Watch The Man with Two Faces For Free

Wonderful Movie

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Director: ARCHIE MAYO. Screenplay: Tom Reed and Niven Busch. Based on the stage play The Dark Tower by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott. Photography: Tony Gaudio. Film editor: William Holmes. Art director: John Hughes. Music: Bernard Kaun. Music director: Leo F. Forbstein, conducting The Vitaphone Orchestra. Songs: "Stormy Weather" (Clarke) by Harold Arlen (music) and Ted Koehler (lyrics); "Am I Blue?" by Harry Akst (music) and Grant Clarke (lyrics). Producer: Robert Lord.Copyright 14 July 1934 by First National Pictures, Inc. Released through Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Strand: 11 July 1934. U.K. release: 30 March 1935. Australian release: 5 December 1934. 72 minutes. SYNOPSIS: A black-hearted confidence trickster (Louis Calhern) exerts an unbreakable hypnotic influence over his actress wife (Mary Astor).NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at the Morosco on 25 November 1933, and, despite excellent reviews, ran a very middling 57 days. "It was a tremendous success," claimed co-author Woollcott, "except for the minor detail that people wouldn't come to see it!" The cast included Basil Sydney (as Damon Wells), Margalo Gilmore, William Harrigan, Margaret Hamilton, Leona Maricle, Margaret Dale, Ernest Milton and Porter Hall. (Sydney also headed the London cast, opposite Edna Best, Martita Hunt, Francis L. Sullivan and Frith Banbury). Sam H. Harris produced, authors Woollcott and Kaufman directed.COMMENT: Here's Edward G. Robinson in his element once more, this time playing a hammy actor who impersonates a French impresario. In the movie, this disguise is supposed to be wholly convincing to the other players, but Ed didn't ring true to me — not for a single second. Mind you, some critics excused Robinson's performance on the grounds that the audience was supposed to be in on the "joke" from the start. But whether the hollowness of the deception was deliberate or not, I still think the movie would have been more entertainingly suspenseful if Robinson and his make-up men had tried a little harder. After all, I have just seen an extremely modest Jack Perrin movie, "Hair-Trigger Casey" (1936), in which a little-known support person named Edward Cassidy manages to bring off an extremely successful transformation, thanks not only to his own histrionic talent but the skills of Poverty Row studio technicians. True, Archie Mayo's direction is more than several notches ahead of all but the most stylish "B" personnel, and the support rendered by actors of the caliber of chillingly realistic Mary Astor and suavely evil Louis Calhern (one of his best performances ever) leaves most second-rated players for dead. Ricardo Cortez, however, is wasted in a nothing role, though it is nice to see him enact the good guy for a change. Mae Clarke spends the movie stooging for Edward G., but does get a chance to warble a few notes from "Stormy Weather". Despite its missed opportunities, "The Man with Two Faces" still provides a reasonable modicum of "A"-grade pleasures. TCM deserves a round of applause just for scheduling this picture.

A play is about to have it's opening night when something awful happens....Stanley Vance (Louis Calhern) arrives. It seems that everyone thought he was dead...and hoped this was the case. But this malicious jerk is somehow alive and he's arrived for one reason....to destroy his wife's play until he is paid off to just go away again! It seems that Jessica (Mary Astor) is like a zombie around the Svengali-like Stanley...as if he is exerting some sort of mind control over her...and she seems helpless to stop him from ruining everything. Everyone hates Stanley...everybody. So you assume sooner or later Stanley is going to suffer some 'accident' which will permanently remove this vicious jerk from the picture. But who and how...that is what you'll have to find out when you watch the picture.I really enjoyed watching Louis Calhern. He was delightfully awful...sort of like watching a cat toying with a mouse before ultimately snuffing it. He must have had a great time doing this...and he was excellent. I also loved that this is the sort of film where the audience is pulling for the murder to happen AND for the killer to get away with it...something which helped make "The Suspect" one of the best movies of its day. Overall, a very entertaining film...well acted, well written and very enjoyable.

Edward G. Robinson is "The Man with Two Faces" in this 1934 drama which also stars Louis Calhern, Mary Astor, and Ricardo Cortez. Astor and Robinson are Jessica and Damon Wells, sister and brother actors appearing in the out of town tryout of a play called "The Dark Tower." Astor's cruel, greedy, crooked husband, Stanley Vance (Calhern) is believed dead. Unfortunately he's not, and he shows up where the cast is staying.Damon Wells comes up with an idea of getting rid of Vance once and for all, and he uses Wells' greed to do it, telling him that a man, Chautard, is interested in buying Vance's and Jessica's part of the show for a great deal of money. Stanley eagerly meets Chautard at his hotel.This is a nice, short mystery that showcases both Robinson and Calhern. It's not the most believable plot - for one thing, Astor becomes shell-shocked when her husband appears and does everything he tells her, as if she has no mind of her own. That seemed rather odd. However, the acting is good and the action goes by pleasantly.

George S. Kaufman was one of the towering figures of 20th Century American theater. He occasionally lent his enormous talent to Hollywood as in the Marx Brothers'"A Night at the Opera," but he is best known for adaptations of his theater work. Kaufman frequently worked with collaborators as varied as Moss Hart and Edna Ferber and here combined his prodigious talent with a fellow member of the renowned Algonquin Round Table, acerbic critic Alexander Woollcott. The resultant thriller with comic overtones, "The Dark Tower," reminds the viewer of "Sleuth," a great showcase for actors with a flair for theatrics and makeup. Like "Sleuth" its impact comes from the revelation rather late in the play that one actor has been playing dual roles, but "The Man with Two Faces" telegraphs that surprise because of the very nature of the film medium. Even the most casual viewer will realize quite quickly that Damon Wells and Jules Chautard are both played by Edward G. Robinson after the first close-up of the bearded Frenchman. The film's producers seem to have conceded that point with the changeover to the title "The Man with Two Faces" in order to promote contract player Robinson as a deserving successor to Lon Chaney. So what is the movie's great appeal?Although the storyline comes out of 19th Century melodramatic tradition, the actors tackle their roles with such enthusiasm, the film becomes a guilty pleasure. Mary Astor is Jessica Wells, a beautiful and talented actress returning to the stage after a three year absence due to an undisclosed mental breakdown. Although her triumphal comeback seems certain, family and friends are shocked when Vance, her long-lost husband, shows up at the family home. Louis Calhern plays this slimy character with flamboyant relish as Vance immediately exerts his influence on the usually vivacious Jessica. She is Trilby to his Svengali as she immediately reverts to a sleepwalking automaton blindly obeying his every wish.The authors never make clear what the hold Vance has on her is, but hints of a Caliostro-like hypnotic power are suggested. The avaricious and opportunistic Vance has heard that his estranged wife holds half the rights to the current play, a prospective mega-hit with her in the cast, but a sure flop with Jessica in her current somnambulist state. Calhern plays the vain, larcenous conman with obvious over-the-top élan. He feeds cheese to the pet mice he carries with him in a cage, threatens to kick in the head of an elderly housekeeper, punches his wife in the face with a pinkie ring, and orders garishly gaudy silk ties on the family's dime.Robinson plays Jessica's loyal but alcoholic brother, who goes on the wagon to lend his theatrical prestige and expertise to his sister's comeback while helping her to reclaim her talent as her on-stage acting coach. He quickly realizes that the viperous Vance must be dealt with once and for all (crunched "underfoot on the sidewalk" according to Jessica's manager, Ricardo Cortez), so he enters into an elaborate sting that will get rid of the vermin-like Vance permanently.The bravura of Calhern's enjoyably shameless overplaying is balanced by Robinson's subtle underplaying, and several of the supporting roles are extremely well done -- especially Arthur Landau as an homicide detective, Emily Fitzroy as a crusty housekeeper, and Warner favorite Mae Clarke as Robinson's low-rent girlfriend.In order to substitute for the loss of the play's original surprise revelation of the dual role, the authors have substituted a wryly ironic denouement, surprisingly satisfying for this highly enjoyable Pre-Code black comedy.