The Man with Wax Faces
About The Man with Wax Faces
In a cabaret, Pierre de Lionne boasts that he does not know fear and takes a bet from his friend Jacques to spend the night in a frightening place. Jacques picks a wax museum. The proprietor lets Pierre stay if he breaks nothing, then locks him in. Pierre grows terrified among the tableaux. Jacques sneaks in through a back door after two in the morning. Pierre sees the shadow, stabs him, and at dawn is found mad, his knife having added one more figure to the museum.
Cast & crew
More about The Man with Wax Faces
Maurice Tourneur directed the short in France. It is based on André de Lorde's story Figures de cire, taken from the play de Lorde wrote with Georges Montignac, first staged at the Grand Guignol in Paris in 1912. Henry Roussel plays Pierre. Cinema Éclair distributed it. A 1918 reissue was called L'Homme aux figures de cire. The English title is The Man with Wax Faces.
Themes
Background
Wax-museum chambers of horrors go back to the late 18th century. This short is one of the early films to set a horror story inside one, two years after the Grand Guignol play.
Preservation
A damaged copy was found in 2007 and reissued by Lobster Films.
Notes
- Emile Tramont plays Jacques, billed as M. Tramont. Henri Gouget plays the man with the wax figures, billed as M. Gouget.
- A closing intertitle says Pierre's dagger had added one more figure to the wax museum.
- The film was treated as lost until a damaged copy turned up in 2007.
Scenes
- Pierre wanders the wax tableaux until he finds he is locked in.
- He stabs the shadow behind a paper screen and kills Jacques.
- At dawn he stands over the body with the knife while the police look on.
Influenced by
- André de Lorde and Georges Montignac's Grand Guignol play Figures de cire (1912)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons
Quotes
Son poignard avait ajouté au musée de cire une figure de plus.
