actor – The Framing Device

Full disclosure, I haven’t written anything in well over a year – it’s probably closer to two if I’m being completely honest – for a multitude of reasons: a severe lack of confidence, general work-related inability, the pandemic, or just general disgruntlement at the world around me. Inspiration took me by complete surprise when I began looking back over this blog space and I allowed myself to briefly reminisce about the enthusiasm I once had, and the encouragement I received from two wonderful souls. Both of whom are, devastatingly, no longer with us. Anyway I digress… although I’m sure there is something to add about the fragility and futility of life. Do what you love. So, I figured I’d try and write about a subject I love, a bit of an obsession* if you will.

One of the first pieces I published was way back in 2012 for a long-defunct film-site and it got me thinking of my onscreen main squeeze, Viggo Mortensen. Eleven years later, he is still somewhat of a King (and technically a Knight having been bestowed with the honour back in 2010 by Queen Margarethe II of Denmark) and continues to work, thankfully, choosing roles that are fascinatingly complex, interesting, and most of the time utterly unique to him.

“I have no plan. Maybe I should have a career plan but I don’t. I usually wait and hope the right thing will find me.”
The Evening Chronicle

Now a spritely 65-year-old (come October), the dimple-chinned deity has received countless SAG award noms, Golden Globes, EFAs, recognition at TIFF, the Goyas, BIFA, and BAFTA. Plus, wins at Stockholm FF and San Sebastian for his directorial debut, Falling, and a second and third Oscar nom (for Captain Fantastic and Green Book respectively). I can’t say I was a fan of Green Book to be perfectly honest – it was fine, j’adore Vig and Mahershala Ali but I kind of loathed Tony Lip. Thankfully, there has been plenty to enjoy since 2013 (which is where my original Viggo is King piece left off).

The Two Faces of January (Dir. Hossein Amini. 2014)

Based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel of the same name, Viggo is Chester McFarland, a con-artist married to Colette (Kirsten Dunst), who has to quickly rely on Oscar Isaac’s perfect stranger Rydal Kenner to get him out of a sticky sitch. Cue: frustration, jealousy, paranoia and a slow unravelling. As leading men go, few have looked finer in this tragic murder-flight-redemption mystery thriller. There is an almost Oedipal theme running throughout despite the link to Janus, and with filming taking place in Athens, Crete, Knossos, and Istanbul the emphasis is on heat, sand, and bright light (there are few shadows to hide in). Chester’s Man From Del Monte suit begins to look rather grubby by the end.

Jauja (Dir. Lisandro Alonso, 2014)

In 1880s Argentina, Danish Captain Gunnar Dinsen (Mortensen) is there with his daughter Ingeborg (Viilbjørk Malling Agger) who wants a dog, falls in love with one man, and has to spurn the affections of another… to reveal anything more of the plot would spoil the experience. This is a slow-burn and magical piece of cinema, its gorgeous visuals shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio (Mortensen also served as the film’s composer). The title, Jauja, refers to the once capital of Spanish Peru known as ‘never never land’ and the ‘land of milk and honey’; a mythical El Dorado of sorts. The film itself is existential in tone, hypnotic, and haunting and has me excited for Lisandro Alonso’s next film Eureka – a recent Special Screening at Cannes – which is also anchored by Mortensen.

Captain Fantastic (Dir. Matt Ross, 2016)

Ben Cash (Mortensen), his wife Leslie and their six, uniquely named children live deep in the wilderness of Washington State, “off-grid”. The kids are home-schooled, they hunt, fish, read Noam Chomsky and can be more than a little wild. When Leslie takes her own life, Dad and the kids have to shun isolation and venture into mainstream society, the first time for a lot of them. Vig continues his run of ‘out-of-time’ men, male characters on the cusp of, well, somewhere else. His Ben exudes a childlike simplicity and whimsy but he’s a limiting, almost dangerous, father; selfish, imperfect, and deeply flawed. It’s an incredibly honest and raw performance.

Falling (Dir. Viggo Mortensen, 2020)

Mortensen’s most personal project to date – a work of auto-fiction – based on his own childhood, his parents’ love story, and the last few years of their lives. He directed the film, wrote the screenplay, and composed the film’s score as well as starring as John, a Pilot charged with looking after his father Willis (Lance Henriksen), an unflinching and uncouth, bad-tempered old bastard of a man whose brain is slowly surrendering to dementia. This film is the antithesis of Florian Zeller’s The Father and one which looks at memory, communication, forgiveness, and is evidently made with love.

Crimes of the Future (Dir. David Cronenberg, 2022)

David Cronenberg’s 2022 body horror is the fifth time he has worked with his favoured leading man (a safe assumption by now, right? For anyone questioning the five films, Cronenberg plays a staid proctologist in Falling). After Tom Stall, Nikolai Luzhin, and Sigmund Freud comes Saul Tenser, he of tender soul – and still a man ‘undercover’ or in hiding. This is a vulnerable Vig. His Saul is a performance artist whose body leaves him in constant pain – he has the ability to produce multiple new body organs, which are then removed during a live show by his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux). He is then approached to go undercover to infiltrate some radical evolutionists. The world is changing (again) and “surgery is the new sex”. There are visual nods to The Man Who Laughs (1928), The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and call-backs to Videodrome (1983), Crash (1996) and Existenz (1999). Viggo is, as ever, compelling but I think the women of the cast, Seydoux, Kristen Stewart (who is fantastic), and LifeFormWare Techs played by Nadia Litz & Tanya Beatty shade him at times.

My admiration goes way back to The Indian Runner (Dir. Sean Penn, 1991), I was 15 when I discovered the DVD in 1998, I’d just seen him in another directorial debut (ugh) Albino Alligator (1996) and wanted to see more, beyond the bespectacled and besuited moustache he played. Aside from the obvious aesthetically-pleasing exterior, there’s a quiet intensity, and nuance to his performances. He’s not a method actor but I find him as mesmerising as Brando (unsurprisingly, I’m a huge fan of Bud too). 27 years later, Mortensen is still my go-to, one of a select group of actors who I’ll watch anything and everything they churn out.

This has resulted in a wealth of work to look back on and dip in and out of from the multi-hyphenate artist. As well as the new projects he completes to look forward to. Perhaps, I will even, finally, get to those elusive three that I have yet to watch – La pistola de mi hermano (1997), On the Road (2012) and Far From Men (2014).

It’s rare for him to give a bad performance even if the film itself is a dud. Whether he’s onscreen for one brief scene or the King of a 682-minute trilogy, he tends to bring his kind of magic to it which keeps you enthralled or at least pique your interest. Next, however, will be his sophomore outing behind the camera, The Dead Don’t Hurt, an 1860s-set western love story, in which he will play Danish immigrant Holger Olsen opposite Vicky Krieps’ Vivienne Le Coudy. Can’t wait.

*“Without obsession, life would be nothing.” – John Waters

Man of a Thousand Faces (Dir. Joseph Pevney, 1957)

Man of a Thousand Faces begins with the following cue: “On August 27 1930, the entire Motion Picture industry suspended work to pay tribute to the memory of one of its great actors. This is his story.” Except, well, it’s not. It’s the ‘Hollywood’ version steeped in melodrama and all a little dull.

At the Universal studio lot, the flag flies at half-mast as Irving Thalberg (played by the late Robert Evans, sans perma-tan) makes his own tribute to “The phantom of the opera.” In actuality, work was not suspended but a two minute silence was conducted in the wake of Lon Chaney’s death – nor were his most successful films made at Universal… This film starts as it means to go on, dramatising and conflating the life of an extremely private man who, if history books are to be believed, would have shunned even this mediocre production.

The biopic begins with the obligatory flashback which will serve the overarching narrative and then loop back around; aligning childhood, trauma and tragedy which is seemingly how it wants to establish Chaney (James Cagney). It traces his career from the Vaudeville stage to the cinema screen and admirably attempts to squeeze 30 years into 122 minutes, perhaps had the film been cast differently it may just have worked.

As talented as Cagney arguably was, there’s no way he can pull off aged 22 at 56 convincingly. Not to mention the physical limitations; a tall sinewy figure with a distinctive growl never really translates to a chipper Irish-American barely reaching 5’7”. Star personas were prevalent during the studio system and it’s fair to say, Cagney was horribly miscast nor did he have the lithe grace Chaney exhibited or the creepy melancholy.

If there’s one word used to describe the tone of the film, it is tragedy, as it prefers to add weight to the man’s alleged suffering than his film career. Hammering home his deaf-mute parents, hitting child abandonment and the dissolution of his marriage along the way, to having to place son Creighton in an orphanage and then, well, death. It’s all rather dreary; at odds with the sweeping epic soundtrack and the man whose early career began in Vaudeville and making people laugh. Why his parents’ deafness defines him or them, for that matter, appears to be a sign of the times – as for when that is the film does little to quantify. Creighton (he who would become Lon Chaney Jr.) is the only real evidentiary passage of time as the part is split between four actors (Dennis Rush, Rickie Sorensen, Robert Lydon and Roger Smith) each older than the next. None of which is helped by the occasional fifties-looking costuming.

Before his ‘big break’ as a lead, Chaney worked tirelessly and took every job he could, often making himself over and disguising his natural attributes depending on what was required on the call sheet. His ground-breaking make-ups led the way for the likes of Jack Pierce. Bud Westmore, Dick Smith, and, of course, Rick Baker among many, many others. It was then that casting agents began to take notice and he was cast in The Miracle Man thanks to his ability to twist and coil his body into unnatural positions. This would lead to arguably his greatest roles: The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame in which he gravitated, yet again, to the tortured and afflicted depicting the tormented empathy of Quasimodo. Cagney tries but it’s hard not to see Cagney playing ‘Cagney’ imitating Chaney, or ‘Chagney’ if you will.

Obviously, given the decades between meant different make-up processes and evolution of the prosthetic. The make-up recreations in Man of a Thousand Faces are pretty awful given that Westmore et al would have used more modern supplies and they are still nowhere as convincing as Chaney and his ‘crude’ materials. Eagle-eyed viewers will also notice that camera-angles vary in relation to the original films, they’re not quite as polished.

It’s not all terrible, there are some high points. The father-son relationship shines and the performances from the actors who played the young(er) Creighton are lovely. These moments highlight Chaney’s love of mime and character, donning wigs and a false nose to “show” his son a bedtime story. The use of sign language is refreshingly brilliant for a film as old as this, when communicating it’s all about the face which for Lon Chaney it was. His.

He worked in cinema from 1914-1930 with 100 of his 157 films either lost or destroyed. It’s a missed opportunity that the 2000 documentary, The Man of a Thousand Faces narrated by Sir Kenneth Branagh isn’t included in the extras here. However, if Chaney holds an interest for you, seek it out, it’s really informative and one gets to see the original performer rather than a shallow impersonation. While the film never quite reaches the heights expected, the transfer is stunning. It is clear and crisp with very little residing grain which serve the make-up replicas and those stark chiaroscuro shadows which ‘Chagney’ often lurks within.

Lon Chaney died from a throat haemorrhage brought on my complications from the cancer that he was diagnosed with years earlier. An almost karmic fate for a versatile entertainer who sought silence both on stage and screen – his last film (a remake of Browning’s The Unholy Three) was his only speaking role – and has been revered ever since.

Disc Extras

Commentary by Tim Lucas – this is highly informative and provides great education for those unfamiliar with Chaney and his work and those that are interested in their broadening their knowledge. Lucas provides lots of information and titbits, paying particular attention to historical context – something the film sorely lacks.

The Man Behind a Thousand Faces: Kim Newman on Lon Chaney (20:52) Filmed in a cluttered room full of DVDs and books, Kim in his signature red waistcoat and cravat discusses the silent stars of Hollywood’s heyday including Chaplin, Garbo, Valentino and of course Chaney. Newman’s brief foray into the topic is not overly focussed and feels more conversational in tone which is a great contrast to the slightly more scripted and academic commentary. He maintains that Chaney lingers long in the cultured memory “and without Chaney’s make up Karloff and Lugosi would have contrived to play gangsters, and never Universal monsters (though, I’m sure Jack Pierce would have argued with that). He also thinks Cyrano de Bergerac was the role Chaney was made for but never got the chance to play. The chat is intercut with clips from the films and sadly, ends rather abruptly.

Theatrical Trailer (1:33) – It’s always worth watching the film’s theatrical trailer if only to see the original footage prior to the restoration process, and the extent of the transfer and clean up.

Image Galleries – These include 82 slides of production stills which show the costumes and make-ups in greater detail (not always a pro) and give more opportunity to see Bud Westmore’s clunky recreations albeit all in black and white. In addition to the slides, there are 18 posters and lobby cards in both monochrome and colour from all over the world including France, Spain, Germany and Russia.