage performance way,
Speaker 4: characters kind of borderline shout their lines and they're full
Speaker 4: of overt passion. But if you know, if you know
Speaker 4: that's what you're in for, it's not really a bad thing.
Speaker 4: It's just a different way to tell a story.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Another point about this picture we'll keep coming back to
Speaker 2: is that it's a pretty fast ride. This film's only
Speaker 2: sixty nine minutes long, and I think it's the rare
Speaker 2: weird house cinema selection where I have to say I
Speaker 2: don't think it is long enough. I feel like I
Speaker 2: needed a little bit more from it. I mean, what
Speaker 2: we have is tremendous, but you know, I wanted to
Speaker 2: see scenes that are alluded to but not shown to us.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it doesn't have a lot of time to
Speaker 2: even necessarily further explore some of the ideas that it
Speaker 2: brings up, which you know isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Speaker 4: Many of the most pivotal scenes in the plot happen
Speaker 4: off screen. They're like the big turning points are like
Speaker 4: you see what's leading up to it, and then you
Speaker 4: see the characters talking about it afterwards, but you don't
Speaker 4: see the thing itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, so it's like Frank Herbert would
Speaker 2: dig that. But it's like, it's not battle scenes that
Speaker 2: are left out, you know, it's not like big budget
Speaker 2: things that I don't know, you know, maybe it was
Speaker 2: a budgetary decision to not show someone like the key
Speaker 2: heists that become important later on, but you know, they
Speaker 2: make a lot out of the time they have here.
Speaker 4: Do you think they left out the safe cracking scene? Like,
Speaker 4: was it cut for content that was just like too
Speaker 4: spicy for audiences at the time.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I really yeah, we'll talk about when
Speaker 2: we get to that point in the plot, but yeah,
Speaker 2: I really wanted to see this first big heist that
Speaker 2: that Janosh is involved in. But more on that in
Speaker 2: a bit.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I am, by no means an expert in film noir,
Speaker 4: but I associate several different plot types with this genre.
Speaker 4: The most common, I would say is the private detective story.
Speaker 4: You know, somebody shows up with a strange case for
Speaker 4: a private detective and the detective goes down the rabbit hole,
Speaker 4: you know, figuring out all the twists and turns and
Speaker 4: all that. Multice falcon is of that sort. But if
Speaker 4: there is a second type of plot structure I most
Speaker 4: associate with film noir. It is the plot that we
Speaker 4: get in the face behind the mask, which is an
Speaker 4: originally good hearted person is lured or forced into a
Speaker 4: life of crime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fallen angel, breaking bad, Yes, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And one of the interesting things about it is that
Speaker 2: this is of course also an immigrant story. And so
Speaker 2: the good person at the heart of this is someone
Speaker 2: who is entering America for the first time and has
Speaker 2: all these big ideas and all these dreams, dreams that
Speaker 2: he has absorbed, you know, from afar, the American dream,
Speaker 2: and so his fall is also about realizing the flaws
Speaker 2: in the American dream and the things that you know,
Speaker 2: that he had built up in his head that just
Speaker 2: aren't part of the reality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that his hopes are sort of crash against the
Speaker 4: rocks of reality and of circumstances beyond his control. And
Speaker 4: that just happens over and over until he is forced
Speaker 4: into becoming the gang story that he once feared.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, Now I don't have any trailer audio for
Speaker 2: this one, but if you want a little dash of
Speaker 2: the trailer audio, look up Joe Dante's Trailers from Hell
Speaker 2: feature on it. It's pretty fun. It's just you know,
Speaker 2: Joe Dante talking a little bit about this picture and
Speaker 2: then sharing some audio and video from the trailer. But
Speaker 2: I couldn't find that trailer anywhere else for us to sample,
Speaker 2: so I'll just say go ahead and check out what
Speaker 2: Joe Dante has to share about that trailer. Now you
Speaker 2: might be wondering at this point, Hey, I haven't seen
Speaker 2: Face Behind the Mask. I'd like to before continuing on
Speaker 2: with the episode. Well, fair enough. I support that. This one, however,
Speaker 2: is not, to my knowledge, currently available in the US
Speaker 2: on disc, but it is currently part of the streaming
Speaker 2: options over at the Criterion Channel. That's the streaming platform
Speaker 2: and app brought to you by the Criterion Collection. The
Speaker 2: Face behind the Mask is currently featured as part of
Speaker 2: their Noir November Essentials collection. We don't champion a lot
Speaker 2: of streaming options on stuff to blow your mind, but
Speaker 2: the Criterion Channel is, in my unpaid four opinion, here
Speaker 2: a great streaming option for film fans. So you can
Speaker 2: try it for free for a week, you know that
Speaker 2: sort of thing. But you can watch everything from Brida
Speaker 2: Frankenstein and Scanners to the story of Ricky and Raising Arizona,
Speaker 2: and they have some really tantalizing playlists of films, including
Speaker 2: I was just looking at it this morning. There's one
Speaker 2: that's just synth scores, so all sorts of cool electronic
Speaker 2: scores for the pictures selected. And then they have one
Speaker 2: that's just hopping vampires. So it's like, I think it's
Speaker 2: all just mister Vampire pictures. And of course we talked
Speaker 2: about the first Mister Vampire film on the show a
Speaker 2: while back.
Speaker 4: Yes, also, in my unpaid for opinion, I greatly enjoyed
Speaker 4: the Criterion Channel, though I should issue a warning to
Speaker 4: people because I was confused by this at first. You
Speaker 4: can't assume just because a movie has a Criterion collection
Speaker 4: release that it will be featured streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Speaker 4: Some movies have a disc from Criterion, but they're not
Speaker 4: on there. But it's still a good channel.
Speaker 2: Right, And likewise, there are plenty of pictures on there
Speaker 2: that I don't think have discs on Criterion. But it's
Speaker 2: just it's a great selection, and a number of weird
Speaker 2: house cinema pictures are in there as of this recording.
Speaker 2: All right, let's run through some of the people involved here.
Speaker 2: The director is, of course Robert Florey, who have nineteen
Speaker 2: hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength French American director
Speaker 2: who worked from the twenties through the sixties, amassing one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighteen credits and just really cranking out pictures
Speaker 2: during the nineteen thirties. His early career was apparently more
Speaker 2: avant garde expressionism, but he became one of these kind
Speaker 2: of like cinematic workhorse types of guys. From a purely
Speaker 2: horror standpoint. He's perhaps best known for directing Murders in
Speaker 2: the Room Morgue nineteen thirty two, based on the Edgar
Speaker 2: Allen post story and starring Hungarian American film legend Lagosi,
Speaker 2: as well as ape suit legend Charles Gomora. Also of
Speaker 2: note was the noir film Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven.
Speaker 2: That one featured a female Chinese American elite in the
Speaker 2: form of Anime Wong, another legendary name from a lot
Speaker 2: of noir pictures, as well as Korean American actor Philip
Speaker 2: an Flori is also noted for having been the initial
Speaker 2: director on nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein, with Lugosi attached to
Speaker 2: play the monster during those early stages, before Legosi like
Speaker 2: leaving the picture because he didn't want to play like this.
Speaker 2: You know, what we might think of is just like
Speaker 2: a killing machine Frankenstein monster, and you know, of course
Speaker 2: Flores ends up being replaced by James Whale, and we'd
Speaker 2: get the nineteen thirty one Frankenstein that we all know
Speaker 2: and love. Flori later directed a lot of TV, and
Speaker 2: his last film credit as an episode. Our TV credit
Speaker 2: is an episode of the original Outer Limits series titled Moonstone.
Speaker 2: He also did three Twilight Zone episodes. All right, now,
Speaker 2: as far as the story and screenplay here goes, there
Speaker 2: are four different names, some of which I don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of information on. Apparently the story is based
Speaker 2: on a radio play called Interim by Thomas Edward O'Connell,
Speaker 2: who live nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty one. I couldn't
Speaker 2: find out much about this. The screenplay for the film, however,
Speaker 2: was apparently very much put together with Peter Lourie in
Speaker 2: mind for the lead. Let's see, author Levinson has a
Speaker 2: story credit note relation obviously to I think there's a
Speaker 2: contemporary author Levinson who's involved with like Apple computers or
Speaker 2: something different.
Speaker 3: Guy.
Speaker 2: There's Alan Vincent who has a screenplay credit, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen oh three through nineteen seventy nine actor and screenwriter
Speaker 2: who appeared in such films as nineteen thirty three's Mystery
Speaker 2: of the Wax Museum. This is his first screenplay credit,
Speaker 2: and then we also have a screen play credit for
Speaker 2: Paul Jericho, who lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Oscar nominated American screenwriter here for nineteen forty two's Tom
Speaker 2: Dick and Harry, who was later blacklisted during the McCarthy
Speaker 2: era for his ties to the Communist Party and alleged
Speaker 2: subversive content. During this time, though, he produced the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four film Salt of the Earth, which was a
Speaker 2: project that entailed a handful of other blacklisted filmmakers and
Speaker 2: was well received, and I think it continues to be
Speaker 2: well received. Often worked uncredited or under a pseudonym. His
Speaker 2: other credits also include nineteen sixty twos All Night Long,
Speaker 2: All Right, but of course our star playing Janosh Johnny Zabo.
Speaker 2: We have Peter Lourie Yeah, nineteen oh four through nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty four, Austro Hungarian actor of Jewish descent who made
Speaker 2: it big in Fritz Lung's im Back in thirty one,
Speaker 2: sometimes singled out as an early noir picture are certainly
Speaker 2: very influential on noir films to follow, before he ended
Speaker 2: up fleeing the rise of anti Semitism under the Nazi regime.
Speaker 2: A legendary character actor who of course appeared in one
Speaker 2: of our first Weird House Cinema episodes, covering nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: five's Mad Love, he is best remembered for his various
Speaker 2: roles in such noir mainstays as Casablanca, Maltese falcon thrillers
Speaker 2: like nineteen thirty four's The Man Who Knew Too Much,
Speaker 2: as well as such horror films as nineteen sixty three's
Speaker 2: The Raven and even such big budget productions as nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty four to twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea. He
Speaker 2: wrote and directed a single film, nineteen fifty one's The
Speaker 2: Lost One, and he was technically the first actor to
Speaker 2: play a Bond villain, appearing in the nineteen fifty four
Speaker 2: TV adaptation of Casino Royale.
Speaker 4: This is the Thing That was an adaptation of Casino
Speaker 4: Royale that had Barry Nelson as James Bond. Barry Nelson
Speaker 4: is the guy who plays the hotel manager at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the Shining. He's like the guy hiring Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 2: This is back when James Bond was played by an
Speaker 2: America and present it as an American character.
Speaker 3: Oh that's so good.
Speaker 4: But man, I would watch Peter Laurie as La Chief
Speaker 4: that that'd be good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm whatever else is.
Speaker 2: Going on, Yeah yeah, I mean Peter Laurie is such
Speaker 2: an intriguing icon, you know, like iconic in ways that
Speaker 2: are hard to overstress, you know, like he becomes this
Speaker 2: like you go ack and you watch old Bugs Bunny
Speaker 2: cartoons and they'll have a Peter Lourie character. I think
Speaker 2: plenty of people still like doing, Like if you have
Speaker 2: I have a Dungeons and Dragon's character that uses a
Speaker 2: Peter Loriie voice. I feel like a lot of other
Speaker 2: people haven't leave. Even dungeon masters have probably done some
Speaker 2: version of a Peter Lourie voice at some point. You know,
Speaker 2: he's just he's that iconic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's so iconic that my Christoph Lambert voice is
Speaker 4: actually a Peter Lorrie voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, he's just tremendous, you know, And
Speaker 2: he was. He was frequently typecast the Sinister Foreigners, and
Speaker 2: his career has some real ups and downs absolutely, but
Speaker 2: especially during his prime here, he's always there's always something
Speaker 2: about his performance.
Speaker 3: It's a treat.
Speaker 2: And this is a film much like Madlove, where we
Speaker 2: get to enjoy him as the star of the picture.
Speaker 2: He gets to play a lot of different notes in
Speaker 2: his performance that we don't otherwise get to experience. I
Speaker 2: want to point out too, that he was thirty six
Speaker 2: when they filmed this, and he looks thirty six. But
Speaker 2: there are different points where they would call him like kid.
Speaker 2: Are they talking about him as if he's like this
Speaker 2: young boy who just arrived in America. It's like he's
Speaker 2: clearly a grown man, but fair enough.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I don't know. Early in the film, he's
Speaker 4: so full of hope. He almost has a kind of
Speaker 4: newborn quality.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean he is totally bought into the American mythology
Speaker 2: that he's been presented with. And yeah, it's just overflowing
Speaker 2: with optimism and it is a bit naive, as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: all right. So that's Peter Laurie more his performance as
Speaker 2: we proceed. The love interest here, the eventual blind love
Speaker 2: interest for our protagonist is the character Helen Williams played
Speaker 2: by Evelyn Keys, who lived nineteen sixteen through two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight. She was an American actress who played supporting
Speaker 2: roles in some pretty big films, including nineteen thirty nine's
Speaker 2: Gone with the Wind and nineteen fifty five's The Seven
Speaker 2: Year Itch. Other credits include nineteen fifty one's The Prowler
Speaker 2: and then much later in her career, Larry Cohen's A
Speaker 2: Return to Salem's Lot in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 4: So we were just mentioning there's a part of the
Speaker 4: movie where where Peter Lourie is full of hope and optimism,
Speaker 4: but the character of Helen appears later in the film
Speaker 4: after all of Peter Laurie's hope and optimism is gone,
Speaker 4: and she's sort of like the energy beat. She's like
Speaker 4: an energy weapon of happiness just blasting into the film
Speaker 4: from orbit, and you know what it's like. She really
Speaker 4: does completely change the tone of the movie when she appears.
Speaker 4: But of course, you know, this is film noir, so
Speaker 4: they're going to have to play this romance for tragedy ultimately.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, she's she's great in this. She's delightful,
Speaker 2: you know, totally buy into this this light of optimism.
Speaker 2: You know that she brings, but also like obviously she's
Speaker 2: a doomed angel, you know, like, yeah, you know where.
Speaker 3: This is going? Too good for this world? All right.
Speaker 2: We also have Don Bedo playing Lieutenant James Jim O'Hara.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a sympathetic New York police officer who helps jan
Speaker 2: o'sher early on. Played by an American character actor whose
Speaker 2: credits include nineteen fifty five is the Night of the
Speaker 2: Hunter and nineteen forty six is the Best Years of
Speaker 2: Our Lives. He performed on Broadway prior to this movie
Speaker 2: and prior to his going into film and television. According
Speaker 2: to Joe Dante, he's an actor known for a lot
Speaker 2: of milk toast roles, but he thinks this is one
Speaker 2: of his best performances. And then we have the character
Speaker 2: of Dinky.
Speaker 3: Dinky.
Speaker 2: This is the character that really surprised me because I
Speaker 2: came into this expecting a great Peter Lorrie performance, but
Speaker 2: I really think George E. Stone is terrific here as Dinky,
Speaker 2: the criminal with a heart of gold.
Speaker 4: He's the guy who he just can't he can't stop
Speaker 4: doing crime, but he's actually a really nice guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't want to do crimes, but like, things
Speaker 2: keep happening and he keeps falling back down the ladder,
Speaker 2: and then he has no choice, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Stone lived nineteen oh three through nineteen sixty seven. Polish
Speaker 2: born American actor of Vaudeville, Broadway, film, and TV. Played
Speaker 2: a lot of scrappy Prohibition era New York characters often
Speaker 2: described as runyon esque. This is not really terminology I
Speaker 2: was familiar with, but this is a reference to the
Speaker 2: writings of author Damon Runyon, who invoked a lot of
Speaker 2: colorful New York City slang in his writings.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, So like when we very first meet Dinky,
Speaker 4: he comes out of the shadows to pick up the
Speaker 4: wallet that was dropped by like a wealthy you know,
Speaker 4: Wall Street trader who gets scared by Peter Lorii's face
Speaker 4: in the middle of the movie scene, and Dinky he
Speaker 4: picks up the wallet and he goes like, hey, let's
Speaker 4: see what Sandy Claus left for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, I didn't know what runyon Esque was beforehand,
Speaker 2: but now that I've seen this performance and I have
Speaker 2: heard the word, now, I can recognize runyon esque elsewhere
Speaker 2: in pictures, like there are definitely characters in Santa Claus
Speaker 2: Conquers the Martians that are run your esque. Yeah, even
Speaker 2: though they're Martians. I don't know why they're run your Esque,
Speaker 2: but anyway, but yes, Stone is terrific in this his
Speaker 2: film roles. Other film roles include nineteen thirty one's Little Caesar,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty fives Guys and Dolls, and nineteen fifty nine
Speaker 2: Some Like It Hot. Yeah, he's it's a great performance. Like,
Speaker 2: he's very likable and he has a lot of heart,
Speaker 2: and he is a characters will discuss that very much
Speaker 2: saves Janosh at a very dark point in his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, to the extent that this movie has a villain,
Speaker 2: like a centralized individual villain, it is Jeff Jeffries. I
Speaker 2: guess his full name would be Jeffrey Jeff Jeffries, a
Speaker 2: man so Jeff they named him twice, played by James
Speaker 2: c who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 4: I was banging my head trying to figure out where
Speaker 4: I recognized this guy from because he was very familiar,
Speaker 4: and I finally realized it was from a Miracle on
Speaker 4: thirty fourth Street.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, who does he play in that.
Speaker 4: He's like I think there are two psychiatrists in it,
Speaker 4: and there's like the one mean one who's sort of
Speaker 4: the antagonist, and then there's the one nice one, And
Speaker 4: I think he's the nice one. I could be remembering
Speaker 4: that wrong, but I know he's in the film.
Speaker 2: He has a very memorable chin, and in this picture anyway,
Speaker 2: has very memorable shoulders. Like Jeff's suit has shoulders so
Speaker 2: broad that they made me think of the Dick Tracy
Speaker 2: villain shoulders, Like it's basically the same dimensions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he's absolutely.
Speaker 2: Towering over all the shorter character actors in the picture, Like,
Speaker 2: his shoulders are as broad as Peter Laurie is like
Speaker 2: long if you laid him out, you know, Like that's
Speaker 2: how broad these shoulders are. It's ridiculous. It's laugh inducing,
Speaker 2: at least from our modern perspective.
Speaker 4: The effect created by his outfit, and it's a standard forties,
Speaker 4: you know, gang member outfit. So it's a suit with
Speaker 4: a with a black fedora, you know, big shoulder pads,
Speaker 4: the vest of the tie. And if this makes any sense,
Speaker 4: it has the effect of like he's in football pads.
Speaker 4: He's fully suited up. He's suited up for game time.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I end up having this like real reaction
Speaker 2: to him too, because like Laurie is obviously like you know,
Speaker 2: he was a much shorter guy. You know, he's he's
Speaker 2: not leading your typical leading man material, you know, like
Speaker 2: he really I attached to Peter Lourie more as like
Speaker 2: he is like a nerd, you know, he's one of us.
Speaker 2: And Jeff Jefferies is total jock here. James c is
Speaker 2: like total jock mode, and like its instantly I identify
Speaker 2: him as a danger to our hero and our icon here.
Speaker 4: But there's there's a scene where Peter Lourie like beats him.
Speaker 2: Up, yeah and makes us believe it. Like I like,
Speaker 2: we build up to that encounter and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: how are you going to make me believe this? Like
Speaker 2: this dude is enormous, But you know Laurie does it.
Speaker 2: But uh yeah, See, see pops up in a number
Speaker 2: of different things, So you might have seen him in
Speaker 2: things like fifty ones, The Day the Earth Stood Still,
Speaker 2: fifty four'st Killers from Outer Space, and I think I
Speaker 2: probably recognize I don't know who he was in this
Speaker 2: because I haven't seen it forever. Because nobody will put
Speaker 2: it out on disk, but nineteen fifty seven is the
Speaker 2: Amazing Colossal Man also features a James.
Speaker 4: C row Oh and Rob you had this note. He
Speaker 4: was also in the Beginning of the End, which is
Speaker 4: a Burt Eye Gordon film. This is the one with
Speaker 4: the giant grasshopper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another one. I don't think I've
Speaker 2: ever seen that one in full. And he's not the
Speaker 2: star in that one. He's like, you know, mid cast.
Speaker 2: That one stars Peter Graves.
Speaker 4: I think see here was known for often playing like
Speaker 4: a military commander or some government bureaucrat. He's like somebody
Speaker 4: you would cut away to and they're just giving orders. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so he's got a more substantial role in this movie.
Speaker 4: But it does turn out because I've seen Beginning of
Speaker 4: the End and I've seen some of these other sci
Speaker 4: fi movies, so it's not just Miracle on thirty fourth Street.
Speaker 4: I know him from him, but that is what was
Speaker 4: in my mind when I was seeing him here in
Speaker 4: his crime uniform.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. Two more behind the scenes credits to mention.
Speaker 2: Franz Planner, who had eighteen ninety fourth through nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: is the cinematographer Austria, Hungarian cinematographer and five time Oscar nominee.
Speaker 2: His other credits include nineteen fifty threes The five Thousand
Speaker 2: Fingers of Doctor t that is one that has been
Speaker 2: recommended for Weird House numerous times, also Roman Holiday, as
Speaker 2: well as nineteen fifty fourth twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea,
Speaker 2: which of course has Peter Lourie and it's a pretty
Speaker 2: vast ensemble cast. And then finally Sydney Kuttner is credited
Speaker 2: with music on this nineteen oh three through nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: But this is all pretty much stock music, I'm to understand,
Speaker 2: and there are some other music credits in there that
Speaker 2: are clearly labeled as stock. So you know, there's nothing
Speaker 2: out of the ordinary as far as the music for
Speaker 2: Face Behind the Mask. But it's effective, it does the job.
Speaker 2: It's nice and melodramatic, all right.
Speaker 4: So I guess we're doing the plot now. So the
Speaker 4: movie opens with some text gives us the setting, and
Speaker 4: it says it's set just a few years ago, when
Speaker 4: a voyage to America an adventure, not flight, when a
Speaker 4: quota was a number, not a lottery prize to be
Speaker 4: captured by a lucky few. I guess the contrast between
Speaker 4: adventure and flight there being that this movie was released
Speaker 4: during World.
Speaker 2: War Two, so yeah, it's already kind of like calling
Speaker 2: back to the interwar period here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we see a boat streaming into harbor in
Speaker 4: New York City, passing in front of the Statue of Liberty,
Speaker 4: and on the musical track, the orchestra plays a couple
Speaker 4: of bars of my country tis of thee when we
Speaker 4: see the statue. So again, this movie is not subtle.
Speaker 3: No, it lays it on pretty thick.
Speaker 4: And then on the boat, two passengers gaze out over
Speaker 4: the water. So there's one man who's sort of taller
Speaker 4: with a mustache, looking a little bit hopeful, but his
Speaker 4: expression is more tempered and he walks away, leaving only
Speaker 4: the other guy there. The other guy in the background
Speaker 4: is Peter Lori, looking out at the scene with wide eyed,
Speaker 4: almost childlike giddiness. And this is our protagonist Janosh, a
Speaker 4: watchmaker by trade who is a new arrival to America
Speaker 4: from Hungary. Yanosh approaches a crew member on the deck
Speaker 4: of the ship with excitement and he asks him for
Speaker 4: a match, and the kindly man offers him a match,
Speaker 4: and then Janosh says, no, thank you, I don't smoke,
Speaker 4: and then he asks for the time. The man tells
Speaker 4: him it's a quarter past ten. Yanosh checks his own
Speaker 4: watch and agrees that is indeed the time. Janosh then
Speaker 4: reveals with an infectious giggle that he is simply practicing
Speaker 4: his English and again, I can't drive home enough. How
Speaker 4: sweet Peter Laurie is at the beginning here.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, he really is.
Speaker 2: There's a childlike innocence here.
Speaker 4: So he points out over the water at the Statue
Speaker 4: of Liberty and he says, look, she's beautiful, and the
Speaker 4: boat worker agrees, says, yeah, I'd love to see it
Speaker 4: every every time we come into port here, and Yanosh
Speaker 4: then shows him a picture of a woman folded in
Speaker 4: his wallet in his wallet and says, she is very
Speaker 4: beautiful too. This is his beloved Maria. Yanosh explains that
Speaker 4: after he establishes himself in America, she's going to make
Speaker 4: the journey to join him, and then they will be
Speaker 4: married when she arrives. So Janosh arrives on the streets
Speaker 4: of New York and we see him walking around. He
Speaker 4: stops a stranger to ask him where he can find
Speaker 4: a good hot and Cold Water Hotel, and the stranger
Speaker 4: gives him directions to the Carlton Plaza.
Speaker 3: He's like, go.
Speaker 4: Six blocks up, one block over, two blocks to the left,
Speaker 4: and then he says, they're waiting for you. I think
Speaker 4: this went over my head a bit, but I assume
Speaker 4: the joke is that this is a ridiculously fancy hotel
Speaker 4: and they're waiting for you, as like their advertising slogan
Speaker 4: or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's the dig here.
Speaker 4: But then up the street, Janos stops to buy a
Speaker 4: juice from a street vendor and discovers that all of
Speaker 4: his money is gone. The fifty nine dollars he arrived with.
Speaker 4: It's all missing from his wallet. So he runs to
Speaker 4: a nearby policeman for help.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and at this point he's like he's begging
Speaker 2: the policeman to help him. And again we have more
Speaker 2: of this over the top, a naivety and an optimism
Speaker 2: from Janosh. But he has this line though that is
Speaker 2: so dumb that it does actually succeed in being really funny.
Speaker 2: He's like, I've been gangstered. So but then he like
Speaker 2: calms down a bit, like the this is where we
Speaker 2: meet O'Hara for the first time, and O'Hara is here
Speaker 2: to sort of talk him down, and it's like, all right, well, buddy,
Speaker 2: when when did you last see your money? And then
Speaker 2: he's able to get Janos to calm down enough to realize, oh,
Speaker 2: I still have the money on me.
Speaker 4: I have it under my shirt, that's right. So I
Speaker 4: was afraid in this scene. Oh no, he's going to
Speaker 4: run into a crooked cop who's going to double scam him.
Speaker 4: But fortunately the detective he meets is friendly and helpful,
Speaker 4: so O'Hara talks him through it, and then he remembers
Speaker 4: he was listening to a man on the boat talk
Speaker 4: about gangsters in America and he became afraid. And you know,
Speaker 4: I don't know if the like Tommy Gunn gangster was
Speaker 4: as big a media sensation at this point in American
Speaker 4: history as it had been like a decade earlier. I
Speaker 4: think of like the early thirties as the heyday of
Speaker 4: the you know, the big gangster stories about John Dillinger
Speaker 4: and so forth. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but yeah,
Speaker 4: I wonder if that's sort of what they're playing on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, at any rate, we're all familiar with
Speaker 2: the sort of chewed up by the Big City trope,
Speaker 2: which of course is reflected in that wonderful Simpsons episode
Speaker 2: where Homer has to come back to New York City
Speaker 2: to pay for to get a boot off of his car. Right, yes,
Speaker 2: And it's just you know, absolute I d in his
Speaker 2: mind that this is a hell city that will you know,
Speaker 2: that will come at you. So yeah, I was afraid
Speaker 2: too that Janosh was about to run into another scam
Speaker 2: and just be all the worse off for it.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because in that Simpsons episode there's a scene
Speaker 4: where he gets his camera stolen. Then he goes to
Speaker 4: complain to a police officer, and then the police officer
Speaker 4: steals his suitcase. But anyway, like you said, he remembers
Speaker 4: that he just hid his money in the shirt. He
Speaker 4: finds it again, so everything's okay. Then the policeman takes
Speaker 4: Yanosh for cold drink of some kind. It looks like
Speaker 4: they're having like an ice cream float. They're at a
Speaker 4: soda shop and Yanosh tells O'Hara about all of his
Speaker 4: hopes and dreams. He wants to get a job and
Speaker 4: make money, then bring Marie over the ocean with him
Speaker 4: to get married and then have children. He wants to
Speaker 4: have his sons follow him into his trade, which is
Speaker 4: watchmaking and watch repair, and Ohara tries to help Yanosh
Speaker 4: by telling him, Hey, I know of a hotel that's clean,
Speaker 4: comfortable and cheap. You go to the Excelsior. It's run
Speaker 4: by a guy named Finnegan. So he gives him directions
Speaker 4: sends him on his way. Now at the hotel, Yanosh
Speaker 4: not only rents a room, but he gets a job
Speaker 4: washing dishes at the cafe on the ground floor, where
Speaker 4: it seems like he does extremely good work. We see
Speaker 4: a scene of him efficiently drying off plates and teacups
Speaker 4: while singing to himself. The gist is that Yanosh is
Speaker 4: a machine. He's a real good worker, and he's friendly
Speaker 4: to boot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now, at this hotel, we learned from the manager there
Speaker 4: are a couple of rules if you're a guest. Of all,
Speaker 4: no ironing for some reason. I think he says it
Speaker 4: overloads the circuits or something. But then the other thing
Speaker 4: is no cooking your own food. And the reason given
Speaker 4: is explicitly that the cafe is not making enough money
Speaker 4: and the hotel needs the business from the guests, so
Speaker 4: you can't make your own food. Well, one night, we
Speaker 4: see Yanosh relaxing in his hotel bed after a long
Speaker 4: shift at work. He's sort of chattering away lovingly to
Speaker 4: his photo of Maria. And then meanwhile, in another room,
Speaker 4: a guest is doing such wickedness. He is breaking one
Speaker 4: of the two commandments. He is cooking in his room,
Speaker 4: and we get a close up of his little hot plate,
Speaker 4: and unfortunately, the black and white photography is not kind
Speaker 4: to whatever he's cooking in this spot. It's some gleaming,
Speaker 4: wretched slop. It looks like he's boiling glass beads in
Speaker 4: a broth of nail polish. It does not look good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can figure out what this was. It was like,
Speaker 2: is he doing like some sort of reduction of marachino
Speaker 2: cherries or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like tasting it. He's stirring it with a
Speaker 4: fork and tating yum yum yum. Well, old man Finn again,
Speaker 4: the guy who runs this place. He's roaming the halls,
Speaker 4: sniffing around at the doors for illegal cookery, and he
Speaker 4: detects He detects the cooking, so he zeros in on
Speaker 4: the culprit, pulls up a ladder and tries to snoop
Speaker 4: through the transom over the door to the room, but
Speaker 4: the guest wises up real quick. He realized he hears
Speaker 4: something outside, and then he hides his hot plate and
Speaker 4: the pot of stew in the drawer of his wooden dresser.
Speaker 4: Seems like a predictable outcome from this, so the guest
Speaker 4: like he hides it in the dresser, and then he
Speaker 4: puts on a hat and coat leaves the room. He
Speaker 4: gives a wink to the old man that the manager.
Speaker 4: He's like, ah, I thought you could catch me. Huh. Now,
Speaker 4: as you might guess, putting the hot plate and the
Speaker 4: pot inside the wooden furniture starts a fire, and the
Speaker 4: fire grows out of control and then rages through the hotel.
Speaker 4: So this scene turns horrifying. Yano Sho had been having
Speaker 4: such a sweet time earlier. He was doing well at work. He's,
Speaker 4: you know, dreaming about his beloved. Suddenly he's awoken to
Speaker 4: find himself in a crumbling inferno. He tries to escape
Speaker 4: the hotel, but he is hit by falling debris and
Speaker 4: he ends up badly injured, very badly burned. By the way,
Speaker 4: I just wanted to point out, rob there's one part
Speaker 4: where he's like coming down the stairs and he's hit
Speaker 4: by burning debris that falls from above and then tumbles
Speaker 4: over the staircase railing. I just thought this was a
Speaker 4: pretty impressive and dangerous looking stunt. I don't know how
Speaker 4: they pulled this off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not sure. Like the stunt double of they
Speaker 2: have for Lori here, I assume it's a stunt double
Speaker 2: and looks just like him, And yeah, very terrifying. I
Speaker 2: tend to find most fire effects terrifying in films these days,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it absolutely feels like a raging inferno here.
Speaker 4: So Yano survives and he's taken to the hospital, but
Speaker 4: he has suffered extensive third degree burns over his face
Speaker 4: and head, and we see him in his hospital bed
Speaker 4: with his head wrapped up completely in bandages like a mummy,
Speaker 4: and his policeman friend O'Hara comes to the hospital showing concern.
Speaker 4: He says he feels responsible for Yanosh's injuries because he's
Speaker 4: the one who sent him to that hotel, and he
Speaker 4: pays for some of his care. I think he gives
Speaker 4: five dollars to pay for his hospital care, and then
Speaker 4: he leaves a business card for Yanosh writing a note
Speaker 4: on the back that he should call him when he's recovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or I think the wording is something like when
Speaker 2: things are okay. It's a little bit more vague, and
Speaker 2: that's going to be important later on.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: I think it says call me when okay. So Janosh
Speaker 4: retains the use of his hands, but as the healing
Speaker 4: process goes on, it becomes clear that he's going to
Speaker 4: have extensive scarring on his face and he will never
Speaker 4: look the same. The scene where the doctor removes his
Speaker 4: bandages is extremely dark and it's played like a horror film.
Speaker 4: The doctor draws the shades on the window and then
Speaker 4: covers the mirror in the corner of the room before
Speaker 4: he takes the wrappings off. And while the doctor is
Speaker 4: removing everything, Janosh is still his friendly, optimistic self. He's
Speaker 4: going on and on about how he's excited to go
Speaker 4: back out and look for work. He's talking about how
Speaker 4: he's saying, I'm very skilled with my hands. I have
Speaker 4: experience as a watchmaker, but also in other mechanical jobs.
Speaker 4: I once worked in an airplane factory. I even flew
Speaker 4: airplanes when I was in the Armed Forces. And so
Speaker 4: he's going on about the future. He's very hopeful, but
Speaker 4: once his face is revealed, the nurses in the room
Speaker 4: shut their eyes and wins, and then one nurse even
Speaker 4: walks into the room and screams in horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this scene instantly made me think of a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine Batman, the Tim Burton picture. We have that
Speaker 2: great scene with the removal of the bandages on Jack
Speaker 2: Nicholson's joker in that and you know, it's not you know,
Speaker 2: one to one here, But I can't help but ponder
Speaker 2: to what extent like this picture and what other pictures
Speaker 2: may have influenced that scene.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, I see strong similarity. I would agree
Speaker 4: it's a likely influence. But of course, you know these reactions,
Speaker 4: they start to alarm you a ocean. He becomes upset,
Speaker 4: so he runs to the mirror, pulls away the towel
Speaker 4: that's hiding the glass, and is confronted with his new face.
Speaker 4: Every inch of it is scarred and it has sort
Speaker 4: of a melted texture. And it's interesting that this is
Speaker 4: basically the only time the movie actually gives you a
Speaker 4: good look at his injuries after this scene. For a
Speaker 4: long time, until there's another plot development, his face will
Speaker 4: be always turned away from the camera or otherwise hidden.
Speaker 4: At a certain point, he's going to acquire a customized
Speaker 4: mask that makes him look like Peter Loriie again, but
Speaker 4: a sort of altered lory like Uncanny Laurie. And I
Speaker 4: don't unless I'm forgetting it. There's really not any other
Speaker 4: time they show him with his injuries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get some pretty solid glances of it, like
Speaker 2: the mirror and so forth. But yeah, for the most part,
Speaker 2: they they don't show it to us directly. It's focused
Speaker 2: more on him becoming a creature of the shadows and people,
Speaker 2: you know, having this terrible reaction to seeing him.
Speaker 3: And then once the.
Speaker 2: Mask is acquired, it is quite interesting because it gives
Speaker 2: it ends up giving Janosh this kind of weird, almost
Speaker 2: otherworldly beauty.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He's like like like an angel, like a fallen angel certainly,
Speaker 2: you know, but this clearly this being that's caught between realities,
Speaker 2: Like it smooths out Peter Lourie's face. So, yeah, he
Speaker 2: takes on this strange but not like you know, monstrous appearance.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So after seeing his face, Janosh temporarily loses his mind.
Speaker 4: He starts screaming, where is my face, and he thrashes about,
Speaker 4: shouting and attacking the doctor until finally he is forcefully sedated.
Speaker 4: So after this, some time passes and we see things
Speaker 4: continuing to go back. For Yanosh, he goes out looking
Speaker 4: for work, dressed in a black fedora and a dark
Speaker 4: coat with the collar pulled up around his face to
Speaker 4: hide himself. So he's dressed kind of like a cross
Speaker 4: between your standard hard boiled PI but also a bit
Speaker 4: of Dracula in there, somewhere in between the two. And
Speaker 4: everywhere he goes, including a watchmaker shop and an airplane factory,
Speaker 4: he asks for work, but he is turned away once
Speaker 4: the boss sees his face, And there's some very gloomy
Speaker 4: atmosphere in this part of the film, like I'm thinking
Speaker 4: particularly of the scene where he goes to the watchmaker's shop,
Speaker 4: or it seems to be nighttime outside and the windows
Speaker 4: are illuminated from inside, so he goes in to talk,
Speaker 4: but once the watchmaker sees him, he's like, sorry, I
Speaker 4: forgot to take the sign out of the window. We
Speaker 4: don't have any positions and sends him away, and we
Speaker 4: see Peter Lorie walking off down the sidewalk where he's
Speaker 4: illuminated by like he should be illuminated by this lamp
Speaker 4: that we see in the foreground, but it's like none
Speaker 4: of the light touches him somehow, like he's just a
Speaker 4: pure shadow from head to toe. Yeah, we see him
Speaker 4: becoming increasingly desperate when he goes to talk to the
Speaker 4: manager of the airplane factory, like he's turned away from
Speaker 4: the camera, but he says, please, my face makes no
Speaker 4: difference to how I can work with my hands, and
Speaker 4: he's showing the manager his hands, but the manager just says, sorry,
Speaker 4: there's nothing doing here. And then we get maybe the
Speaker 4: most heartbreaking scene in the entire film, a scene where
Speaker 4: Yanosh writes a letter to his love back home to Maria,
Speaker 4: which we see part of it translated into English, and
Speaker 4: the part we see says, I must hurt you, dear Maria,
Speaker 4: just once, then you can forget me forever. I have
Speaker 4: met a girl, a very pretty girl. We are going
Speaker 4: to be married. Goodbye, Maria, forgive and forget Janosh. Obviously
Speaker 4: this is not true, but he can't face her now,
Speaker 4: so he lies to make her move on with her life.
Speaker 4: And this part is so.
Speaker 2: Sad, absolutely heartbreaking. This one legitally made me tear up
Speaker 2: when I was watching the picture.
Speaker 4: But then we're going to get another slight reversal of fortune.
Speaker 4: So here we come up on the scene where Yanosh
Speaker 4: meets Dinky. Now, the setup to this scene visually is
Speaker 4: very moody and beautiful. Yanosh is standing in his dark costume,
Speaker 4: covered by the coat and the hat at the railing
Speaker 4: of a concrete walkway overlooking the ocean, and the moonlight
Speaker 4: reflects off of the water and casts these white ripples
Speaker 4: across the whole scene. It seems to imply Yanosh is
Speaker 4: thinking about jumping from the railing and ending his life,
Speaker 4: but hope comes through a series of unusual events. So
Speaker 4: a well dressed man approaches Yanosh to ask for a
Speaker 4: match to light his cigar, and this is kind of
Speaker 4: interesting in how it plays on the very first thing
Speaker 4: we ever heard from Yanosh, when he walks up to
Speaker 4: the guy working on the boat at the beginning and
Speaker 4: asks for a match to practice his English. This guy
Speaker 4: comes up to ask for a match, and then Yanosh
Speaker 4: tries to get give him one, but when the man
Speaker 4: sees Janosh's face up close, the cigar falls out of
Speaker 4: his mouth and he runs away screaming. Suddenly, from out
Speaker 4: of the shadows behind a bunch of crates and barrels
Speaker 4: comes a third man, and this is Dinky, who's going
Speaker 4: to become a major character. Dinky notices that the well
Speaker 4: dressed man dropped his wallet as he was running away,
Speaker 4: so he approaches Yanosh without fear. He picks up the
Speaker 4: wallet and he's like, you know, oh, hey thought I
Speaker 4: was a cop, didn't you. Well, let's see what Sandy
Speaker 4: Claus left for us, And he starts going through the wallet.
Speaker 4: And Dinky is a crook, but he's also instantly likable,
Speaker 4: Like he gets the cash out of the wallet and
Speaker 4: he's like, ah, what a cheap skate, only twelve bucks,
Speaker 4: but he splits the cash with Yano. She gives him half.
Speaker 4: So they introduce themselves to each other, and Dinky is
Speaker 4: a little squirrely, but unlike everyone else, he doesn't react
Speaker 4: with horror at Yanosh's face. Instead, he treats him like
Speaker 4: a friend, like when Yanosh is like, aren't you afraid
Speaker 4: of me? And Dicky says, what your face? Ah, that's nothing,
Speaker 4: And they start talking about Janosh's apparent thoughts of jumping
Speaker 4: from the wall, and Dinky has has a kind of
Speaker 4: casual way of bringing some cheer to the situation. He says,
Speaker 4: what do you get out of being dead lying around
Speaker 4: in a grave? Ain't my idea of a good time?
Speaker 4: And he's a sympathetic ear. Yano starts to tell him
Speaker 4: about his troubles. No one will give him work and
Speaker 4: no one will look him in the face or talk
Speaker 4: to him, And Dinky says like, hey, I'm looking, I'm
Speaker 4: looking at you, I'm talking to you. Let me take
Speaker 4: you out for a hot meal. So he takes him
Speaker 4: to eat and takes him back to the hotel where
Speaker 4: he's crashing, and they start to become fast friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dinky almost has kind of a what a run
Speaker 2: and ask Zen quality to him. You know, he lives
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 3: In the moment, that's right.
Speaker 4: So back at Dinky's place, Dinky's like having a bath
Speaker 4: and sermonizing to Yanosh about his life philosophy.
Speaker 2: Oh and by Dinky's place, we mean a hotel room
Speaker 2: that they were able to pay for for just one night,
Speaker 2: you know, because again, Dinky lives in the moment, is
Speaker 2: one night at a time, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, So Dinky says, I've been on
Speaker 4: my own since I was fifteen. I learned my lesson early.
Speaker 4: You got to go for the free rides in this world.
Speaker 4: You got to grab everything you can for yourself before
Speaker 4: somebody else grabs it first. Only don't get too greedy.
Speaker 4: I grabbed one thing too many once and got free
Speaker 4: room and board in a reform school. And Yano says,
Speaker 4: what you stole, And Dinky says, well, that's what they
Speaker 4: called it, And Yano's just like, but Dinky, it is
Speaker 4: wrong to steal. You can't do wrong and find happiness
Speaker 4: in life. And here there was big like Loupita from
Speaker 4: Santa Claus energy.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. The morality play aspects of this
Speaker 2: picture very interesting because it's like the police in this
Speaker 2: picture are absolutely good. Criminals can go either way. And
Speaker 2: then of course Janosh, at least at this portion, in
Speaker 2: this portion of the picture is very much of the
Speaker 2: idea that like there is an absolute right and wrong,
Speaker 2: there is a firm line between the two, there is
Speaker 2: no gray area, and you cannot cross over that line.
Speaker 4: Really, it's funny. Yeah, the cops in the movie are good,
Speaker 4: even though I expected them to be crooked. The criminals
Speaker 4: are a mix. The really like bad lot are hiring managers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they cast a bit of
Speaker 2: shade too on the guy who dropped the wallet. I
Speaker 2: think they were they prefer to him being like a
Speaker 2: Wall Street guy or something.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Dinky's attitude is like, what is he going to
Speaker 4: come back for this money? He's not gonna miss it. Yeah,
Speaker 4: But Dinky also explains it's not like he really wants
Speaker 4: to be in a life of crime the way he
Speaker 4: thinks about it. He says, what do you get out
Speaker 4: of going straight? I tried to go straight six or
Speaker 4: seven times, but something always went wrong, something always happened.
Speaker 4: So we sort of get the picture forming that Dinky
Speaker 4: is a small time crook, but he's not really malicious.
Speaker 4: He's kind of a sweetheart, and he keeps trying to
Speaker 4: set things right. You find out that he's got a
Speaker 4: mother living out on a farm in the Midwest, hoping
Speaker 4: he'll come home sometime, and he keeps meaning to save
Speaker 4: up some money so he can take some money and
Speaker 4: go back to her and help her buy a chicken
Speaker 4: ranch she's always dreamed of and work on the ranch
Speaker 4: with his mom. And it seems it's a really sweet intention,
Speaker 4: but he just never manages to get it together, often
Speaker 4: because of stuff outside of his control, like he They
Speaker 4: never say exactly what it is, but it's implied that
Speaker 4: Dinky has some kind of chronic disease that occasionally flares up,
Speaker 4: and then he gets sick and asks to go to
Speaker 4: the hospital, which in the past has caused him to
Speaker 4: lose whatever legitimate job he had at the time. So
Speaker 4: then when he gets out of the hospital, he has
Speaker 4: to do crime again. Yeah, So they compare their attitudes.
Speaker 4: Janosh is now very hopeless and fatalistic about his situation
Speaker 4: in life. Dinky is relatively carefree. He says, Yanosh's like,
Speaker 4: what's going to happen when we run out of the
Speaker 4: money that we got tonight? Dinky's like, eh, you know,
Speaker 4: something else always comes along. He mentions that he has
Speaker 4: an associate named Jeff. This will be Jeffrey Jeff Jeffries
Speaker 4: who is doing a stretch up the river, like doing
Speaker 4: time in prison, and when he when he gets out,
Speaker 4: he will have plenty of jobs for the both of them. Yanosh,
Speaker 4: not fully understanding the criminal implications here, is like, oh, boy, jobs,
Speaker 4: and he goes to sleep dreaming that things will turn up.
Speaker 4: So Dinky and Janosh who Dinky calls Janosh Johnny. They
Speaker 4: go on living in cheaper and cheaper motels. You see
Speaker 4: a kind of montage of the four rent signs getting
Speaker 4: lower and lower prices, until finally they get thrown out
Speaker 4: of a real flea bag and they're living in a junkyard.
Speaker 4: And Dinky at this point he's had some kind of
Speaker 4: health flare up. He's sick and in need of a doctor.
Speaker 4: And here is where the plot takes a turn. Dinky
Speaker 4: is supposed to go out on a job tonight, but
Speaker 4: he's too sick, and he sends janoshoff to tell his
Speaker 4: associates that he's not going to be able to be
Speaker 4: there to do the job. Instead of that, Yanosh goes
Speaker 4: to his associates and pulls the job off in Dinky stead,
Speaker 4: and we learned that the job was straight up crime.
Speaker 4: It was cracking into a safe and pulling off a
Speaker 4: jewel heist. I think we're to assume, you know, they
Speaker 4: talked multiple times before about how Yanosh has skilled hands.
Speaker 4: He has mechanical skill with his hands, so I think
Speaker 4: we're to assume that these skills transferred, you know, his
Speaker 4: watchmaker skills were transferable to opening a locked safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got that eighteen dexterity, so he's able to
Speaker 2: get in there and break into some space. But yeah,
Speaker 2: we don't see this heist, this, this this safe cracking
Speaker 2: scene at all. It's missing, Yeah, scene, absolutely missing it.
Speaker 2: I would have loved to have seen it, like I
Speaker 2: wanted to. I wanted to see like the gears turning
Speaker 2: and Yanosh his head as he realizes like what this
Speaker 2: job is, as he you know, actually you know, gets
Speaker 2: the determination together to go ahead and pull it off,
Speaker 2: like this seems like a great dramatic sequence that I
Speaker 2: guess it was just never filmed, And I don't know
Speaker 2: what the full story is here. If they never intended to,
Speaker 2: it's just that's not the sort of picture it is,
Speaker 2: or if it's something they were going to film and
Speaker 2: didn't have the funds for, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. I would have liked to see
Speaker 4: it too. But anyway, Yanosh makes so much money from
Speaker 4: the job he is able to take Dinky to the
Speaker 4: doctor and get medicine to make him better. So Dinky's
Speaker 4: recovering now. But while he's he's in bed and Iyanosh
Speaker 4: is there by his side. Some tough guys show up
Speaker 4: to demand money that Dinky owes them, and they're like, Hey,
Speaker 4: this new guy's real good. Let's put him to work.
Speaker 4: Just another note, This doesn't feel like a comment on
Speaker 4: their character, or at least on an intentional one. But
Speaker 4: I should note that the other criminals also do not
Speaker 4: seem phased by Janosh's scars the way that like any
Speaker 4: buddy who's offering a legitimate job does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is interesting, isn't it. I hadn't really thought
Speaker 2: about this as much. But they they just see the
Speaker 2: dollar signs. They're like, Oh, this guy can crack a
Speaker 2: safe and in no time. Well, yeah, of course we
Speaker 2: want to keep doing business with him. Yeah, but in
Speaker 2: ways that other like legitimate businesses, refuse to consider on
Speaker 2: all these job interviews he was going for and so forth.
Speaker 4: Anyway, so the path is now on offer. They can
Speaker 4: keep lining up more jobs for yanoshan he can make
Speaker 4: them all filthy rich. Now Janosh initially does not want this.
Speaker 4: He still thinks it is wrong to steal, but Dinky
Speaker 4: knows how to make the appeal to him. He's like, Janosh,
Speaker 4: I know what you want more than anything else in
Speaker 4: the world. You want your face back. And there are
Speaker 4: these people out there called I think he calls them
Speaker 4: plastic doctors. He's talking about plastic surgeons. He says, if
Speaker 4: you have enough money, they can they can give you
Speaker 4: your old face back. And Yanosh is entranced.
Speaker 3: By this idea.
Speaker 4: He's like, really, I didn't even know that was possible.
Speaker 4: So he says, could they fix my face so that
Speaker 4: people can look at me? And Dinky says, all you
Speaker 4: need is money, So it's impossible for Janosh to resist. Now,
Speaker 4: a new face would be a new life. So he's like, okay,
Speaker 4: crime me up, I will do crime.
Speaker 2: This bit of dialogue between Dinky and Janosh, it really
Speaker 2: feels like the heart of the picture, And it's the
Speaker 2: part of the picture that I feel like gives us
Speaker 2: the most to chew on and figuring out what its
Speaker 2: message is. You know, this bit where he's saying it's
Speaker 2: being done every day. Yeah, all you have to have
Speaker 2: is money, you know, buying yourself a new face and
Speaker 2: so forth. Yeah, it's a lot to chew on. It's
Speaker 2: really it's as if Dinky is really opening Janosh's eyes
Speaker 2: to the real American dream, Like, here is the real America,
Speaker 2: and this is how you climb here.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So there's a scene where Yanosh goes to visit
Speaker 4: the plastic surgeon, but unfortunate once he gets there, the
Speaker 4: answer isn't as straightforward as Dinky led him to believe.
Speaker 4: It's interesting the surgeon isn't presented as giving him giving
Speaker 4: him impossible promises. Instead, the surgeon seems to be fairly
Speaker 4: measured in his initial analysis. He's like, well, I'll need
Speaker 4: to consult another doctor from the practice and compare notes,
Speaker 4: but we think full reconstructive surgery would be expensive and
Speaker 4: protracted might not be possible at all. In the meantime,
Speaker 4: I can make you a rubber mask of your old
Speaker 4: face based on your passport photo, and the mask will
Speaker 4: serve until we can, you know, do a full rundown
Speaker 4: and see what the prospects for surgery are.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: So Janosh is like, mask me up. Let's go with
Speaker 2: the mask and then I'll come back for that next apployment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the mask will also be expensive. So Yanosh does
Speaker 4: have to do more crimes. So he goes from reluctant
Speaker 4: safe cracker to just NonStop crime boss. He not only
Speaker 4: it becomes a safe cracker, he takes over the gang
Speaker 4: like he all the you know, the tough guys who
Speaker 4: were showing up at Dinky's, now they're all working for
Speaker 4: Janosh and he pulls off highest after heist, we get
Speaker 4: the newspaper headlines, scenes of the police getting chewed out
Speaker 4: by their superiors because they can't catch this criminal mastermind.
Speaker 4: In fact, it seems like the main detective on the
Speaker 4: case is Yanosh's old friend, Lieutenant O'Hara.
Speaker 3: Of course, it is.
Speaker 4: Also somewhere along this process Yanosh ends up not only
Speaker 4: with a lot of money, but ends up with an airplane,
Speaker 4: or at least flying an airplane, like he They mentioned
Speaker 4: multiple times that he goes out flying an airplane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so's he has become the boss. He's running
Speaker 2: this entire operation. And we'll get some more of crime
Speaker 2: Boss Janosh. But this is another part of the picture
Speaker 2: where it's like I really wanted more. I needed like
Speaker 2: another solid twenty minutes of Yanos just being the boss,
Speaker 2: you know, enforcing his will, being a little scary with people,
Speaker 2: and so forth. We get all that, but you know,
Speaker 2: it just leaves you wanting more.
Speaker 4: Now next to I'm sure we're all dying to see
Speaker 4: the mass. Well, we do get to see it, and
Speaker 4: of course when we finally see it, it is a
Speaker 4: bit creepy, because I guess a realistic mask sort of
Speaker 4: always is. But I'll also say it's not bad for
Speaker 4: a nineteen forties mask, Like I can tell that it
Speaker 4: is supposed to be Peter Lourie.
Speaker 2: It looks better than some decapitated head effects I've seen
Speaker 2: for sure.
Speaker 4: Yes, And then when he puts it on. You were
Speaker 4: talking about this earlier rob so when he puts the
Speaker 4: mask on, we go back to the cameras showing Peter
Speaker 4: Laurie's face again, but now his skin looks tight and
Speaker 4: sort of pinched up and unnatural. I don't know exactly
Speaker 4: how they accomplished this effect. I guess it's some kind
Speaker 4: of makeup effect, because ironically, the mask we're now seeing
Speaker 4: I believe is just Peter Laurie's real face, but with
Speaker 4: some makeup and manipulations.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I say, it kind of like smooths him
Speaker 2: out a bit more and gives him this slightly uncanny appearance.
Speaker 4: It's like Peter Laurie with an intense face lift.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: After this, there's this one sequence where they pull off
Speaker 4: some kind of opera robbery I'm not sure I didn't
Speaker 4: fully get the details here, but it involves an opera
Speaker 4: and then like going to the opera and like looking
Speaker 4: at each other during a certain time in the show,
Speaker 4: and then we just see like I think an orchestra
Speaker 4: conductor tied up and they've got a bunch of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess so they didn't have access
Speaker 2: to montage technology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: But anyway, while the gang is counting up all their
Speaker 4: money from the opera heist, they are interrupted by a
Speaker 4: real nasty customer. Remember old Jeff we heard about earlier,
Speaker 4: Jeff Jeffrey. Jeffrey's well, anyway, he's out of prison now,
Speaker 4: and he wanders into the gang's counting room with a
Speaker 4: gun and insists he's in charge now. Jeff says, we're
Speaker 4: gonna live just as swell. Only one thing will change.
Speaker 4: We don't need him appointing at yanosh Ooh but then twist,
Speaker 4: I didn't see this coming. Peter Lorie like muscles this
Speaker 4: much bigger guy. He slaps him around. He's like, I'm
Speaker 4: in charge now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is great. It's very much like little dog
Speaker 2: putting a bigger dog in its place. Sort of energy
Speaker 2: here and you know, Laurie brings it like he makes
Speaker 2: you believe it, like seconds before it OCCURR. You feel
Speaker 2: like something like that is going to have to happen
Speaker 2: in order to put Jeff in his place. But if
Speaker 2: you're like, I don't know if LORI can do it. No,
Speaker 2: he totally did it. He pulled it off.
Speaker 3: I believe it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so I think the line he says is
Speaker 4: these were your boys, their mine. Now we can all
Speaker 4: be friends. If you want to play friendly, it's up
Speaker 4: to you. So Jeff cools his attitude and he gets
Speaker 4: absorbed into the gang. But you can see in this
Speaker 4: scene that he's he's swallowing his pride for the moment,
Speaker 4: but it might not be going away. He's he's still
Speaker 4: hanging on to a grudge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is this is a great scene. So
Speaker 2: this Janosh in his villain era here, it's tremendous.
Speaker 4: So some more plot developments. Janosh goes back to a
Speaker 4: follow up appointment with his plastic surgeons, and during this
Speaker 4: appointment they explain, you know, after really looking at things,
Speaker 4: we cannot, in good conscience recommend an operation to you
Speaker 4: because your burns are too extensive, too severe to be repaired.
Speaker 3: They say, you.
Speaker 4: Know, if it's possible at all, it would take like
Speaker 4: thirty operations over fifteen years to even really give you
Speaker 4: a chance of looking like your old self.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we get that great bit of that great line
Speaker 2: from Jano. Schrez just repeats that. He just says, fifteen years.
Speaker 2: You know, is it really sinks in that this path
Speaker 2: that he's chosen for himself, that he's picked up is
Speaker 2: a temporary change to get back on track is a
Speaker 2: long term track apparently, and potentially the rest of his life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to him, it means fifteen years of crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Janosh is furious, but on his way out of
Speaker 4: the building, he has a chance encounter that will change
Speaker 4: his life. Yet again, we keep having these reversals of
Speaker 4: fortune here. So he bumps into a woman on the
Speaker 4: sidewalk and makes her drop all her things. And this
Speaker 4: is the romantic meat cute in the middle of the
Speaker 4: film noir about a good man's desperate and hellish descent
Speaker 4: into crime. It's a strange change of tone, but this
Speaker 4: character is the one we mentioned earlier. Helen, played by
Speaker 4: Evelyn Keys. Helen is blind and works as a jewelry maker,
Speaker 4: stringing necklaces I think she does. She string them for
Speaker 4: a department.
Speaker 3: Store, I believe so.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and she was transporting project boxes when they
Speaker 4: ran into each other on the sidewalk. Helen is friendly
Speaker 4: and she's funny and optimistic, and her positivity just cuts
Speaker 4: through the gloom of the story like a laser. Janosh
Speaker 4: is instinctively rude to her at first because he's feeling
Speaker 4: so bad, but he quickly softens and he helps her
Speaker 4: pick up her things. And in this scene, I don't
Speaker 4: know if you noticed the same thing, Rob, but you
Speaker 4: can hear in Peter Lourie's vocal performance his voice changes
Speaker 4: as as he became the crime boss. His voice changed
Speaker 4: to become very tight and gruff. That uses this tight,
Speaker 4: gruff voice with his gangster accomplices, but when he talks
Speaker 4: to Helen, he quickly starts to sound more like he
Speaker 4: did at the beginning of the movie when he first
Speaker 4: arrived in America, with a softer, higher pitched voice.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. It reawakens the old Janos share.
Speaker 4: So Yanosh offers to walk with her and carry her things,
Speaker 4: and she accepts, and so they go back to her
Speaker 4: apartment and they get to know one another. Helen talks
Speaker 4: about how she enjoys living independently. She likes keeping up
Speaker 4: her apartment and listening to music on the radio from
Speaker 4: the neighbor's next door, and she's so charming it is
Speaker 4: easy to see why Janosh's crime boss heart is melting.
Speaker 4: Will probably come as no shock that this is the
Speaker 4: beginning of a romance story. He asks if he can
Speaker 4: come back and visit her sometime, and she says she'd
Speaker 4: like that. So the two of them get to know
Speaker 4: each other, they become friends. The love story blossoms. They
Speaker 4: spend lots of time together and one day they go
Speaker 4: out walking in the country among the oak trees. Here,
Speaker 4: Helen gives this monologue sort of sharing her perspective on life.
Speaker 4: Why she's so optimistic and has such a sense of
Speaker 4: good humor about everything, And she explains from her point
Speaker 4: of view, being blind, she's able to find beauty in
Speaker 4: things more easily, So she says, like, you know, when
Speaker 4: I feel the fur, even of a scrawny alley cat,
Speaker 4: I can imagine it's the most regal beast. Or just
Speaker 4: by putting one fresh flower in a jar in my apartment,
Speaker 4: I feel like I'm living in a spring meadow. And
Speaker 4: this already kind of interfaces with stuff she said earlier
Speaker 4: about how much pleasure she gets in listening to the radio.
Speaker 3: Yano.
Speaker 4: She gave her her own radio as a gift sometime earlier,
Speaker 4: and she loves the music, of course, but she even
Speaker 4: finds pleasure in the advertisements, like even if she's not
Speaker 4: interested in the product they're selling, she just likes listening
Speaker 4: to the enthusiastic appeals of friendly strangers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she likes her work. It's mentioned in one
Speaker 2: of these bits from her talks about like she enjoys
Speaker 2: listening to the radio and beating you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah, Yano. She's so taken with her way of
Speaker 4: seeing the good and everything. And he says he wishes
Speaker 4: he could see the world the way she does, he
Speaker 4: would imagine himself as a noble king. But she's like, dude,
Speaker 4: you are a king. You are unselfish and thoughtful, and
Speaker 4: that's the most noble thing of all. And during the scene,
Speaker 4: Yanosh breaks down, he starts to cry, and he says
Speaker 4: that if she were able to see his burned face,
Speaker 4: the face behind the mask, the title of the film,
Speaker 4: she would run away and terror like everybody else.
Speaker 3: But she rejects this.
Speaker 4: She wants to know what he's been hiding, what's troubling him,
Speaker 4: and invites him to tell his story.
Speaker 3: So he does.
Speaker 4: He relents, and he tells her his whole history, everything
Speaker 4: that happened, though he tells her off screen, as many
Speaker 4: pivotal scenes they do take place off screen. Though I
Speaker 4: guess this is a common This is a fair thing.
Speaker 4: We don't want to see a character recap the entire
Speaker 4: film so far, that makes sense.
Speaker 2: But there would have been some really emotional moments in
Speaker 2: that we miss out on. But we know what's going
Speaker 2: to happen. She is going to accept him for who
Speaker 2: he is, and she sees the true face behind the mask.
Speaker 2: She sees his heart.
Speaker 4: That's right, and I guess that's the play on the title.
Speaker 4: There are two different kinds of face behind the mask.
Speaker 4: When Yanosh thinks of the face behind the mask, he
Speaker 4: thinks of his scars, his physical face, and when she
Speaker 4: thinks of it, she thinks of the real hymn, his
Speaker 4: good heart.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Yanosh's conscience is now awakened again by his love
Speaker 4: for Helen, and he goes back to his gang and
Speaker 4: is like, boys, I'm out, I'm going to clean my
Speaker 4: whole act up and he is out of the life
Speaker 4: of crime for good.
Speaker 2: This always works. You can always walk away from a
Speaker 2: life of crime. We know that from so many pictures.
Speaker 4: Well it's funny because he tries to tell Jeff, like, hey,
Speaker 4: you're going to get what you always wanted. Now the
Speaker 4: boys are yours again. You're in charge now. But you
Speaker 4: get the sense that Jeff maybe has enjoyed coasting on
Speaker 4: Yanosh's crime skills and just sniping from the sidelines. Now
Speaker 4: that he's in charge, he's mad.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, now Jeff will have to deliver as the
Speaker 2: boss of this crew that has become accustomed to a
Speaker 2: higher level of success. So, yeah, good luck, Jeff. Let's
Speaker 2: see how this works out for you.
Speaker 3: It's what he wanted.
Speaker 4: But now that he has it, he's not happy. He's
Speaker 4: just doing but he can't stop Yanosh from leaving. Yanosh
Speaker 4: has a house out in the country and he plans
Speaker 4: to move there with Helen. Yanosh gives his new address
Speaker 4: to Dinky in secret and says, if you ever you know,
Speaker 4: you ever need me, you ever want to get out
Speaker 4: of the life, look me up here. So Yanosh and
Speaker 4: Helen make their plans. They pack things up. They make
Speaker 4: plans to move out to a house with green shutters.
Speaker 4: They talk about this detail and Yanosh oh, he buys
Speaker 4: a secondhand car, one with a radio because he knows
Speaker 4: Helen likes to listen to the radio so much much. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: at crime headquarters, Jeff is stewing again. He got what
Speaker 4: he wanted, but he's still angry. He starts digging around
Speaker 4: through Yanosh's old things and he finds something curious. He
Speaker 4: finds the business card of a police detective. This is
Speaker 4: the card that O'Hara left for Yanosh in the hospital
Speaker 4: way back when. But not understanding what it is, Jeff
Speaker 4: jumps to a conclusion, and that conclusion is Yanosh wanted
Speaker 4: out of the business because he is ratting the gang
Speaker 4: out to the cops. And Jeff says, I figured it out.
Speaker 4: We got to get revenge against Janosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Again, the cryptic nature of that original scrawl message, now
Speaker 2: out of context, is interpreted to me, oh, Yanosh is
Speaker 2: in a league with the police.
Speaker 4: That's right. And here's where the potential happy ending turns
Speaker 4: to tragedy, as it must in a movie like this.
Speaker 4: Jeff and the gang find Dinky and they torture him
Speaker 4: for information about where to find Yanosh. Finally they retned
Speaker 4: to burn his feet in the fireplace, and he tells
Speaker 4: where yan oshan Helen are hiding. So the next day
Speaker 4: yan Oshan Helen and an adorable scruffy dog by the way,
Speaker 4: really old dog, big cute dog. They move out to
Speaker 4: their house in the country you never you know, and
Speaker 4: they like settle in and everything's so happy. You never
Speaker 4: want to be a movie character saying it's all so
Speaker 4: perfect unless you're in the last like two minutes of
Speaker 4: the film and I say, we have another fifteen twenty
Speaker 4: to go here.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, not good.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they seem like this seems to be the dream, right,
Speaker 2: the dog, the house. There's a scene though, where Janosh
Speaker 2: tells Helen that she doesn't have to do her bead
Speaker 2: work anymore because she'll have this house to run, And
Speaker 2: part of me was kind of like, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: She she had this whole bit where she talked about
Speaker 2: how much joy she derived.
Speaker 3: From her work, but I likes it.
Speaker 2: It's a nineteen forty one film, it's supposed to be
Speaker 2: well intended by it. But yeah, I think she can
Speaker 2: still do her beadwork.
Speaker 4: So everything is beautiful and till knock on the door
Speaker 4: and it's Jeff. Jeff arrives and he makes menacing comments
Speaker 4: to Yanosh. They have a confrontation, but it does not
Speaker 4: escalate to violence.
Speaker 3: He leaves.
Speaker 4: He says like, I won't even waste a bullet on you.
Speaker 4: But when he gets back to the car, when Jeff
Speaker 4: gets back to the car with his boys, they revealed
Speaker 4: that they had planted a bomb in Yanosh's car. It's
Speaker 4: wired to the radio. And then the gangsters are driving
Speaker 4: away and they conclude that they're done with Dinky, so
Speaker 4: they throw him out of the moving car onto the highway.
Speaker 4: It's unclear if they thought they had killed him or
Speaker 4: if they meant to leave him alive. I wasn't sure
Speaker 4: there did.
Speaker 3: They shoot him first in the back.
Speaker 4: Think so to hear like a you don't see a gun,
Speaker 4: but you hear a gun sound effect. And then they
Speaker 4: throw him out of the side of the car. But
Speaker 4: Dinky manages, despite his injuries, to get to a nearby
Speaker 4: service station and place a phone call. And then the
Speaker 4: logistics of this climax scene get really complicated. Dinky calls
Speaker 4: a neighbor of Janosh's. I guess Janosh and Helen don't
Speaker 4: have a phone yet. He calls the neighbor. The neighbor
Speaker 4: cranks his car up, drives to Yanosh's house, picks up
Speaker 4: Yanosh drives him back to his house to take Dinky's call,
Speaker 4: only for the call to be like, don't start your car, Yano,
Speaker 4: she don't use your radio, And unfortunately it's a Godfather scenario,
Speaker 4: you know, it's Apollonia in Sicily. Yanosh rushes back home
Speaker 4: to stop Helen from using the car. But Helen, she's
Speaker 4: been loading things into the car. She wants to listen
Speaker 4: to the radio. She turns it on and there's a
Speaker 4: terrible explosion and she dies. So it's incredibly sad.
Speaker 2: And the dog dies too, Like that makes it even
Speaker 2: more heartbreaking, obviously, because she's in the car with the
Speaker 2: dog and she's like, all right, scruffy, let's turn on
Speaker 2: the radio. I love listening to the radio. And yeah, explosion.
Speaker 4: So now Yanosh's only hope of love and happiness is gone,
Speaker 4: and he decides there is only one thing left for him,
Speaker 4: and it is revenge. This leads to the final sequence
Speaker 4: of the movie, which is the airplane revenge plot. So
Speaker 4: Jeff and the gang have plans to fly an airplane
Speaker 4: somewhere for some are they doing Are they trying to
Speaker 4: get to a job or are they trying to do
Speaker 4: it get away.
Speaker 2: I thought it was more of a getaway, like we
Speaker 2: got to flee to Mexico. Boys, that's the desert. But
Speaker 2: I mean they probably have some jobs lined up there.
Speaker 2: They got to keep working, gotta stay busy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't remember. But they're in a plane for
Speaker 4: some reason. And Yanosh, remember he's a pilot, he can
Speaker 4: fly a plane. He impersonates the pilot and he takes
Speaker 4: the role flying the plane that all the gang is
Speaker 4: in except Dinky. Dinky's left behind, but all the bad
Speaker 4: guys in the gang they're in the plane and he
Speaker 4: flies them out to the middle of nowhere in the desert,
Speaker 4: landing the plane when it has no fuel left, and
Speaker 4: then he explains to them their predicament. He's like, there's
Speaker 4: no fuel, there's nowhere to go. I just want you
Speaker 4: to know I have my revenge.
Speaker 2: And I believe they actually filmed the sequence out in
Speaker 2: the Arizona desert, so this is like real desert. I
Speaker 2: think we get some stuff. Footage is some desert from
Speaker 2: when they're flying around. But then yeah, we're out here
Speaker 2: on the sands.
Speaker 4: So the gang is furious, but they have nothing to do,
Speaker 4: you know, they can't get out of the situation. So
Speaker 4: they tie Yanosh to the plane. They start exploring in
Speaker 4: different directions, but they just get you know, beaten down
Speaker 4: by the sun. They find no not a hint of
Speaker 4: civilization anywhere nearby. They start fighting over water rations, turning
Speaker 4: on each other, shooting at each other, and it's a
Speaker 4: real desperate scene. Now, finally, there's a thing we established earlier,
Speaker 4: which is that Yanosh sent a note to O'Hara, to
Speaker 4: the police, to his old friend saying, hey, if you
Speaker 4: want to find the gang who's been doing these robberies,
Speaker 4: come to this place in the middle of the desert.
Speaker 4: Here are the coordinates at this time on this day.
Speaker 4: And so the police take them up on that. I
Speaker 4: guess they're like, surely, yeah, let's believe this anonymous tip.
Speaker 4: So they arrived by plane several days later, finding all
Speaker 4: of the gang and Yanosh dead. And when they find
Speaker 4: to Jeff in the desert, collapsed in the sand, they
Speaker 4: observed that he was trying to escape, but they say
Speaker 4: he just kept walking in one big circle. It seems
Speaker 4: thematically loaded.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And leading up to this moment we get some great
Speaker 2: desert sand and hour glass imagery which I also really
Speaker 2: like tickets a little artsy here.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So when O'Hara finds Janosh's body, there's a note
Speaker 4: waiting for him, explaining, explaining who he is, and saying like, hey,
Speaker 4: remember me when we first met, you were kind to me.
Speaker 4: Wanted to thank you that for that, and also to
Speaker 4: repay you the five dollars that I owe you. And
Speaker 4: you know, however long ago that was. I don't know
Speaker 4: if they make explicit how long how much time has
Speaker 4: passed in between. But O'Hara is reminded and he it says, you.
Speaker 3: Were kind to me.
Speaker 4: These men here they were not, And he says, I
Speaker 4: have forgotten either, And so the music swells on a
Speaker 4: scene of the men standing in the shadow of the
Speaker 4: airplane in the middle of the desert, and it's a
Speaker 4: it's a very bleak ending, though there is one happy
Speaker 4: element to it, which is that I don't remember if
Speaker 4: if we get an indication whether Dinky survives in the
Speaker 4: end or not, but he does. Janosh does have a
Speaker 4: big pot of money and he oh no, wait, no,
Speaker 4: there's reward money for the capture of the gang.
Speaker 2: He arranged it to go to Dinky's mother.
Speaker 4: That's right, Yes, so he has the reward money sent
Speaker 4: to Dinky's mother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is this sense and I'm gonna take it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna assume it works out that Dinky's mom is
Speaker 2: going to get to fix up the chicken farm. Dinky
Speaker 2: gets to go out there and settle down, support his mother,
Speaker 2: live there, and in his own way, live happily.
Speaker 3: Ever after.
Speaker 2: You got to take your victories where you can find him.
Speaker 4: Yes, no, that's that's there is a glimmer of happiness
Speaker 4: in this mostly bleak ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah so yeah, that's the face behind the mask. You know,
Speaker 2: it's a in a Columbia Pictures B movie, but it
Speaker 2: has a has a great look, has some very nice
Speaker 2: performances in it, great Peter Loriie performance at the center
Speaker 2: of everything obviously, and you know it it's it's very
Speaker 2: much you know, it's very much on the rails, and
Speaker 2: like I say, it's a short run time, but it
Speaker 2: does give you some stuff to chew on it. It does,
Speaker 2: in its own way, examine some fairly complex issues and
Speaker 2: you know, morality and and and ambition and and even
Speaker 2: the American dreams. So it's it's a much better film
Speaker 2: than I was anticipating. Like I was, I was expecting
Speaker 2: something that was just going to mostly be centered in
Speaker 2: the Lori performance, you know, where I might just be
Speaker 2: appreciating it for its own sake. Is this is sometimes
Speaker 2: the case with great character actors. You know, like sometimes
Speaker 2: it's just a gym in the rough, and you appreciate
Speaker 2: that gym for what it is. But I think as
Speaker 2: a whole, the picture's quite good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 4: Can I actually revise my judgment about something we said earlier?
Speaker 4: We said we said that the movie is not subtle,
Speaker 4: and I think that that's true about a lot of
Speaker 4: things about it, but there are elements that are subtle.
Speaker 4: I think actually what I would say is that some
Speaker 4: things about it are incredibly unsubtle, Like it has very
Speaker 4: overt themes and very overt use of the tools of
Speaker 4: cinema music and you know, and you know, heavy like
Speaker 4: visual foreshadowing and things like that. Some of that stuff
Speaker 4: is not subtle. But there is also some subtle stuff
Speaker 4: that you know, you get by implication. The death of
Speaker 4: Jeff at the end, you know, walking around in circles.
Speaker 4: They don't state that connection to the themes too overtly.
Speaker 4: And also some things about Peter Lourie's performance, Like in
Speaker 4: some scenes he is just very overtly like stating his
Speaker 4: emotions and motivations and performing them very forcefully. But in
Speaker 4: other scenes, I think there is some subtlety. There's some
Speaker 4: subtlety about like exactly what is so beautiful to him
Speaker 4: about about Helen's attitude. You know, that's not all stated explicitly,
Speaker 4: like he mentions her optimism, but the the stuff about
Speaker 4: like the way that she finds the best in everything
Speaker 4: that seems to kind of like remind him of his
Speaker 4: earlier self, but like he never says that explicitly, So
Speaker 4: I don't know, I think there's some good subtle stuff.
Speaker 2: Actually, this is interesting because we might in a way
Speaker 2: be getting back into the idea of what is noir,
Speaker 2: you know, And you know, you think about these black
Speaker 2: and white pictures with you know, deep midnight blacks and
Speaker 2: you know, contrasted by the white, and you know, we
Speaker 2: think about like you know, good and evil, but then
Speaker 2: all of these like areas of ambiguity in between, even
Speaker 2: though you know, obviously noir pictures often also play with
Speaker 2: severe absolutes as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some stuff is very heavy handed and some stuff
Speaker 4: is more subtle. In fact, I wonder to over extend
Speaker 4: the metaphor perhaps I wonder if you could almost think
Speaker 4: of this as kind of like a stage magician, that
Speaker 4: a stage magician is going to be through misdirection, being
Speaker 4: very flamboyant with what they do with one hand in
Speaker 4: order to you know, sort of keep your attention off
Speaker 4: of what they're doing with the other hand. Could that
Speaker 4: could that be the case with some noir storytelling like
Speaker 4: we see here, that it makes the subtle elements all
Speaker 4: the more the more emotionally resonant, that they're kind of
Speaker 4: hidden by this heavy handed, overt storytelling style in some
Speaker 4: of the other choices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a pretty solid way to look
Speaker 2: at it, And obviously we'd love to hear what listeners
Speaker 2: have to say about all of this. You know, think
Speaker 2: about it in terms of your favorite noir pictures, be
Speaker 2: it you know, old timey noir or neo noir, you know,
Speaker 2: the various noir elements that you'll find in various works
Speaker 2: of science fiction, anime, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Right, in.
Speaker 2: We'd love to have that discussion with you and think
Speaker 2: about it as we proceed through the month of November.
Speaker 2: Is there another noir or neo noir picture you would
Speaker 2: like for us to consider on Weird House Cinema, you know,
Speaker 2: in the future, right in and let us know. For instance,
Speaker 2: I was my backup for this one was going to
Speaker 2: be a Cohen Brother's picture, And at some point I
Speaker 2: think I would like to come back and do a
Speaker 2: Cohen Brothers picture on some of my favorite filmmakers, and
Speaker 2: a number of those films are very close to my heart.
Speaker 4: Oh, I think I know exactly what movie you have
Speaker 4: in mind. Yeah, or we could come back to the
Speaker 4: Cohen Brothers in a number of ways. Actually, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder to everybody that Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film here on Weird House Cinema. And if you want
Speaker 2: to see a full list of the films we've covered
Speaker 2: over the years, and sometimes a peek ahead what's coming
Speaker 2: up next, go to Letterbox Dot com look for our
Speaker 2: username there it is weird House and you'll find that list. Likewise,
Speaker 2: if you're on Instagram, follow us at STBYM podcast. That's
Speaker 2: another way to keep up with what we're doing in
Speaker 2: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind feed in general, be
Speaker 2: it Core episodes or Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 4: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
Speaker 4: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 4: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 4: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 4: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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