Summer Under the Stars 2011 -- Day Fifteen Review: Laugh, Clown, Laugh

Legend has it that Peter Bogdanovich chose to film The Last Picture Show in black-and-white because his friend and mentor Orson Welles advised him that black-and-white film worked better for "actors' pictures" -- that is, films where the acting is front and center, rather than being a function of the grander story. To apply that rule to all films would obviously be a mistake, but I think Welles had a point: color can enhance a film, but it can also act as a distraction, especially when "color" refers to the vivid Technicolor of the pre-1965 period. In some cases, the type of film used makes a big difference -- color works better for epics like Reap the Wild Wind, while black-and-white is almost a necessity for noirs -- but more often than not, color vs. black-and-white simply emphasizes different aspects of the movie as a whole, and black-and-white can be more affective in highlighting an actors' presence, and in picking up tiny nuances that color might obscure. (I don't think it's a coincidence that the idea of "movie stars" started to fade as soon as black-and-white fell out of favor.)

The 1928 silent film Laugh, Clown, Laugh came out seven years before color film began to be widely used, but Welles's theory holds true nonetheless, in that Clown is very much an actors' picture and the black-and-white photography serves to highlight the masterful work of its lead actor, Lon Chaney. Chaney is recognizable to most people today through his work in 1925's The Phantom of the Opera, but in fact he was an accomplished actor and makeup artist throughout the twenties, leaving his mark on a number of critically-respected silent films and becoming somewhat emblematic of the silent era itself, dying in 1930 of a throat hemorrhage (he made one sound film, 1930's The Unholy Three). In Laugh, Clown, Laugh he plays a traveling performer who adopts an abandoned child and raises her as his daughter, only to fall in love with her as she nears adulthood. Loretta Young plays the girl, Simonetta, while Nils Asther plays Count Ravelli, a reckless young man who steals her heart while Chaney's character pines for her in secret. 

Loretta Young was herself only 14 when she played the part of Simonetta, and she is both lovely and startlingly childlike, even when compared with roles she played just a few years later in films like Midnight Mary and Platinum Blonde. Chaney, by comparison, was 45, and it's a credit to him more than anyone that the potentially icky nature of the story never comes across that way on screen, even as his character Tito descends further and further into depression both from guilt and the pain of unrequited love. I got the feeling sometimes that the film wasn't quite as tragic as it wanted to be, but it is sad, and like many pre-Code films, wasn't afraid to go out on an unhappy note (although a happier ending was shot). I would also be remiss not to mention that an additional benefit of using black-and-white film is the mystery and beauty associated with colorless photography, evident not only in black-and-white films but promotional portraits as well. People never look quite so beautiful, or handsome, or sophisticated as they do in black-and-white photographs, and for movie stars, that's an asset not to be taken lightly.

Grade: B