Film Review: The Man with Two Faces (1934)

The subtitle for The Man with Two Faces could easily be "How to Ruin a Movie That Might Have Otherwise Been Good," because despite the strength of the premise and the presence of two of my favorite actors, The Man with Two Faces is ultimately a disappointing adaptation of a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott that is neither as suspenseful nor as clever as it attempts to be. The film stars Edward G. Robinson as an actor whose sister Jessica is in the midst of her own triumphant return to the stage when her evil, presumed-dead husband resurfaces and immediately forces her back under his heel. Mary Astor plays Jessica, with Louis Calhern playing Jessica's husband Stanley Vance.

The film starts promisingly, setting up an effective sense of foreboding by contrasting Jessica's current state of happiness with the imminent return of her husband. The scene depicting Vance's return also works quite well, especially because Calhern -- at least in this initial scene -- strikes a good balance between self-centered dandy and malicious abuser, but the rest of the film doesn't match this first portrayal, quickly turning him into nothing more than a stereotypical money-grubber who has no real relationship with Jessica except that he can manipulate her into making him rich. The problem with The Man with Two Faces is that we're supposed to believe that Jessica is completely in the thrall of her husband, to the point that she turns into a listless zombie as soon as he enters the room, but the film gives us no reason to believe that Vance is the sort of man who could have that effect on a woman: he's not very good-looking, especially compared with Jessica's current boyfriend (played by Ricardo Cortez); he seems quasi-gay, and not in the way that would fool someone like Jessica; and he and Jessica have absolutely no chemistry, nor anything else to suggest they were formally great lovers. In the end, Vance isn't even uniquely evil in a way that could mentally trap someone; he's just mean and oppressively nasty.

The rest of the film revolves around Robinson's character trying to free his sister from Vance's clutches, and the means he devises to accomplish this are, again, potentially interesting, but also extremely transparent to the viewer, which is all I'll say on the subject so that I won't spoil the story. Robinson does a nice job in his part, as he always does, but the material is beneath his talents, just as it's below Astor; she had one of the most unique screen presences of the thirties, and in The Man with Two Faces she is reduced to sleepwalking through her scenes. For a better Astor film, I would recommend Dodsworth, Midnight, or The Great Lie (not a great movie, but a great Astor performance); The Man with Two Faces isn't completely without merit, but it's nowhere near the apex of the work of anyone involved.

Grade: B-