Robert Florey

The Face behind the Mask

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Janos/Johnny in his mask

Playing the child murderer in Fritz Lang’s M bought Peter Lorre his ticket to Hollywood, where he soon tired of playing exotics and weirdos. He was already Hollywood’s go-to creep when he made The Face behind the Mask in 1941. It follows a naive watchmaker who arrives in New York off the boat from old Europe, gets horrifically burned in a hotel fire, then, unable to get work on account of his looks, embarks on a life of crime to pay for reconstructive surgery. Both a wild gothic-crime story and an an invitation to overact, Lorre gives it both barrels. The story gets wilder once Janos discovers that surgery will be impossible. Instead, … Read more

Ex-Lady

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Helen and Don

“A piece of junk” is how Bette Davis described 1931’s Ex-Lady in her 1962 autobiography. By the early 1960s a good chunk of Davis’s stock in trade was disdain but even so it’s a tall claim. The film was, among other things, the first to put Davis’s name above the title. It’s a Hollywood “problem movie”, the problem being the incompatibility of marriage and “young moderns”, as the film calls people like the progressive, independent illustrator character Davis plays, a woman who wants to carry on with life as it is – and not get married to Don (Gene Raymond), the advertising guy she’s currently hooking up with for clandestine sex. Then he … Read more