Sep 9, 2017
Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). The life and career of vaudevillian and silent screen horror star Lon Chaney, his contentious relationship with his neurotic wife, and his premature death.
I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for James Cagney, but this film is representative of the twilight of his career - he was doing a lot of backstage bio pics, and he was kind of phoning it in. His natural charisma was still off the charts, but the movies were lazy, and never quite worked. Man of a Thousand Faces isn’t an exception to that. The movie never goes as deep as it should, and it feels gimmicky, in a way that is pretty gross. Cagney is solid though, and Dorothy Malone is really good, so it has that, at least. 6/10.