Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Face Behind the Mask

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe celebrate Noirvember with a viewing of the 1941 Robert Florey crime film “The Face Behind the Mask,” starring the legendary Peter Lorre. (originally published 11/15/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind, it is November,
so we are celebrating November like a lot of film
fans out there. So this is our newar November episode
from last year. It is the nineteen forty one Peter
Lorie film The Face Behind the Mask. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. In today's episode of
Weird House Cinema. We're getting in on the Near November festivities.
If you're not familiar with this, this is a yearly,
month long celebration of near cinema, a concept introduced in
twenty ten by film critic Maria E. Gates. Film noir is,

(01:00):
of course, a turn that covers a lot of ground
and bleeds into a number of different subgenres and adjacent genres.
I mean it ultimately becomes just sort of a shade,
you know, and a stylistic flourish that may be employed
even just in key scenes in a particular picture, but
in its arguably truest form, we're talking about black and

(01:24):
white old Hollywood crime dramas, full of cynicism, amoral characters
and style, heavy dash of German expressionism, plenty of cigarette smoke.
Throw all that in and you're good to go. There's
also much to be said about this genre emerging out
of the Great Depression. Lots of moving parts, so you

(01:44):
can identify noir in everything from such films as The
Maltese Falcon from nineteen forty one nineteen forty two's Casablanca
to stuff like nineteen eighty twos Blade Runner and multiple
you know, neo noir films from the likes of the
Cohen Brothers and David Lynch. And we haven't really gotten
in on this Noirvember thing before. You know, I've seen it.

(02:07):
I've seen it celebrated at Videodrome, the rental store here
in Atlanta, I've seen it celebrated online in various places,
and you know, it feels right. November is a really
choice month for all of this, because wordplay aside, it's
a month of continued descent through fall and into winter.
It's a month often typified by things like elections or

(02:28):
corporate layoffs. It's a bleak time for bleak hearts, so
what better time than now to dive into the black
and white world of private detectives and professional criminals. So
what is today's movie? It is nineteen forty one's The
Face Behind the Mask, And yeah, it actually comes out
nine months before The Maltese Falcon, which is sometimes considered

(02:51):
the first big film noir picture, but it also ultimately
depends on how you slice it. You can also reach
back into the thirties for possible examples of forerunners in
the genre. And also, this is a picture that I'm
to understand wasn't actually viewed a lot after its initial release.
It's kind of built up a following over time.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, so your selection this week got me really thinking
about what is it that makes a movie film noir.
I don't really know exactly what the primary criteria are.
It's one of those things where it's defined by a
number of different sort of plot conventions and stylistic conventions.
And if a movie has a critical mass, if it

(03:31):
has enough of these different things in it, then it
starts to feel like noir. But I don't know what
the core things are. Though you mentioned a minute ago
The Maltese Falcon, the Humphrey Bogart movie and I feel
like that's kind of the prototype film noir, right, Like
that's or the archetype. I don't know which is the
right term there. It's like it's the type example that

(03:52):
you think of, or at least that I think of
for film noir. So it has a tough, cynical detective.
It has a lot of people running around chasing after money,
It has cynical crime themes. It has a maybe somewhat
gloomy outlook on human nature, but also has a sense
of humor, a kind of dark sense of humor. And

(04:15):
in fact, it has an actor in common with the
movie we're going to be talking about today, because a
major character actor in the Maltese Falcon is Peter Lourie
in the role of Joel Cairo, who is the main
character in the face behind the mask. So I would say,
almost to the same extent that I associate Humphrey Bogart

(04:35):
with noir, I also associate Peter Lourie with it.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
That's right. If you're cooking film noir, either during this
time period or in later decades, Peter Lourie, or at
least the ghost of Peter Laurie, is very much on
the spice Rack, as is Humphrey Bogart, as are various
other elements. Like you can also throw in things that
are not president in this picture, such as the fem fatale.

(04:59):
It's very often an employed to some degree in a
noir picture. So there are, yeah, all these different things
that may or may not be added to the finished product.
But when you taste the soup, you know, ah, this
is film noir.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, cigarettes, fried eggs, black coffee, revolvers, Fedoras, trench coats.
That's what's going on here. And Peter Lourie is part
of the mix.

Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah. So as far as weird House cinema selections go,
it's notable that this is our This is only our
fourth selection from the nineteen forties, following Doctor Cyclops, The
Beast with Five Fingers, and The Devil Bad. It's our
second picture directed by Robert Florey, and our third Peter
Lori picture. It's also one of our infrequent picks to

(05:43):
not feature a speculative element, though I would say it's
weird enough in its own way for our purposes. I
also want to stress that this film is also very
strongly a melodrama, so it's not subtle in its manipulation
of the heart strings. You know, it's a bit of
a morality play. Well, so it's yeah, it's a it's
a good picture. I was really pleased with. It is

(06:06):
one that's kind of been on my short list for
a long time. Often held up as one of Laurie's
best performances. A picture where he is the lead and
gets to bust out a number of his tools and
you know, not just be the villain or a side
villain or a side quirky character. He is the main
event here.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
This, this really is a look at my range movie
for Peter Loriie. There are some scenes where he is
so wholesome and so precious, He's just cute, adorable, wonderful,
other scenes where he is the creepiest creep and he
gets to do both in the same film.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Yeah, So for like an absolute Peter Lourie picture, it's
like this and Mad Love or I think Neck and Neck.
You don't, they don't, But each film hit slightly different notes.
You know, you don't get the same array of Peter
Lourie in both films, but added together, I mean you
get to see so many different colors from him.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
But you're also right in saying that this is not
a subtle film. I mean, this is not a film
where the drama takes place reading between the lines. It's
all on the lines here. So there are extremely overt
monologues in which the themes of the film are pretty
explicitly stated, and we get like swelling music while they're delivered,

(07:22):
and they're delivered in almost kind of a stage performance way.
You know, characters kind of borderline shout their lines and
they're full of overt passion. But if you know, if
you know that's what you're in for, it's not really
a bad thing. It's just a different way to tell
a story.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. Another point about this picture we'll keep coming back
to is that it's a pretty fast ride. This film's
only sixty nine minutes long, and I think it's the
rare weird house cinema selection where I have to say
I don't think it is long enough. I feel like
I needed a little bit more from it. I mean,
what we have is tremendous, but you know, I wanted
to see scenes that are alluded to but not shown

(08:00):
to us. And yeah, it doesn't have a lot of
time to even necessarily further explore some of the ideas
that it brings up, which you know isn't necessarily a
bad thing.

Speaker 3 (08:12):
Many of the most pivotal scenes in the plot happen
off screen. They're like the big turning points are like
you see what's leading up to it, and then you
see the characters talking about it afterwards, but you don't
see the thing itself.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, but you know, so it's like Frank Herbert would
dig that. But it's like, it's not battle scenes that
are left out, you know, it's not like big budget
things that I don't know, you know, maybe it was
a budgetary decision to not show some of like the
key heists that become important later on, but you know,
they make a lot out of the time they have here.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Do you think they left out the safe cracking scene?
Like it was it cut for content that was just
like too spicy for audiences at the time.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
I don't know, I really Yeah, we'll talk about when
we get to that point in the plot, but yeah,
I really wanted to see this first big heist that
that Jagosh is involved in. But more on that in
a bit. Now.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
I am, by no means an expert in film noir,
but I associate several different plot types with this genre.
The most common, I would say, is the private detective story.
You know, somebody shows up with a strange case for
a private detective, and the detective goes down the rabbit hole,
you know, figuring out all the twists and turns and
all that. Maltese Falcon is of that sort. But if

(09:25):
there is a second type of plot structure I most
associate with film noir, it is the plot that we
get in the face behind the mask, which is an
originally good hearted person is lured or forced into a
life of crime.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, fallen angel, breaking bad, yes, you know. Yeah. And
one of the interesting things about it is that this
is of course also an immigrant story, and so the
good person at the heart of this is someone who
is entering America for the first time and has all
these ideas and all these dreams, dreams that he has absorbed,

(10:04):
you know, from Afar, the American dream, and so his
fall is also about realizing the flaws and the American
dream and the things that you know, that he had
built up in his head that just aren't part of
the reality.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, that his hopes are sort of crash against the
rocks of reality and of circumstances beyond his control, and
that just happens over and over until he is forced
into becoming the gang story that he once feared.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, all right, Now, I don't have any trailer audio
for this one, but if you want a little dash
of the trailer audio, look up Joe Dante's Trailers from
Hell feature on it. It's pretty fun. It's just, you know,
Joe Dante talking a little bit about this picture and
then sharing some audio and video from the trailer. But
I couldn't find that trailer anywhere else for us to sample,

(10:54):
so I'll just say go ahead and check out what
Joe Dante has to share about that trailer. Now you
might be wondering at this point, Hey, I haven't seen
Face behind the Mask. I'd like to before continuing on
with the episode. Well, fair enough. I support that. This one, however,
is not, to my knowledge, currently available in the US
on disc, but it is currently part of the streaming

(11:17):
options over at the Criterion channel. That's the streaming platform
and app brought to you by the Criterion Collection. The
Face behind the Mask is currently featured as part of
their Noir November Essentials collection. We don't champion a lot
of streaming options on stuff to blow your mind. But
the Criterion Channel is, in my unpaid four opinion, here
a great streaming option for film fans. You can try

(11:39):
it for free for a week, you know that sort
of thing. But you can watch everything from Brida Frankenstein
and Scanners to the Story of Ricky and Raising Arizona.
And they have some really tantalizing playlists of films, including
I was just looking at it this morning. There's one
that's just synth scores, so all sorts of cool electronic
scores for the pictures selected. And then they have one

(12:00):
that's just hopping vampires, so it's like, I think it's
all just mister Vampire pictures. And of course we talked
about the first Mister Vampire film on the show a
while back.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yes, also in my unpaid for opinion, I greatly enjoyed
the Criterion Channel, though I should issue a warning to
people because I was confused by this at first. You
can't assume just because a movie has a Criterion Collection
release that it will be featured streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Some movies have a disc from Criterion, but they're not

(12:31):
on there. But it's still a good channel.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Right, and likewise, there are plenty of pictures on there
that I don't think have discs on Criterion, but it's
just it's a great selection, and a number of weird
house cinema pictures are in there as of this recording.
All right, let's run through some of the people involved here.

(12:55):
The director is, of course Robert Florey, who lived nineteen
hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength French American director
who worked from the twenties through the sixties, amassing one
hundred and eighteen credits and just really cranking out pictures
during the nineteen thirties. His early career was apparently more
avant garde expressionism, but he became one of these kind

(13:18):
of like cinematic workhorse types of guys from a purely
horror standpoint. He's perhaps best known for directing Murders in
the Rue Morgue in nineteen thirty two, based on the
Edgar Allen post story and starring Hungarian American film legend Lagosi,
as well as ape suit legend Charles Goemora. Also of
note was the noir film Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven.

(13:41):
That one featured a female Chinese American elite in the
form of Anime Wong, another legendary name from a lot
of noir pictures, as well as Korean American actor Philip An.
Flori is also noted for having been the initial director
on nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein with Lego we see attached
to play the monster during those early stages before Legosi

(14:05):
like leaving the picture because he didn't want to play
like this. You know what we might think of is
just like a killing machine Frankenstein monster. And you know,
of course Flories ends up being replaced by James Whale,
and we get the nineteen thirty one Frankenstein that we
all know and love. Florie later directed a lot of
TV and his last film credit is an episode film

(14:25):
or TV credit is an episode of the original Outer
Limits series titled Moonstone. He also did three Twilight Zone episodes.
All right, now, as far as the story and screenplay
here goes, there are four different names, some of which
I don't have a lot of information on. Apparently the
story is based on a radio play called Interim by

(14:46):
Thomas Edward O'Connell who lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty one.
I couldn't find out much about this. The screenplay for
the film, however, was apparently very much put together with
Peter Lourie in mind for the lead. Let's see author
Levinson has a story credit note relation obviously to I
think there's a contemporary author Levinson who's involved with like

(15:08):
Apple computers or something different. Guy. There's Alan Vincent who
has a screenplay credit, who lived nineteen oh three through
nineteen seventy nine, actor and screenwriter who appeared in such
films as nineteen thirty three's Mystery of the Wax Museum.
This is his first screenplay credit. And then we also
have a screenplay credit for Paul Jericho, who lived nineteen

(15:28):
fifteen through nineteen ninety seven. OSCAR nominated American screenwriter here
for nineteen forty two's Tom Dick and Harry, who was
later blacklisted during the McCarthy era for his ties to
the Communist Party and alleged subversive content. During this time, though,
he produced the nineteen fifty four film Salt of the Earth,
which was a project that entailed a handful of other

(15:50):
blacklisted filmmakers and was well received and I think it
continues to be well received. Often worked uncredited or under
a pseudonym his other and it's also included nineteen sixty
two's All Night Long, All Right, But of course our
star playing Janosh Johnny Zabo, we have Peter Lorii. Yeah,
nineteen oh four through nineteen sixty four. Austro Hungarian actor

(16:14):
of Jewish descent who made it big in Fritz Lung's
Im Back in thirty one, sometimes singled out as an
early noir picture, are certainly very influential on noir films
to follow, before he ended up fleeing the rise of
anti Semitism under the Nazi regime. A legendary character actor who,
of course appeared in one of our first Weird House
Cinema episodes covering nineteen thirty five's Mad Love. He is

(16:38):
best remembered for his various roles in such noir mainstays
as Casablanca, Maltese Falcon thrillers like nineteen thirty four's The
Man Who Knew Too Much, as well as such horror
films as nineteen sixty three as The Raven, and even
such big budget productions as nineteen fifty four to twenty
thousand Leagues under the Sea. He wrote and directed a
single film, nineteen fifty one's the Lost One, and he

(17:01):
was technically the first actor to play a Bond villain,
appearing in the nineteen fifty four TV adaptation of Casino Royale.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
This is the Thing that was an adaptation of Casino
Royale that had Barry Nelson as James Bond. Barry Nelson
is the guy who plays the hotel manager at the
beginning of the shining. He's like the guy hiring Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
This is back when James Bond was played by an
American and presented as an American character.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
Oh that's so good, But man, I would watch Peter
Laurie as La Chief that that'd be good.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, yeah, I'm whatever else is going on, Yeah yeah,
I mean Peter Laurie is such an intriguing icon, you know,
like iconic in ways that are hard to overstress, you know,
like he becomes this like you go ack and you
watch old Bugs Bunny cartoons and they'll have a Peter
louri character. I think plenty of people still like doing

(17:57):
like if you have I have a Dungeons and Waggin's
character that uses a Peter Lorrie voice. I feel like
a lot of other people haven't leave even Dungeon Masters
have probably done some version of a Peter Lourie voice
at some point. You know, he's just he's that iconic.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yeah, he's so iconic that my Christoph Lambert voice is
actually a Peter Lorrie voice.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's just tremendous, you know. And
he was frequently typecast as sinister foreigners, and his career
has some real ups and downs, absolutely, but especially during
his prime here, he's always there's always something about his performance.
It's a treat. And this is a film much like Madlove,

(18:37):
where we get to enjoy him as the star of
the picture. He gets to play a lot of different
notes in his performance that we don't otherwise get to experience.
I want to point out too, that he was thirty
six when they filmed this, and he looks thirty six.
But there are different points where they would call him
like kid or are they talking about him as if

(18:58):
he's like this young boy who just in America. It's
like he's clearly a grown man, but fair enough.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Oh yeah, I don't know. Early in the film, he's
so full of hope. He almost has a kind of
newborn quality.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, I mean, he is totally bought into the American
mythology that he's been presented with, and yeah, it's just
overflowing with optimism and it is a bit naive, as
we'll discuss, all right. So that's Peter Laurie. More on
his performance as we proceed. The love interest here, the
eventual blind love interest for our protagonist is the character

(19:33):
Helen Williams, played by Evelyn Keyes who lived nineteen sixteen
through two thousand and eight. She was an American actress
who played supporting roles in some pretty big films, including
nineteen thirty nine's Gone with the Wind and nineteen fifty
five's The Seven Year Itch. Other credits include nineteen fifty
one's The Prowler and then much later in her career,

(19:54):
Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot in nineteen eighty seven.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
So we were just mentioning there's a part of the
movie where where Peter Lourie is full of hope and optimism,
but the character of Helen appears later in the film
after all of Peter Laurie's hope and optimism is gone,
and she's sort of like the energy beat. She's like
an energy weapon of happiness, just blasting into the film

(20:19):
from orbit, and you know what it's like. She really
does completely change the tone of the movie when she appears.
But of course, you know, this is film noir, so
they're gonna have to play this romance for tragedy ultimately.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean she's great in this. She's delightful,
you know, totally buy into this, this light of optimism
you know that she brings. But also like obviously she's
a doomed angel, you know, like, yeah, you know where
this is going. Too good for this world, all right.
We also have Don Beto playing Lieutenant James Jim O'Hara.

(20:57):
He lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety one. Yeah,
he's a sympathetic New York police officer who helps Janosher
early on. Played by an American character actor whose credits
include nineteen fifty five Is the Night of the Hunter
and nineteen forty six is The Best Years of Our Lives.
He performed on Broadway prior to this movie and prior
to his going into film and television. According to Joe Dante,

(21:21):
he's an actor known for a lot of milk toast rolls,
but he thinks this is one of his best performances,
and then we have the character of Dinky. Dinky. This
is the character that really surprised me because I came
into this expecting the great Peter Lorrie performance. But I
really think George E. Stone is terrific here as Dinky,

(21:42):
the criminal with a heart of gold.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
He's the guy who he just can't he can't stop
doing crime, but he's actually a really nice guy.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
Yeah, he didn't want to do crimes, but like, things
keep happening and he keeps falling back down the ladder,
and then he has no choice, you know. Yeah. Stone
lived nineteen oh three through nineteen sixty seven. Published born
American actor of vaudeville, Broadway, film, and TV. Played a
lot of scrappy Prohibition era New York characters often described

(22:12):
as runyon esque. This is not really terminology I was
familiar with, but this is a reference to the writings
of author Damon Runyon, who invoked a lot of colorful
New York City slang in his writings.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
Oh yeah, so like when we very first meet Dinky,
he comes out of the shadows to pick up the
wallet that was dropped by like a wealthy you know,
Wall Street trader who gets scared by Peter Lorii's face
in the middle of the movie scene and Dinky he
picks up the wallet and he goes like, hey, let's
see what Sandy Claus left for us.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, Like, I didn't know what runyon esque was beforehand,
but now that I've seen this performance and I have
heard the word, now I can recognize runyon esque elsewhere
in pictures, Like there are definitely characters in Santa Claus
Conquers the Marsh that are runing esque. Yeah, even though
they're Martians. I don't know why they're runying esque, but anyway,

(23:06):
but yes, Stone is terrific in this his film roles.
Other film roles include nineteen thirty one's Little Caesar, nineteen
fifty fives Guys and Dolls, and nineteen fifty nine Some
Like It Hot. Yeah, it's a great performance. Like, he's
very likable and he has a lot of heart, and
he is a characters will discuss that very much saves

(23:27):
Janosh at a very dark point in his life. Yeah. Now,
to the extent that this movie has a villain, like
a centralized individual villain, it is jeff Jeffries. I guess
his full name would be Jeffrey Jeff jeffries a man
so Jeff they named him twice, played by James c

(23:47):
who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
I was banging my head trying to figure out where
I recognized this guy from because he was very familiar,
and I finally realized it was from a Miracle on
thirty fourth Street.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Oh yeah, who does he play in that?

Speaker 3 (24:02):
He's like, I think there are two psychiatrists in it,
and there's like the one mean one who's sort of
the antagonist, and then there's the one nice one. And
I think he's the nice one. I could be remembering
that wrong, but I know he's in the film.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
He has a very memorable chin, and in this picture anyway,
has very memorable shoulders, Like Jeff's suit has shoulders so
broad that they made me think of the Dick Tracy
villain shoulders, Like it's basically the same dimensions. Yeah, and
he's absolutely towering over all the shorter character actors in
the picture. Like, his shoulders are as broad as Peter

(24:39):
Laurie is like long if you laid him out, you know,
Like that's how broad these shoulders are. It's ridiculous. It's
laugh inducing at least from our modern perspective.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
The effect created by his outfit. And it's a standard forties,
you know, gang member outfit. So it's a suit with
a black fedora, you know, big shoulder pads, the vest
of the tie. And if this makes any sense, it
has the effect of like he's in football pads. He's
fully suited up. He's suited up for game time.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
And yeah, I end up having this like real reaction
to him too, because like Laurie is obviously like, you know,
he was a much shorter guy. You know, he's he's
not leading your typical leading man material, you know, like
he really I attached to Peter Laurie more is like
he is like a nerd, you know, he's one of us.
And Jeff Jefferies is total jock here. James c is

(25:34):
like total jock mode, and like it's instantly I identify
him as a danger to our our hero and our
icon here.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
But there's there's a scene where Peter Lourie like beats
him up.

Speaker 1 (25:44):
Yeah and makes us believe it. Like I like we
build up to that encounter and I'm like, Okay, how
are you gonna make me believe this? Like this dude
is enormous, but you know, Laurie does it. But uh yeah,
See See pops up in a number of different things,
so you might have seen him in things like fifty ones,
The Day the Earth Stood Still, fifty four's Killers from

(26:05):
Outer Space, and I think I probably recognize. I don't
know who he was in this because I haven't seen
it forever because nobody will put it out on disk,
But nineteen fifty seven is the amazing Colossal Man. Also
features a James ce.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Roll Oh and Rob you had this note. He was
also in the Beginning of the End, which is a
Burt Eye Gordon film. This is the one with the
giant grasshoppers.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another one. I don't think I've
ever seen that one in full. And he's not the
star in that one. He's like, you know, mid cast.
That one stars Peter Graves.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
I think See Here was known for often playing like
a military commander or some government bureaucrat. He's like somebody
you would cut away to and they're just giving orders. Yeah,
and so he's got a more substantial role in this movie.
But it does turn out because I've seen Beginning of
the End and I've seen some of these other sci
fi movies, so it's not just Miracle on thirty fourth Street.

(26:58):
I know him from him, but that is what was
in my mind when I was seeing him here in
his crime uniform.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Yeah, all right. Two more behind the scenes credits to mention.
Franz Planner, who HAVED eighteen ninety four through nineteen sixty three,
is the cinematographer Austria, Hungarian cinematographer and five time Oscar nominee.
His other credits include nineteen fifty threes The five Thousand
Fingers of Doctor t that is one that has been
recommended for Weird House numerous times, also Roman Holiday, as

(27:28):
well as nineteen fifty fourth twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,
which of course has Peter Lourie and it's a pretty
vast ensemble cast. And then finally, Sidney Kuttner is credited
with music on this nineteen oh three through nineteen seventy one.
But this is all pretty much stock music, I'm to understand,
and there are some other music credits in there that
are clearly labeled as stock. So you know, there's nothing

(27:52):
out of the ordinary as far as the music for
Face Behind the Mask, but it's effective it does the job.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
It's nice and melodramatic, all right, So I guess we're
doing the plot now. So the movie opens with some
text gives us the setting, and it says it's set
just a few years ago, when a voyage to America

(28:19):
an adventure, not flight, when a quota was a number,
not a lottery prize to be captured by a lucky few.
I guess the contrast between adventure and flight there being
that this movie was released during World War Two.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, so yeah, it's already kind of like calling back
to the inter war period here.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
Yeah. So we see a boat streaming into harbor in
New York City, passing in front of the Statue of Liberty,
and on the musical track, the orchestra plays a couple
of bars of my country tis of thee when we
see the statue. So again, this movie is not subtle.

Speaker 1 (28:54):
No, it lays it on pretty thick.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
And then on the boat, two passengers gaze out over
the water. So there's one man who's sort of taller
with a mustache, looking a little bit hopeful, but his
expression is more tempered and he walks away, leaving only
the other guy there. The other guy in the background
is Peter Lourie looking out at the scene with wide eyed,
almost childlike giddiness. And this is our protagonist Janosh, a

(29:20):
watchmaker by trade who is a new arrival to America
from Hungary. Yanosh approaches a crew member on the deck
of the ship with excitement and he asks him for
a match, and the kindly man offers him a match,
and then Janosh says, no, thank you, I don't smoke.
And then he asks for the time. The man tells
him it's a quarter past ten. Yanosh checks his own

(29:41):
watch and agrees that is indeed the time. Janosh then
reveals with an infectious giggle that he is simply practicing
his English and again, I can't drive home enough. How
sweet Peter Lourie is at the beginning here.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yes, yeah, he really is. There's a childlike innocence here.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
So he points out over the water at the Statue
of Liberty and he says, look, she's beautiful, and the
boat worker agrees, says, yeah, I'd love to see it
every time every time we come into port here, and
Janosh then shows him a picture of a woman folded
in his wallet in his wallet and says, she is
very beautiful too. This is his beloved Maria. Yanosh explains

(30:22):
that after he establishes himself in America, she's going to
make the journey to join him, and then they will
be married when she arrives. So Yanosh arrives on the
streets of New York and we see him walking around.
He stops a stranger to ask him where he can
find a good hot and cold water hotel, and the
stranger gives him directions to the Carlton Plaza. He's like,

(30:43):
go six blocks up, one block over, two blocks to
the left, and then he says, they're waiting for you.
I think this went over my head a bit, but
I assume the joke is that this is a ridiculously
fancy hotel and they're waiting for you, as like their
their advertising slogan or something.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Yeah, I think that's the dig here.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
But then up the street, Janos stops to buy a
juice from a street vendor and discovers that all of
his money is gone. The fifty nine dollars he arrived
with it's all missing from his wallet. So he runs
to a nearby policeman for help.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
And yeah, and at this point he's like he's begging
the policeman to help him, and again we have more
of this like over the top a naivety and an
optimism from Janosh. But he has this line though, that
is so dumb that it does actually succeed in being
really funny. He's like, I've been gangstered. But but then

(31:40):
he like calms down a bit like the This is
where we meet O'Hara for the first time, and O'Hara
is here to sort of talk him down, and it's like,
all right, well, buddy, when when did you last see
your money? And then he's able to get Janos to
calm down enough to realize, oh, I still have the
money on me.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
I have it under my shirt, that's right. So I
was afraid in this scene. Oh no, he's going to
run into a crooked cop who's going to double skin him.
But fortunately the detective he meets is friendly and helpful,
so O'Hara talks him through it, and then he remembers
he was listening to a man on the boat talk
about gangsters in America and he became afraid. And you know,

(32:15):
I don't know if the like Tommy Gunn Gangster was
as big a media sensation at this point in American
history as it had been like a decade earlier. I
think of like the early thirties as the heyday of
the you know, the big gangster stories about John Dillinger
and so forth. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but yeah,
I wonder if that's sort of what they're playing on.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, I mean, at any rate, we're all familiar with
the sort of chewed up by the big city trope,
which of course is reflected in that wonderful Simpsons episode
where Homer has to come back to New York City
to pay for to get a boot off of his car. Right, yes,
And it's just you know, absolute I d in his
mind that this is a hell city that will you know,

(32:56):
that will come at you. So yeah, I was afraid
too that Yanosh was about to run into another scam
and just be all the worse off for it.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Oh yeah, because in that Simpsons episode there's a scene
where he gets his camera stolen, then he goes to
complain to a police officer, and then the police officer
steals his suitcase. But anyway, like you said, he remembers
that he just hid his money in the shirt he
finds it again. So everything's okay. Then the policeman takes
Yanosh for a cold drink of some kind. It looks

(33:27):
like they're having like an ice cream float. They're at
a soda shop and Janosh tells O'Hara about all of
his hopes and dreams. He wants to get a job
and make money, then bring Marie over the ocean with
him to get married, and then have children. He wants
to have his sons follow him into his trade, which
is watchmaking and watch repair. And Ohara tries to help

(33:50):
Yanosh by telling him, Hey, I know of a hotel
that's clean, comfortable and cheap. You go to the Excelsior.
It's run by a guy named Finnegan. So he gives
him directions sends him on his way.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Now, at the.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Hotel, Yanosh not only rents a room, but he gets
a job washing dishes at the cafe on the ground floor,
where it seems like he does extremely good work. We
see a scene of him efficiently drying off plates and
teacups while singing to himself. The gist is that Yanosh
is a machine. He's a real good worker, and he's
friendly to boot.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Now at this hotel, we learned from the manager. There
are a couple of rules if you're a guest. First
of all, no ironing for some reason. I think he
says it overloads the circuits or something. But then the
other thing is no cooking your own food. And the
reason given is explicitly that the cafe is not making
enough money and the hotel needs the business from the guests,

(34:42):
so you can't make your own food. Well, one night,
we see Yanosh relaxing in his hotel bed after a
long shift at work. He's sort of chattering away lovingly
to his photo of Maria, and then meanwhile, in another room,
a guest is doing such wickedness. He is breaking one
of the two amandments. He is cooking in his room,

(35:02):
and we get a close up of his little hot plate,
and unfortunately, the black and white photography is not kind
to whatever he's cooking in this spot. It's some gleaming,
wretched slop. It looks like he's boiling glass beads in
a broth of nail polish. It does not look good.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
Yeah, I can figure out what this was. It was like,
is he doing like some sort of reduction of marachino
cherries or something. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
Yeah, he's like tasting it. He's stirring it with a
fork and tasting yum, yum yum. Well, old man Finn again,
the guy who runs this place. He's roaming the halls,
sniffing around at the doors for illegal cookery, and he
detects He detects the cooking, so he zeros in on
the culprit, pulls up a ladder and tries to snoop

(35:46):
through the transom over the door to the room. But
the guest wises up real quick. He realized he hears
something outside, and then he hides his hot plate and
the pot of stew in the drawer of his wooden dresser.
Seems like a predictable outcome from this, so the guest
like he hides it in the dresser and then he
puts on a hat and coat leaves the room. He

(36:08):
gives a wink to the old man that the manager.
He's like, ah, I thought you could catch me, huh. Now,
as you might guess, putting the hot plate and the
pot inside the wooden furniture starts a fire, and the
fire grows out of control and then rages through the hotel.
So this scene turns horrifying. Yano should have been having such
a sweet time earlier. He was doing well at work. He's,

(36:31):
you know, dreaming about his beloved. Suddenly he's awoken to
find himself in a crumbling inferno. He tries to escape
the hotel, but he is hit by falling debris and
he ends up badly injured, very badly burned. By the way,
I just wanted to point out rob there's one part
where he's like coming down the stairs and he's hit
by burning debris that falls from above and then tumbles

(36:52):
over the staircase railing. I just thought this was a
pretty impressive and dangerous looking stunt. I don't know how
they pulled this off.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, I'm not sure. Like the stunt double of they
have for Lori here, I assume it's a stunt double
and looks just like him, And yeah, very terrifying. I
tend to find most fire effects terrifying in films these days,
but yeah, it absolutely feels like a raging inferno here.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
So Yanos survives and he's taken to the hospital, but
he has suffered extensive third degree burns over his face
and head, and we see him in his hospital bed
with his head wrapped up completely in bandages like a mummy,
and his policeman friend O'Hara comes to the hospital showing concern.
He says he feels responsible for Yanosh's injuries because he's

(37:40):
the one who sent him to that hotel, and he
pays for some of his care. I think he gives
five dollars to pay for his hospital care, and then
he leaves a business card for Yanosh, writing a note
on the back that he should call him when he's recovered.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
Yeah, or I think the wording is something like when
things are okay. It's a little bit more vague, and
that's going to be important later on. That's right.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
I think it says call me when okay. So Janosh
retains the use of his hands, but as the healing
process goes on, it becomes clear that he's going to
have extensive scarring on his face and he will never
look the same. The scene where the doctor removes his
bandages is extremely dark and it's played like a horror film.
The doctor draws the shades on the window and then

(38:24):
covers the mirror in the corner of the room before
he takes the wrappings off. And while the doctor is
removing everything. Yanosh is still his friendly, optimistic self. He's
going on and on about how he's excited to go
back out and look for work. He's talking about how
he's saying, I'm very skilled with my hands. I have
experience as a watchmaker, but also in other mechanical jobs.

(38:45):
I once worked in an airplane factory. I even flew
airplanes when I was in the Armed Forces. And so
he's going on about the future. He's very hopeful. But
once his face is revealed, the nurses in the room
shut their eyes and WinCE. One nurse even walks into
the room and screams in horror.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
Yeah, this scene instantly made me think of a nineteen
eighty nine Batman, the Tim Burton picture. We have that
great scene with the removal of the bandages on Jack
Nicholson's joker in that and you know it's not you know,
one to one here. But I can't help but ponder
to what extent like this picture and what other pictures

(39:26):
may have influenced that scene.

Speaker 3 (39:28):
You know, Yeah, I see strong similarity. I would agree
it's a likely influence. But of course, you know, these
reactions they start to alarm you and ocean he becomes upset,
so he runs to the mirror, pulls away the towel
that's hiding the glass, and is confronted with his new face.
Every inch of it is scarred and it has sort

(39:48):
of a melted texture, And it's interesting that this is
basically the only time the movie actually gives you a
good look at his injuries after this scene. For a
long time, until there's another plot development, his face will
be always turned away from the camera or otherwise hidden.
At a certain point, he's going to acquire a customized

(40:10):
mask that makes him look like Peter Lourie again, but
a sort of altered lory, like Uncanny Laurie, And I
don't unless I'm forgetting it. There's really not any other
time they show him with his injuries.

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Yeah, they we get, we get some pretty solid glances
of it, like in the mirror and so forth. But yeah,
for the most part, they they don't show it to
us directly. It's focused more on him becoming a creature
of the shadows and people, you know, having this terrible
reaction to seeing him. And then once the mask is acquired,

(40:43):
it is quite interesting because it gives it ends up
giving Janosh this kind of weird, almost otherworldly beauty. You know,
he's like like an angel, like a fallen angel certainly,
you know, but this clearly this being that's caught between realities,
Like it's smooths out Peter Laurie's face. So yeah, yeah,
he takes on this strange but not like, you know,

(41:05):
monstrous appearance. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
So after seeing his face, Janosh temporarily loses his mind.
He starts screaming where is my face? And he thrashes about,
shouting and attacking the doctor until finally he is forcefully sedated.
So after this, some time passes and we see things
continuing to go bad for Yanosh. He goes out looking
for work, dressed in a black fedora and a dark

(41:30):
coat with the collar pulled up around his face to
hide himself. So he's dressed kind of like a cross
between your standard hard boiled PI but also a bit
of Dracula in there, somewhere in between the two. And
everywhere he goes, including a watchmaker shop and an airplane factory,
he asks for work, but he is turned away once

(41:51):
the boss sees his face. And there's some very gloomy
atmosphere in this part of the film, like I'm thinking
particularly of the scene where he goes to the watchmaker's shop,
or it seems to be nighttime outside and the windows
are illuminated from inside, so he goes in to talk,
but once the watchmaker sees him, he's like, sorry, I
forgot to take the sign out of the window. We

(42:13):
don't have any positions and sends him away, and we
see Peter Lorie walking off down the sidewalk where he's
illuminated by like he should be illuminated by this lamp
that we see in the foreground, but it's like none
of the light touches him somehow, like he's just a
pure shadow from head to toe. Yeah, we see him
becoming increasingly desperate when he goes to talk to the

(42:36):
manager of the airplane factory, like he's turned away from
the camera, but he says, please, my face makes no
difference to how I can work with my hands, and
he's showing the manager his hands, but the manager just says, sorry,
there's nothing doing here, and then we get maybe the
most heartbreaking scene in the entire film, a scene where

(42:57):
Janosh writes a letter to his love back home to Maria,
which we see part of it translated into English. And
the part we see says, I must hurt you, dear Maria,
just once, then you can forget me forever. I have
met a girl, a very pretty girl. We are going
to be married. Goodbye, Maria, forgive and forget Janosh. Obviously

(43:19):
this is not true, but he can't face her now,
so he lies to make her move on with her life.
And this part was so.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Sad, absolutely heartbreaking. This one legitally made me tear up
when I was watching the picture.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
But then we're going to get another slight reversal of fortune.
So here we come up on the scene where Yanosh
meets Dinky. Now, the setup to this scene visually is
very moody and beautiful. Yanosh is standing in his dark costume,
covered by the coat and the hat, at the railing
of a concrete walkway overlooking the ocean, and the moonlight

(43:53):
reflects off of the water and casts these white ripples
across the whole scene. It seems to imply Yana is
thinking about jumping from the railing and ending his life,
but hope comes through a series of unusual events. So
a well dressed man approaches Janosh to ask for a
match to light his cigar and This is kind of

(44:13):
interesting in how it plays on the very first thing
we ever heard from Yanosh, when he walks up to
the guy working on the boat at the beginning and
asks for a match to practice his English. This guy
comes up to ask for a match, and then Janosh
tries to give him one, but when the man sees
Janosh's face up close, the cigar falls out of his
mouth and he runs away, screaming. Suddenly, from out of

(44:34):
the shadows behind a bunch of crates and barrels comes
a third man, and this is Dinky, who's going to
become a major character. Dinky notices that the well dressed
man dropped his wallet as he was running away, so
he approaches Yanosh without fear. He picks up the wallet
and he's like, you know, oh, hey thought I was
a cop, didn't you. Well, let's see what Sandy Claus

(44:55):
left for us, And he starts going through the wallet,
and Dinky is a but he's also instantly likable, Like
he gets the cash out of the wallet and he's like, ah,
what a cheap skate, only twelve bucks, but he splits
the cash with Yano. She gives him half, so they
introduce themselves to each other, and Dinky is a little squirrely,

(45:16):
but unlike everyone else, he doesn't react with horror at
Yanosh's face. Instead, he treats him like a friend, like
when Yanosh is like, aren't you afraid of me? And
Dicky says, what your face? Ah, that's nothing, And they
start talking about Yanosh's apparent thoughts of jumping from the wall,
and Dinky has has a kind of casual way of

(45:38):
bringing some cheer to the situation. He says, what do
you get out of being dead lying around in a grave?
Ain't my idea of a good time? And he's a
sympathetic ear. Yanos starts to tell him about his troubles.
No one will give him work and no one will
look him in the face or talk to him, and
Dinky says like, Hey, I'm looking, I'm looking at you,
I'm talking to you. Let me take you out for

(45:59):
a hot meat. So he takes him to eat and
takes him back to the hotel where he's crashing, and
they start to become fast friends.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yeah, Dinky almost has kind of a what a run
and ask zen quality to him? You know he lives
very much in the moment that's right.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
So back at Dinky's place, Dinky's like having a bath
and sermonizing to Yanosh about his life philosophy.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Oh and by Dinky's place, we mean a hotel room
that they were able to pay for for just one night,
you know, because again Dinky lives in the moment is
one night at a time, you know.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, So Dinky says, I've been on
my own since I was fifteen. I learned my lesson early.
You got to go for the free rides in this world.
You got to grab everything you can for yourself before
somebody else grabs it first. Only don't get too greedy.
I grabbed one thing too many once and got free
room and board in a reform school. And Yano says,

(46:52):
what you stole? And Dinky says, well, that's what they
called it. And Yanosh just like, but Dinky, it is
wrong to steal. You can't do wrong and find happiness
in life. And here there was big like Lupita from
Santa Claus energy.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. The morality play aspects of this
picture very interesting because it's like the police in this
picture are absolutely good. Criminals can go either way, and
then of course, Gianos, at least at this portion. In
this portion of the picture, is very much of the
idea that like there is an absolute right and wrong,

(47:29):
there is a firm line between the two, there is
no gray area, and you cannot cross over that line.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Really, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
The cops in the movie are good, even though I
expected them to be crooked. The criminals are a mix.
The really like bad lot are hiring managers.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And they cast a bit of
shade too on the guy who dropped the wallet. I
think they were they were They prefer to him being
like a Wall Street guy or something. Right.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Yeah, Dinky's attitude is like, what is he going to
come back for this money? He's not gonna miss it. Yeah,
But Dinky also explains it's not like he really wants
to be in a life of crime the way he
thinks about it. He says, what do you get out
of going straight? I tried to go straight six or
seven times, but something always went wrong, something always happened.
So we sort of get the picture forming that Dinky

(48:17):
is a small time crook, but he's not really malicious.
He's kind of a sweetheart, and he keeps trying to
set things right, Like you find out that he's got
a mother living out on a farm in the Midwest,
hoping he'll come home sometime, and he keeps meaning to
save up some money so he can take some money
and go back to her and help her buy a

(48:37):
chicken ranch she's always dreamed of and work on the
ranch with his mom, And it seems it's a really
sweet intention, but he just never manages to get it together,
often because of stuff outside of his control, like he
They never say exactly what it is, but it's implied
that Dinky has some kind of chronic disease that occasionally
flares up, and then he gets sick and has to

(48:58):
go to the hospital, which in the past has caused
him to lose whatever legitimate job he had at the time.
So then when he gets out of the hospital, he
has to do crime again. So they compare their attitudes.
Janosh is is now very hopeless and fatalistic about his
situation in life. Dinky is relatively carefree. He says, Yanosh Is, like,

(49:18):
what's going to happen when we run out of the
money that we got tonight? Dinky's like, you know, something
else always comes along he mentions that he has an
associate named Jeff. This will be Jeffrey, Jeff Jeffries who
is doing a stretch up the river, like doing time
in prison, and when he when he gets out, he
will have plenty of jobs for the both of them. Janosh,

(49:40):
not fully understanding the criminal implications here, is like, oh
boy jobs, and he goes to sleep, dreaming that things
will turn up. So Dinky and Yano, who Dinky calls

(50:01):
Yanosh Johnny. They go on living in cheaper and cheaper motels.
You see a kind of montage of the like four
rent signs getting lower and lower prices, until finally they
get thrown out of a real fleabag and they're living
in a junkyard. And Dinky at this point he's had
some kind of health flare up. He's sick and in
need of a doctor. And here is where the plot

(50:24):
takes a turn. Dinky is supposed to go out on
a job tonight, but he's too sick, and he sends
Janosh off to tell his associates that he's not going
to be able to be there to do the job.
Instead of that, Yanosh goes to his associates and pulls
the job off in Dinky Stead, and we learned that
the job was straight up crime. It was cracking into

(50:46):
a safe and pulling off a jewel heist. I think
we're to assume, you know, they talked multiple times before
about how Yanosh has skilled hands. He has mechanical skill
with his hands, So I think we're to assume that
these skills transferred, you know, his watchmaker skills were transferable
to opening a locked safe.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
Yeah, he's got that eighteen dexterity, so he's able to
get in there and break into some safe. But yeah,
we don't see this heist, this this safe cracking scene
at all. It's alluded missing. Yeah, scene absolutely missing it.
I would have loved to have seen it, like I
wanted to. I wanted to see like the gears turning

(51:25):
in Yanosh's head as he realizes like what this job is,
as he you know, actually you know, gets the determination
together to go ahead and pull it off, like this
seems like a great dramatic sequence that I guess it
was just never filmed, And I don't know what the
full story is here. If they never intended to, it's
just that's not the sort of picture it is, or

(51:46):
if it's something they were going to film and didn't
have the funds for. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yeah, I don't know. I would have liked to see
it too. But anyway, Janosh makes so much money from
the job he is able to take Dinky to the
doctor and get medicine to make him better. So Dinky's
recovering now. But while he's he's in bed and Ianosh
is there by his side, some tough guys show up
to demand money that Dinky owes them, and they're like, Hey,

(52:10):
this new guy's real good. Let's put him to work.
Just another note, This doesn't feel like a comment on
their character, or at least not an intentional one. But
I should note that the other criminals also do not
seem phased by Janosh's scars the way that like anybody
who's offering a legitimate job does.

Speaker 1 (52:28):
Yeah, this is interesting, isn't it. I hadn't really thought
about this as much, But they they just see the
dollar signs. They're like, Oh, this guy can crack a
safe and in no time. Well, yeah, of course we
want to keep doing business with him. Yeah, but in
ways that other legitimate businesses refuse to consider. On all
these job interviews he was going for and so forth.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Anyway, so the path is now on offer. They can
keep lining up more jobs for yan Ocean. He can
make them all filthy rich. Now Yah There's initially does
not want this. He still thinks it is wrong to steal,
but Dinky knows how to make the appeal to him.
He's like, Janosh, I know what you want more than
anything else in the world. You want your face back.

(53:11):
And there are these people out there called I think
he calls them plastic doctors. He's talking about plastic surgeons.
He says, if you have enough money, they can they
can give you your old face back. And Yanosh is
entranced by this idea. He's like, really, I didn't even
know that was possible. So he says, could they fix
my face so that people can look at me? And

(53:31):
Dinky says, all you need is money. So it's impossible
for Janosh to resist. Now, a new face would be
a new life. So he's like, okay, crime me up,
I will do crime.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
This bit of dialogue between Dinkie and Janosh it really
feels like the heart of the picture, and it's the
part of the picture that I feel like gives us
the most to chew on and figuring out what its
message is. You know this bit where he's saying it's
being done every day. Yeah, all you have to have
is money, you know, buying yourself a new face and
so forth. Yeah, it's a lot to chew on. It's

(54:05):
really it's as if Dinky is really opening Janosh's eyes
to the real American dream, Like here is the real
America and this is how you climb here.

Speaker 3 (54:16):
Yeah. So there's a scene where Yanosh goes to visit
the plastic surgeon, but unfortunate, once he gets there, the
answer isn't as straightforward as Dinky led him to believe.
It's interesting the surgeon isn't presented as giving him giving
him impossible promises. Instead, the surgeon seems to be fairly

(54:37):
measured in his initial analysis. He's like, well, I'll need
to consult another doctor from the practice and compare notes,
but we think full reconstructive surgery would be expensive and protracted,
might not be possible at all. In the meantime, I
can make you a rubber mask of your old face
based on your passport photo, and the mask will serve

(54:57):
until we can do a full rundown. And see what
the prospects for surgery are.

Speaker 1 (55:02):
Yep. So Janosh is like, mask me up. Let's go
with the mask and then I'll come back for that
next apploytment.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Yeah, the mask will also be expensive. So Janosh does
have to do more crimes. So he goes from reluctant
safe cracker to just NonStop crime boss. He not only
it becomes a safe cracker, he takes over the gang
like he all the you know, the tough guys who
were showing up at Dinky's plays, Now they're all working
for Janosh. And he pulls off highest affter heist. We

(55:31):
get the newspaper headlines, scenes of the police getting chewed
out by their superiors because they can't catch this criminal mastermind.
In fact, it seems like the main detective on the
case is Yanosh's old friend, Lieutenant O'Hara.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Of course it is. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Also somewhere along this process, Yanosh ends up not only
with a lot of money, but ends up with an airplane,
or at least flying an airplane like he They mentioned
multiple times that he goes out flying an airplane.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
Yeah. Yeah, so he's he has become the boss. He's
running this entire operation, and we'll get some more of
crime boss yanovsch But this is another part of the
picture where it's like I really wanted more. I needed
like another solid twenty minutes of Yanov's just being the boss,
you know, enforcing his will, being a little scary with people,

(56:18):
and so forth. We get all that, but you know,
it just leaves you wanting.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
More now next to I'm sure we're all dying to
see the mask. Well, we do get to see it,
and of course when we finally see it, it is a
bit creepy, because I guess a realistic mask sort of
always is. But I'll also say it's not bad for
a nineteen forties mask, Like I can tell that it
is supposed to be Peter LORII.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
It looks better than some decapitated head effects I've seen,
for sure.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
Yes, And then when he puts it on. You were
talking about this earlier, rob So when he puts the
mask on, we go back to the cameras showing Peter
Lourie's face again, but now his skin looks tight and
sort of pinched up and unnatural. I don't know exactly
how they accomplished this effect. I guess it's some kind

(57:06):
of makeup effect, because ironically, the mask we're now seeing
I believe is just Peter Lourie's real face, but with
some makeup and manipulations.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
Yeah yeah, Like I say, it kind of like smooths
him out a bit more and gives him this slightly
uncanny appearance.

Speaker 3 (57:22):
It's like Peter LORII with an intense facelift.

Speaker 1 (57:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
After this, there's this one sequence where they pull off
some kind of opera robbery. I'm not sure I didn't
fully get the details here, but it involves an opera
and then like going to the opera and like looking
at each other during a certain time in the show,
and then we just see like I think an orchestra
conductor tied up and they've got a bunch of money.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Yeah, I mean, I guess so they didn't have access
to montage technology.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yeah, okay, But anyway, while the gang is counting up
all their money from the opera heist, they are interrupted
by a real nasty customer. Remember old Jeff we heard
about earlier, Jeff Jeffrey Jeffreyes. Well, anyway, he's out of
prison now, and he wanders into the to the gang's
counting room with a gun and insists he's in charge now.

(58:11):
Jeff says, we're going to live just as swell. Only
one thing will change. We don't need him appointing at
yanosh Ooh. But then twist. I didn't see this coming.
Peter Lourie like muscles this much bigger guy. He slaps
him around. He's like, I'm in charge now.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Yeah, this is great. It's very much like little dog
putting a bigger dog in its place. Sort of energy here,
and you know, Laurie brings it like he makes you
believe it, like seconds before it to Kurt. You feel
like something like that is going to have to happen
in order to put Jeff in his place. But you're like,
I don't know if LORI can do it. No, he

(58:47):
totally did it. He pulled it off. I believe it.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Yeah, And so I think the line he says is
these were your boys, their mine. Now we can all
be friends. If you want to play friendly, it's up
to you. So Jeff cools his attitude and he gets
absorbed into the gang. But you can see in this
scene that's he's swallowing his pride for the moment, but
it might not be going away. He's still hanging on

(59:10):
to a grudge.

Speaker 1 (59:11):
Yeah. So this this is a great scene. So this
Yanosh in his villain era here, it's tremendous.

Speaker 3 (59:17):
So some more plot developments. Yanosh goes back to a
follow up appointment with his plastic surgeons, and during this
appointment they explain, you know, after really looking at things,
we cannot in good conscience recommend an operation to you
because your burns are too extensive, too severe to be repaired.
They say, you know, if it's possible at all, it
would take like thirty operations over fifteen years to even

(59:40):
really give you a chance of looking like your old self.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Yeah, we get that great bit of that great line
from janoshras just repeats that. He just says fifteen years.
You know, is it really sinks in that this path
that he's chosen for himself, that he's picked up is
a temporary change to get back on track is a
long term track apparently, and potentially the rest of his life.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Yeah, to him, it means fifteen years of crime.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
So Janos's furious, but on his way out of the
building he has a chance encounter that will change his life.
Yet again, we keep having these reversals of fortune here.
So he bumps into a woman on the sidewalk and
makes her drop all her things. And this is the
romantic meat cute in the middle of the film noir
about a good man's desperate and hellish descent into crime.

(01:00:32):
It's a strange change of tone, but this character is
the one we mentioned earlier. Helen, played by Evelyn Keys.
Helen is blind and works as a jewelry maker, stringing necklaces.
I think she does. She string them for a department store.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
I believe so. Yeah, yeah, and she was.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Transporting project boxes when they ran into each other on
the sidewalk. Helen is friendly, and she's funny and optimistic,
and her positivity just cut through the gloom of the
story like a laser. Janosh is instinctively rude to her
at first because he's feeling so bad, but he quickly
softens and he helps her pick up her things. And

(01:01:12):
in this scene, I don't know if you notice the
same thing, Rob, but you can hear in Peter Lourie's
vocal performance, his voice changes as as he became the
crime boss. His voice changed to become very tight and
gruff that he uses this tight gruff voice with his
gangster accomplices, but when he talks to Helen, he quickly

(01:01:34):
starts to sound more like he did at the beginning
of the movie when he first arrived in America, with
a softer, higher pitched voice.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
Yeah yeah, yeah. It reawakens the old Yanos.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Heare, so Yanosh offers to walk with her and carry
her things, and she accepts, and so they go back
to her apartment and they get to know one another.
Helen talks about how she enjoys living independently. She likes
keeping up her apartment and listening to music on the
radio from the neighbor's next door. And she's so charming
it is easy to see why Janosh's crime boss heart

(01:02:07):
is melting. Will probably come as no shock that this
is the beginning of a romance story. He asks if
he can come back and visit her sometime, and she
says she'd like that. So the two of them get
to know each other, they become friends. The love story blossoms.
They spend lots of time together and one day they
go out walking in the country among the oak trees. Here,

(01:02:28):
Helen gives this monologue sort of sharing her perspective on life.
Why she's so optimistic and has such a sense of
good humor about everything, And she explains from her point
of view, being blind, she's able to find beauty in
things more easily, so she says, like, you know, when
I feel the fur, even of a scrawny alley cat,

(01:02:50):
I can imagine it's the most regal beast. Or just
by putting one fresh flower in a jar in my apartment,
I feel like I'm living in a spring meadow. Kind
of interfaces with stuff. She said earlier about how much
pleasure she gets in listening to the radio.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Yano.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
She gave her her own radio as a gift sometime earlier,
and she loves the music, of course, but she even
finds pleasure in the advertisements, even if she's not interested
in the product they're selling. She just likes listening to
the enthusiastic appeals of friendly strangers.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Yeah, and she likes her work. It's mentioned in one
of these bits from her where she talks about like
she enjoys listening to the radio and beating you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah, Yano, she's so taken with her way of seeing
the good and everything, And he says he wishes he
could see the world the way she does, he would
imagine himself as a noble king. But she's like, dude,
you are a king. You are unselfish and thoughtful, and
that's the most noble thing of all. And during the scene,
Yanosh breaks down, he starts to cry, and he says

(01:03:52):
that if she were able to see his burned face,
the face behind the mask, the title of the film,
she would run away and terror like everybody else else.
But she rejects this. She wants to know what he's
been hiding, what's troubling him, and invites him to tell
his story.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
So he does.

Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
He relents, and he tells her his whole history, everything
that happened, though he tells her off screen, as many
pivotal scenes they do take place off screen. Though I
guess this is a common this is a fair thing.
We don't want to see a character recap the entire
film so far, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
But there would have been some really emotional moments in
that that we miss out on. But we know what's
going to happen. She is going to accept him for
who he is, and she sees the true face behind
the mask, She sees his heart.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
That's right, and I guess that's the play on the title.
There are two different kinds of face behind the mask.
When Yanosh thinks of the face behind the mask, he
thinks of his scars, his physical face, And when she
thinks of it, she thinks of the real hymn, his
good heart.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:00):
So Yanosh's conscience is now awakened again by his love
for Helen, and he goes back to his gang and
is like, boys, I'm out. I'm going to clean my
whole act up, and he is. He is out of
the life of crime for good.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
This always works. You can always walk away from a
life of crime. We know that from so many pictures.

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
Well, it's funny because he tries to tell Jeff like, hey,
you're going to get what you always wanted. Now, boys
are yours again. You're in charge now. But you get
the sense that Jeff maybe has enjoyed coasting on Yanosh's
crime skills and just sniping from the sidelines. Now that
he's in charge, he's mad.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Yeah, I mean, now Jeff will have to deliver as
the boss of this crew that has become accustomed to
a higher level of success. So, yeah, good luck, Jeff.
Let's see how this works. Out for you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
It's what he wanted, but now that he has it,
he's not happy. He's just doing, but he can't stop
Yanosh from leaving. Yanosh has a house out in the
country and plans to move there with Helen. Yanosh gives
his new address to Dinky in secret and says, if
you ever you know, you ever need me, you ever
want to get out of the life, look me up here.
So Yanosh and Helen make their plans. They pack things up,

(01:06:13):
They make plans to move out to a house with
green shutters. They talk about this detail and Yanosh oh
he buys a secondhand car, one with a radio because
he knows Helen likes to listen to the radio so much. Meanwhile,
at crime headquarters, Jeff is stewing again. He got what
he wanted, but he's still angry. He starts digging around

(01:06:34):
through Yanosh's old things and he finds something curious. He
finds the business card of a police detective. This is
the card that O'Hara left for Yanosh in the hospital
way back when. But not understanding what it is, Jeff
jumps to a conclusion, and that conclusion is Janosh wanted
out of the business because he is ratting the gang

(01:06:55):
out to the cops, and Jeff says, I figured it out.
We got to get revenge against Janosh.

Speaker 1 (01:07:01):
Yeah. Again, the cryptic nature of that original scrawl message,
now out of context, is interpreted to me, oh, Yanosh
is in a league with the police.

Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
That's right. And here's where the potential happy ending turns
to tragedy, as it must in a movie like this.
Jeff and the gang find Dinky and they torture him
for information about where to find Yanosh. Finally they threaten
to burn his feet in the fireplace, and he tells
where yan Osh and Helen are hiding. So the next

(01:07:32):
day yan oshan Helen and an adorable scruffy dog by
the way, really old dog, big cute dog. They move
out to their house in the country you never you know,
and they like settle in and everything's so happy. You
never want to be a movie character saying it's all
so perfect unless you're in the last like two minutes
of the film and I say, we have another fifteen

(01:07:53):
twenty to go here.

Speaker 1 (01:07:54):
Uh oh, not good. But yeah, they seem like the
this seems to be the dream, right, the dog, the house.
There's a scene though, where Janosh tells Helen that she
doesn't have to do her bead work anymore because she'll
have this house to run, and part of me was
kind of like, yeah, no, she know. She had this
whole bit where she talked about how much joy she
derived from her work. But I likes it. It's a

(01:08:17):
nineteen forty one film. It's supposed to be well intended
by it. But yeah, I think she can still do
her beadwork.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
So everything is beautiful until knock on the door and
it's Jeff. Jeff arrives and he makes menacing comments to Yanosh.
They have a confrontation, but it does not escalate to violence.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
He leaves.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
He says like, I won't even waste a bullet on you.
But when he gets back to the car, when Jeff
gets back to the car with his boys, they revealed
that they had planted a bomb in Yanosh's car. It's
wired to the radio. And then the gangsters are driving
away and they conclude that they're done with Dinky, so
they throw him out of the moving car onto the highway.
It's unclear if they thought they had killed him or

(01:08:59):
if they meant to leave him alive. I wasn't sure
there did.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
They shoot him first in the back.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
Think, so do you hear like a you don't see
a gun, but you hear a gun sound effect? And
then they throw him out of the side of the car.
But Dinky manages, despite his injuries, to get to a
nearby service station and place a phone call. And then
the logistics of this climax scene get really complicated. Dinky
calls a neighbor of Janosh's. I guess Janosh and Helen

(01:09:26):
don't have a phone yet. He calls the neighbor. The
neighbor cranks his car up, drives to Yanosh's house, picks
up Yanosh drives him back to his house to take
Dinky's call, only for the call to be like, don't
start your car, Yano, she don't use your radio, And
unfortunately it's a it's a Godfather scenario, you know, it's
Apollonia in Sicily. Janosh rushes back home to stop Helen

(01:09:50):
from using the car. But Helen, she's been loading things
into the car. She wants to listen to the radio.
She turns it on and there's a terrible explosion and
she dies. So it's incredibly.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Sad, and the dog dies too. Like that makes it
even more heartbreaking, obviously, because she's in the car with
the dog and she's like, all right, scruffy, let's turn
on the radio. I love listening to the radio. And yeah, explosion.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
So now Janosh's only hope of love and happiness is gone,
and he decides there is only one thing left for
him and it is revenge. This leads to the final
sequence of the movie, which is the airplane revenge plot.
So Jeff and the gang have plans to fly an
airplane somewhere for some are they doing Are they trying

(01:10:36):
to get to a job or are they trying to
do it get away?

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
I thought it was more of a getaway, like we
got to flee to Mexico. Boys, that's the desert. But
I mean, they probably have some jobs lined up there.
They got to keep working, gotta stay busy.

Speaker 3 (01:10:48):
Yeah, I didn't remember. But they're in a plane for
some reason. And Yanosh, remember he's a pilot, he can
fly a plane. He impersonates the pilot and he takes
the role flying the plane that all the gang is
in except Dinky's left behind. But all the bad guys
in the gang, they're in the plane and he flies
them out to the middle of nowhere in the desert,
landing the plane when it has no fuel left, and

(01:11:11):
then he explains to them their predicament. He's like, there's
no fuel, there's nowhere to go. I just want you
to know I have my revenge.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
And I believe they actually filmed the sequence out in
the Arizona desert, so this is like real desert. I
think we get some stock footage some desert from when
they're flying around, but then yeah, we're out here on
the sands.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
So the gang is furious, but they have nothing to do,
you know, they can't get out of the situation. So
they tie Yanosh to the plane. They start exploring in
different directions, but they just get you know, beaten down
by the sun. They find no not a hint of
civilization anywhere nearby. They start fighting over water rations, turning
on each other, shooting at each other, and it's a

(01:11:52):
real desperate scene. Now, finally, there's a thing we established earlier,
which is that Yano sent a note to O'Hara, to
the police, to his old friend saying, hey, if you
want to find the gang who's been doing these robberies,
come to this place in the middle of the desert.
Here are the coordinates at this time on this day.

(01:12:12):
And so the police take him up on that. I
guess they're like, surely, yeah, let's believe this anonymous tip.
So they arrived by plane several days later, finding all
of the gang and Yanosh dead. And when they find
to Jeff in the desert, collapsed in the sand, they
observed that he was trying to escape, but they say
he just kept walking in one big circle. It seems

(01:12:35):
thematically loaded.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Yeah. Yeah, and leading up to this moment we get
some great desert sand and hour glass imagery which I
also really like tickets a little artsy here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Yeah. So when O'Hara finds Janosh's body, there's a note
waiting for him explaining explaining who he is and saying like, hey,
remember me when we first met, you were kind to me.
Wanted to thank you that for that, and also to
repay you the five dollars that I owe you. And
you know, however long ago that was. I don't know
if they make explicit how long how much time has

(01:13:09):
passed in between, but O'Hara is reminded and he he says,
it says you were kind to me. These men here
they were not, and he says, I have forgotten either,
And so the music swells on a scene of the
men standing in the shadow of the airplane in the
middle of the desert, and it's a it's a very
bleak ending. Though there is one happy element to it,

(01:13:29):
which is that I don't remember if if we get
an indication whether Dinky survives in the end or not.
But he does. Janosh does have a big pot of
money and he oh no, wait, no, there's reward money
for the capture of the gang.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
He arranged it to go to Dinky's mother.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
That's right, Yes, so he has the reward money sent
to Dinky's mother.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
Yeah, so there is this sense, and I'm going to
take it. I'm going to assume it works out that
Dinky's mom is going to get to fix up the
chicken farm. He gets to go out there and settle down,
support his mother, live there, and in his own way,
live happily. Ever after, you got to take your victories
where you can find him.

Speaker 3 (01:14:09):
Yes, no, that's it. That's there is a glimmer of
happiness in this mostly bleak ending.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
Yeah. So, yeah, that's the face behind the mask. You know,
it's uh, you know, Columbia Pictures B movie, but it
has as has a great look, has some very nice performances,
and it great Peter Lori performance at the center of
everything obviously, uh, and you know it it it's it's
very much uh, you know, it's very much on the rails.

(01:14:36):
And like I say, it's a short run time, but
it does give you some stuff to chew on it.
It does, in its own way examine some fairly complex
issues and uh, you know, morality and uh and and
ambition and and even the American dreams. So it's uh,
it's a much better film than I was anticipating. Like

(01:14:56):
I was, I was expecting something that was just gonna
mostly be centered in the Lori performance, you know, where
I might just be appreciating it for its own sake.
Is this is sometimes the case with great character actors,
you know, like sometimes it's just a gem in the
rough and you appreciate that gem for what it is.
But I think as a whole, the picture's quite good. Yeah,
I agree.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
Can I actually revise my judgment about something we said earlier?
We said we said that the movie is not subtle,
and I think that that's true about a lot of
things about it, but there are elements that are subtle.
I think actually what I would say is that some
things about it are incredibly unsubtle, Like it has very
overt themes and very overt use of the tools of cinema,

(01:15:41):
music and you know, and you know heavy like visual
foreshadowing and things like that. Some of that stuff is
not subtle. But there is also some subtle stuff that
you know, you get by implication, the death of Jeff
at the end, you know, walking around in circles. They
don't state that connection to the theme too overtly. And

(01:16:01):
also some things about Peter Laurie's performance, like in some
scenes he is just very overtly like stating his emotions
and motivations and performing them very forcefully. But in other scenes,
I think there is some subtlety. There's some subtlety about
like exactly what is so beautiful to him about Helen's attitude.

(01:16:22):
You know, that's not all stated explicitly, like he mentions
her optimism, but the stuff about like the way that
she finds the best in everything that seems to kind
of like remind him of his earlier self. But like
he never says that explicitly, So I don't know, I
think there's some good subtle stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Actually this is interesting because we might in a way
be getting back into the idea of what is noir.
You know, and you know, you think about these black
and white pictures with you know, deep midnight blacks and
you know, contrasted by the white, and you know, we
think about like, you know, good and evil, but then
all of these like areas of ambiguity in between, even

(01:17:00):
though you know, obviously noir pictures often also play with
severe absolutes as well.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
Yeah, some stuff is very heavy handed and some stuff
is more subtle. In fact, I wonder to over extend
the metaphor perhaps I wonder if you could almost think
of this as kind of like a stage magician, that
a stage magician is going to be through misdirection, being
very flamboyant with what they do with one hand in
order to you know, sort of keep your attention off

(01:17:27):
of what they're doing with the other hand. Could that
could that be the case with some noir storytelling like
we see here, that it makes the subtle elements all
the more the more emotionally resonant, that they're kind of
hidden by this heavy handed, overt storytelling style in some
of the other choices.

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Yeah, I think that's a pretty solid way to look
at it. And obviously we'd love to hear what listeners
have to say about all of this, you know, think
about it in terms of your favorite noir pictures, be
it you know, old timey noir or neo you know,
the various noir elements that you'll find in various works
of science fiction, anime, and so forth. Right in, we'd

(01:18:07):
love to have that discussion with you and think about
it as we proceed through the month of November. Is
there another or neo noir picture you would like for
us to consider on Weird House Cinema, you know, in
the future, right in, and let us know. For instance,
I was my backup for this one was going to
be a Coen Brother's picture, and at some point I

(01:18:28):
think I would like to come back and do a
Cohen Brothers picture. Some of my favorite filmmakers and a
number of those films are very close to my heart.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
Oh, I think I know exactly what movie you have
in mind. Yeah, we could come back to the Coen
Brothers in a number of ways.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
Actually, Oh yeah, yeah, just a reminder to everybody that
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
And if you want to see a full list of
the films we've covered over the years, and sometimes a
peak ahead what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot
com look for our username there it is weird House

(01:19:06):
and you'll find that list. Likewise, if you're on Instagram,
follow us at STBYM podcast. That's another way to keep
up with what we're doing in the Stuff to Blow
Your Mind feed in general, be it Core episodes or
Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:19:18):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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