Masculinity and Facial Disfigurement in The Man Who Laughs

“Masculinity and Facial Disfigurement” examines Leni’s film through the lens of disability studies in film. This chapter offers a reading of The Man Who Laughs that addresses the creative liberties that Leni took when adapting the Hugo novel to the screen and that accounted for the representation of physical disfigurement otherwise lost in Hugo’s original text. As the chapter shows, the cinematic representation of Gwynplaine’s disability, in contrast to that in the novelization, “restores a kind of lost masculinity to Gwynplaine, reminding us, in ways the novel never quite does, that Gwynplaine’s body was as ‘fit’ as any other man’s,” in Henderson’s words. This chapter thus reconceptualizes Leni’s adaptation as a positive portrayal of disability, finding equilibrium between Gwynplaine’s contrasting characteristics of masculinity-femininity and ability-disability that are absent in both the novel and other films in this era.