Production
After Universal Pictures had large hits with Gothic dramas such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), the company encouraged film producer Carl Laemmle to produce a follow-up in a similar vein. Laemmle decided to film Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs. The title role was originally meant for Lon Chaney (who starred in the previous Universal films), but he was under a long-term contract with MGM Studios.
Being of German ancestry, Laemmle had connections with the German film scene, which gave him an inside track when negotiating with some of Germany's filmmakers and actors. Laemmle had seen director Paul Leni's Waxworks (1926) and was impressed with the movie's sets and ominous stylistics. Laemmle chose Leni to accept the challenge of crafting the film adaptation. In addition, Laemmle pursued Veidt, who played a prominent role in Waxworks, to star. Veidt had also previously starred in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).
Olga V. Baclanova's resemblance to modern singer Madonna in The Man Who Laughs has been noted by current critics.
Universal put over $1,000,000 into The Man Who Laughs, an extremely high budget for an American film of the time.
Read more about this topic: The Man Who Laughs (1928 Film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)