Posted in: Batman, Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics, Movies | Tagged: Batman, joker

The Man Who Laughs, The Joker's Film Inspiration, Is Now Public Domain

The Man Who Laughs, the 1928 movie that inspired the look at Batman's The Joker, has gone into the public domain.

It's not just Steamboat Willie that has gone into the public domain in the USA. So has The Man Who Laughs, a 1928 silent film directed by Paul Leni, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. It tells the story of Gwynplaine played by Conrad Veidt, a nobleman's son mutilated by a surgeon as a child, leaving him with a permanent grin on his face, achieved by special effects and makeup expert Jack Pierce. Gwynplaine grows up as a travelling performer with his blind love interest, Dea, and his adoptive father, Ursus. His life changes when he discovers his true identity and becomes involved in a political intrigue.

Conrad Veidt's appearance is also famed as a visual inspiration for The Joker. While Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson differed as to which of them created the Joker in 1940, they agreed his exaggerated smile was influenced by this photograph of Veidt from the film. The Joker is not in public domain… though he will be in twelve years time.

A 2005 graphic novel exploring the first encounter between Batman and the Joker by Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke was titled Batman: The Man Who Laughs, and Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo created the Batman Who Laughs, as a Dark Multiverse Batman who was infected by the Joker. A 2014 Man Who Laughs graphic novel by David Hine and Mark Stafford was a direct adaptation of the novel, and sidestepped anything involving the movie, as it was published before the movie was out of copyright.

The film is considered a masterpiece of German expressionism, with dark and stylized visuals, dramatic music, and emotional performances. It was also an innovation, one of the first to use sound effects and a synchronized score, using both sound-on-disc and sound-on-film technologies. And you can watch it on YouTube.

The Man Who Laughs film had considerable influence on the later Universal Classic Monsters films and Pierce provided makeup for Universal's monsters, including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, and Bride of Frankenstein. The movie was also used as direct inspiration for Brian De Palma's 2006 film The Black Dahlia, which used The Man Who Laughs footage. They will have had to have paid for that. But not any more…

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!