Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)

Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), directed by Herbert Brenon, 4 stars

Lon Chaney plays Tito Beppi, who with his partner Simon, comprise a two-person clown act that travels the pastoral Italian countryside entertaining townsfolk and eking out a modest living.  They stop along a riverbed where Tito stumbles upon a young girl who has been abandoned.  He decides to adopt her as his own, dubs her Simonetta to ingratiate her to his partner Simon, and the pair raises her until she grows up to be a very pretty teenager played by Loretta Young.  Seeking out a rose for her hair, she is ensnared in a barb-wire fence where Count Luigi Ravelli (Nils Asther) rescues and is immediately smitten by her.  It turns out that Tito, her foster father, is, too, so Simonetta must navigate the slippery slope between the wealthy count who is more her own age (she was only 15 in 1928) and her aging foster father (45 at the time).  Tito is afflicted by intense sadness; Luigi has a nervous habit of laughing inappropriately and being unable to stop.  They are actually well-matched with respect to Simonetta’s affection, except for the fact that the odds are significantly stacked against Chaney.  Despite his stellar performance, he’s never gotten the girl in any of the films I’ve ever seen him in.

Chaney’s acting is wonderful throughout his progression from a free-wheeling young clown performing tricks using sleight of hand to a seasoned professional with star quality undergoing a fairly severe mid-life crisis.  He displays the jaunty exuberance of a carefree youth, the recklessness and oversized antics of a circus clown, the deeply-felt joy he derives from parenting, and the pathos of a man so truly in love that he is willing to sacrifice all for the happiness of his adopted daughter.  The film intermixes sequences that are almost Felliniesque in their energetic carnival-like abandon with others that are quiet and still.  The scene in which Tito discovers Simonetta by the river reminded me very much of the scene in “Frankenstein,” filmed a few years later, during which the monster discovers the young girl playing with flowers by the lake.  The outcomes are very different, but it would not surprise me to discover that director James Whale modeled his camera setups in “Frankenstein” on his memory of this lovely moment from “Laugh, Clown, Laugh.”  This is Chaney at his best.  It’s a tragedy that he would die of throat cancer at the age of 47 just two years later.