Conrad Veidt is a stage magician with two assistants. One is Leslie Fenton. The other is Mary Philbin, with whom Veidt is in love. One evening, Fred MacKaye breaks into Veidt's hotel room and is caught.... hungrily eating Veidt's dinner. Veidt takes him on as a third assistant. Then he catches MacKaye and Miss Philbin canoodling; he olympically wishes them well, but one evening, doing the trick where Fenton is placed in a trunk and MacKaye shoves swords into the trunk, something goes wrong, and Fenton is discovered in the trunk, stabbed to death. MacKaye is arrested.
Veidt offers one of his great performances; the blacking he wears around his eyes to make him look devilish makes me wonder how he would have been playing Dracula in Tod Browning's version of the movie. In many ways, this looks likes a variation on the sort of formulaic movie that Lon Chaney was starring in at MGM at the moment... although Veidt's performance never asks for our sympathy. He simply dominates everyone.
Veidt offers one of his great performances; the blacking he wears around his eyes to make him look devilish makes me wonder how he would have been playing Dracula in Tod Browning's version of the movie. In many ways, this looks likes a variation on the sort of formulaic movie that Lon Chaney was starring in at MGM at the moment... although Veidt's performance never asks for our sympathy. He simply dominates everyone.