I don’t know what made me think of this movie so early this morning. Something made me think of clowns and how even though their aim is to be comedic and entertaining, they often come across as scary or tragic.
I saw a couple of Lon Chaney silent films a few years back that really reinforce this image. He Who Gets Slapped and Laugh, Clown, Laugh are anything but laughfests. Both are grim in nature and filled with tragic circumstances, like many of the films in the post-WW I early 1920’s.
Lon Chaney was a huge star of early films and is pretty much unfamiliar to modern movie fans. He was known for his ability to transform himself into a wide variety of characters, often contorting his body and altering his face for grotesque effect. 
This transformative ability won him the nickname The Man of a Thousand Faces which was also the title of a great film biography of him starring Jimmy Cagney as Chaney. I recommend this film for those who wishing to learn a little more about an incredible talent.
Chaney is probably best remembered for his classic roles as The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but for me it’s these roles as clowns that define Chaney for me. They are dark films filled with grim melodrama and tragedy. They’re sometimes hard to watch. But they are filled with real human emotion and complexity, so dark that it’s hard to believe that these were popular successes of the time. Hollywood had yet to perfect the happy ending.
Again, I’m not sure why these came to mind today.
Maybe I’ll be painting clowns today. Brightly painted sad faces. Like Red Skelton. That’s probably another too obscure reference.
Anyway, if you get a chance, and don’t really want to have your spirits lifted, check out these classics from the great Lon Chaney or his film biography.
The Man of a Thousand Faces.
Redtree Times 