The Man Who Reclaimed His Head isn’t really one of Universal’s 1930s horror films, although that hasn’t prevented its inclusion in such film packages for lack of a better idea.That’s how I first saw it one Saturday afternoon. It’s certainly adjacent to horror, and for good measure, counts as a proto-noir while packing a punch as a melodrama with a political message. In short, this 1934 production by director Edward Ludwig falls into its own oddball territory, which may be one reason it’s not as well known as it should be. That underappreciation can now be corrected with Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray.
Photographically, the whole film is lovely, and the opening is especially gorgeous. After the credits, The Man Who Reclaimed His Head drops us into a graceful snowfall against trees. A title informs us we’re in 1915 France, which can only mean WWI. That’s why a watchman with a spotlight hides behind the trees. When he sees three German biplanes flying in formation, he knows they’re on a bombing run and calls the alarm, whereupon we’re treated to a dazzling montage of noise and chaos in Paris as spotlights crisscross the night. Kudos here to photographer Merritt Gerstad, editor Murray Seldeen, and uncredited process photographer John P. Fulton.
In the midst of the panic and noise, the camera pans to a house from which we hear a scream and see a window burst out from the inside. Under the cover of the bombing, a mysterious private tragedy is unfolding. Is it a microcosm of the war, or is the war the personal tragedy writ large? Now the camera pans left as a man emerges from the house carrying two things: a child and a large bag or satchel.
We’ll soon learn that the man is Paul Verin (Claude Rains). His fretful little daughter is Linette (played by Juanita Quigley, billed as Baby Jane). Oblivious to what’s happening around him, the seemingly shell-shocked man trudges through the snowy streets and knocks at the door of an old school friend, attorney Fernand de Marnay (Henry O’Neill). Clearly distraught, sometimes in tears, Paul declares, “Nothing matters. Nobody matters, not even God.” Seemingly on the verge of madness or past it, Paul keeps glancing at his black bag on the desk. Finally, he opens it and shows its contents to a horrified de Marnay, begging him to listen to his story.
In a flashback, Paul is a struggling writer who quit a leftist political newspaper that folded. Now he scrapes a living with his wife, Adele (Joan Bennett), who celebrates their fifth anniversary by leaving him at home with his blessing while she joins the city-wide carnival outside. The giant heads worn by the revelers are part of the many references to heads and minds in the dialogue and design.
While she’s gone, Paul receives a visit from his rich, politically ambitious ex-publisher, Henri Dumont, played by eternal slimy villain Lionel Atwill. The bright, open design of Paul’s home suddenly goes dark with a low ceiling (thanks, art director Albert D’Agostino). Paul tells him, “For many reasons, this world discomforts me, yes, and saddens me, so I keep as well out of it as I may.”
Dumont is starting a new journal and solicits Paul as hisghostwriter and speechwriter for handsome remuneration. Startled by the realization that Adele doesn’t understand why he’s so backward about making money and that she’d like not to live in poverty if it can be helped, Paul accepts the offer. It’s a kind of deal with the devil. In two shakes and one edit, the Verins live in a big house while Dumont is admired by the public for the brilliant pacifist editorials he’s incapable of writing.
A businessman in the street agrees that war is wasteful. “Fifty thousand francs to kill one man!” Instantly, Dumont is wooed and flattered by munitions manufacturers, one of whom says, “You know, Dumont, I think I’m a better pacifist than you are. If we could once release the energy contained in an atom, two armies could blow each other to bits in one second. Then we should have seen our last war.” An adamant Paul tells Dumont, “As long as munitions stay in the hands of private enterprise, war will always be around the corner.”
That’s a mere sample of dialogues and ideas that remain strong stuff 90 years later. Nevertheless, The Man Who Reclaimed His Head belongs to its early 1930s era, when the last war and the next one were on everyone’s minds, and public rhetoric often jousted between talk of warmongers, preparedness, and pacifism, all terms thrown about in the script. In a significant sense, Ludwig’s film is a cousin to Universal’s Oscar-winning hit of 1930, Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Another cousin is Ernst Lubitsch‘s Broken Lullaby (1932).
Why is The Man Who Reclaimed His Head often sold as horror? Well, it has its grotesque element. You’ll receive no credit for psychic ability if you guess what’s in Paul’s bag. Hint: as a plot device, it’s figured in everything from the Coen Brothers‘ Barton Fink (1991) to David Fincher’s Seven (1995), which means this odd little chiller even foreshadows those, and let’s recall that Fink was a frustrated writer. Before those spiritual progeny, Universal remade its own property wholesale as John Hoffman’s Strange Confession (1945), a B project for star Lon Chaney Jr.
In posters for The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, Rains was advertised by way of his recent starring role in James Whale‘s The Invisible Man (1933), a tortured soul not unlike Paul Verin.Minor roles go to faces familiar from multiple horrors, such as Edward Van Sloan and Valerie Hobson. WhileBennett remains in her wholesome blonde phase of the 1930s, Adele benignly foreshadows her iconic roles as the expensive femme fatale in such noir triangles as Fritz Lang‘s The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945).
Edward Ludwig, an immigrant from the Russian Empire’s Ukraine, was a busy Hollywood director from the silent era through the 1960s. A large chunk of his output was westerns, both on the big screen and television. He’s probably most known for directing three diverse examples of John Wayne’s Republic films, the effective WWII propaganda of The Fighting Seabees (1944), the sea adventure Wake of the Red Witch (1948), and the Hawaii-set anti-commie propaganda of Big Jim McLain (1952).
Gerstad shot several atmospheric films for Tod Browning, including Freaks (1932). In the same year he worked with Ludwig, he shot John Stahl’s version of Imitation of Life. Interestingly, Baby Jane is in both films. PopMatters has reviewed Ludwig’s two 3-D pictures with Fernando Lamas, Sangaree (1953), and Jivaro (1954),
Screenwriter Jean Bart is a fascinating person. Born Marie Antoinette Vilardell sometime in the mid-1870s in France, she married an American doctor in 1900. In the mid-Teens, she began writing plays and films as Maria de Sarlabous, and she changed her pen name to French naval hero Jean Bart during WWI. In 1926, she wrote a Broadway hit called The Squall.She wrote the play The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, in which Rains starred on Broadway in 1932. In that version, his character was heavily disfigured.
The script is co-written by the prolific Samuel Ornitz, later blacklisted as one of the Hollywood Ten.After serving ten months for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he reclaimed his head by publishing a novel called Bride of the Sabbath (1951).Anzia Yezierska praised it in a New York Times review of 21 October as “a panorama of the New York ghetto from the turn of the century to the beginning of World War I” and calls it “a testament of faith in the power of the spirit to rise over social ostracism and the prisons of prejudice that separate man from man.”
Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray of The Man Who Reclaimed His Head promises a 2K scan from the 35mm fine-grain print. Except for one very brief scratchy shot, it looks and sounds terrific. The disc comes with two different commentaries from film historians David Del Valle and Troy Howarth. They discuss topics such as Bart’s play, the project’s status as a war film vs. a horror film, and the careers of those involved. They naturally agree with what everyone who discovers this overlooked film should feel: that it’s still strong, punchy, beautifully put-together entertainment with both head and soul, and, over blessedly, in 80 minutes. It’s true: they don’t make ’em like this today.