What's up with Laughton's laughable attempt at a moustache???? Looks like he opted to grow one rather than a fake one. Almost like he hated the damn thing himself. Was this perhaps a concious effort at building his character? Whatever, it was very distracting.
shareLOL! I love Laughton dearly, but I agree that his Earl jannoth would look better either without the moustache or with a better groomed one.
I must say that Laughton was generally very careful with the outlook of the characters he was playing, so maybe he thought that Jannoth just required that type of moustache (laughton would "take" charactheristics of real people to play a role, so maybe he saw a guy with that type of moustache who made him think of what Jannoth should be like)
Apart from "The Big Clock", I have to say that Laughton took pains to grow nice hair for a character on most occasions: onstage (when most people is wont to don fake moustaches/beards) laughton grew bushy beards to play Galileo in New York and King Lear on Stratford, and in films, the beard in "The Private Life of Henry VIII" or the moustache on "Rembrandt" are all home growth.
And when he donned fake facial hair (I believe such is the case of tha characters he plays in "payment Deferred", "Island of Lost Souls", "White Woman" or "If I had a million, for instance), it seemed quite adequate.
So my guess is that he must have thought that that type of moustache suited the character, other wise he would have resorted to a good handlebar fake moustache if he didn't have time to grow one, LOL
Gloria
http://rootingforlaughton.blogspot.com
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I thought the moustache was great! The way Laughton is constantly stroking at it with his pinky finger is hiularious and totally puts across how irksomely self-absorbed, vain and cowardly his character is. It's perfect to personify his faults.
"don't think...feeeeel"
james-clayton.blogspot.com/
Spot on.
It's a vanity he wears to separate himself from others.
I have to confess I just don't "get" Charles Laughton. On screen, every gesture and action comes across as planned and unspontaneous...like that annoying little "tic" he does with the mustache in this film. (Count how many times he plays with it.) It's not natural, it's very stagey.
shareI have to confess I just don't "get" Charles Laughton. On screen, every gesture and action comes across as planned and unspontaneous...like that annoying little "tic" he does with the mustache in this film. (Count how many times he plays with it.) It's not natural, it's very stagey.
Laughton certinatly added to every film he was in, so much that you can't take your eyes off him. When he was in character he WAS that person, and real people have nervous tics etc. I think it all adds to the skill he had as an actor and I love him in The Big Clock.
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"Thus almost nothing is naturalistic in this type of picture - from the acting style/-/".
Laughton does twitch his moustache a lot & has this sort of a larger-than-life aura to him, but generally his performance is far from any expressionistic broadness. Milland & Macready are even more nuanced & "real", so itΒ΄s basically the side characters that do the (often genuinely amusing) overacting. ItΒ΄s not that stagey at all.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
I have to confess I just don't "get" Charles Laughton. On screen, every gesture and action comes across as planned and unspontaneous...like that annoying little "tic" he does with the mustache in this film. (Count how many times he plays with it.) It's not natural, it's very stagey.
Anyone who doesn't "get" Charles Laughton should watch his two performances in Spartacus and especially Witness for the Prosecution. He was beyond brilliant in both (he was brilliant in everything, come to think of it), and he steals every scene. I don't think he overacts in The Big Clock at all.
shareNah, he's absolutely spot on. Great performance. Very memorable.
shareI've seen Laughton in many movies over the years. Today was the first time I saw *The Big Clock,* an excellent thriller. He was indeed a most skillful actor, doing whatever was necessary to craft a role and make it distinctly his own. So, although the character of Janoth was stagy, I agree that he was supposed to be that way - at least narcissistic, maybe sociopathic. I remember an anecdote in Sheilah Graham's autobio, *Beloved Infidel.* She wrote about one man - rather overweight, red-faced, flustered and sat on his own hat in the reception room where she saw him. She concluded: He turned out to be the greatest of all - Charles Laughton.
shareAnyone who doesn't "get" Charles Laughton should watch his two performances in Spartacus and especially Witness for the Prosecution. He was beyond brilliant in both (he was brilliant in everything, come to think of it), and he steals every scene. I don't think he overacts in The Big Clock at all.
Funnier than the mustache is Laughton's running. He must have been the fastest heavyset guy I have ever seen in a movie! π
Seriously, the guy made every movie he was in either better or just more fun. One of the greats.
No blah, blah, blah!
I just watched Chas's bravurra performance in Witness for the Prosecution.
His bits of business made what turned out to be a hoary Agatha Christie plot (disguises?)entertaining. I particularly enjoyed his cavalierly opening his office window and duming a full ashtray on any poor soul below.
One of the IMDb trivia items said Laughton's character Janoth was presumed to be based somewhat on publisher Henry R. Luce. Photos of Luce in the 1920s-30s show him to sport a half-hearted cookie-duster. Perhaps as a precaution against defamation suits, the producers decided the older Janoth with moustache was sufficient to differentiate him from the famous publisher who remianed clean-shaven in later years.
We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream
cool. thanks for the info.
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Now that makes a lot of sense.
shareYes, Laughton ran like the wind as he tried to make it to the elevator in "The Big Clock". But for pure chunky-guy speed, nobody beats Edmond O'Brien in "D.O.A."
shareHave to agree with other here. The moustache - and his mannerism of fiddling with it constantly - adds a lot to the character. And it is indeed not an accident. Laughton did his own make up for most of his career. With the obvious exception being The Hunchback of Notre Dame, all of Laughton's facial hair and aging for instance, throughout most of his films, was his doing. It was a large part of his building of character and he definitely put thought into it. He chose mutton chops for The Barretts Of Wimpole Street. He decided on the precise shape and size of Captain Bligh's pony tail. And he would have put considerable thought into Janoth's moustache and how it would feature as 'business' if you like, although that's a wretched term for what Laughton does. Because he first pushes himself into the headspace of a character, then begins a physical manifestation of that individual. He's a remarkable actor.
shareAn absurd subject for a thread, and one which doesn't deserve so many replies.
shareUnlike a lot of the posters here, I thought his settling with his mustache was his character's insecurity poking through. Another way to look at it.
I, too, am a huge Charles Laughton fan and I love the choices he makes for his characters.
Not my taste, but I believe it was in keeping with his character, in that it was larger than life, which he believed himself to be.
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