The Face Behind the Mask

It is a testament to Peter Lorre's versatile facial language that he could contort his face into a rictus of dementia and corruption in M, and 10 years later but with essentially the same features, smile a sweet smile of innocence and candor as the Hungarian immigrant Janos Szabo in The Face Behind the Mask. Janos, watchmaker and self-proclaimed “mechanical genius” arrives in New York in search of the vaunted American dream. The big city, contrary to what one would expect, treats the newcomer well; Janos soon finds a job in a hotel that also becomes his home. Unfortunately, one night the hotel burns down and Janos’s face is horribly disfigured. The same city that gave him a moderately warm reception now rejects him because of his appearance. Unable to find honest work, Janos is forced to employ his manual dexterity in criminal endeavors. All the money in the world, ill-gotten or not, is not enough, however, to undo the damage to his face; Janos, now known as Johnny, turns to wearing what is best described as a Peter Lorre mask (which is not the same as Peter Lorre pretending to wear a mask). Johnny eventually finds a romantic interest in a blind girl (I guess sighted women have always been shallow beyond redemption in the movies) named Helen Williams (Evelyn Keyes); proof that The Love of a Good Woman Can Save Any Man, Janos quits his criminal career to the chagrin of his former accomplices, who bump Helen off in an early combo of the External Combustion and Disposable Woman tropes. All of this leads to a conclusion wherein Johnny flies his ex-henchmen to the desert and strands them all there – including himself – so they can wait around for a boring death. Lorre might have singlehandedly made this lesser noir worthwhile, were it not that his uniquely expressive face has been deprived of the ability to emote (to put it in a modern perspective, the result is as underwhelming as the digital technology used nowadays to de-age famous actors). Most of the time we’re listening to Lorre’s disembodied voice, which could have actually worked (after all, in addition to his face, he also had a unmistakably distinctive voice) they way it did for Claude Rains in The Invisible Man – but then in that film it was understood and agreed upon that we weren’t going to see much of Rains to begin with.

Peter Lorre is "Janos", an enthusiastic, honest, watch-maker who has arrived in New York from Europe hoping to make his way and bring his beloved "Marie" to join him. He alights on the kindly policeman "O'Hara" (Don Beddoe) who recommends lodgings for him and off he goes. Tragedy strikes though as one of his fellow residents is doing a bit of illicit cooking and "Janos" awakens, disfigured and unable to find a job. It's now that he encounters "Dinky" (George E. Stone) and soon formulates a plan to raise the money needed to have surgery on his face - and a life of petty crime beckons. It's all proving surprisingly easy for him and his accomplices until he, quite literally, bumps into "Helen" (Evelyn Keyes), a blind lady to whom he takes a shine - she cannot see his scarring and isn't going to judge him as so many others have. It's when he realises that he will have to wait fifteen years for the corrective surgery to (maybe) work that he decides to cease his life of crime and relocate to a quiet country cottage with "Helen". His erstwhile colleagues are less than impressed with that solution and it all builds to a duplicitous denouement that works really effectively. The production is all a bit basic, but that doesn't really matter - the story and the characterisation from Lorre are both solid and engaging. This isn't seen very often these days, but really is well worth an hour of your time.