Leni, Paul b. July 8, 1895; Stuttgart,Wurttemberg d. September 2, 1929; Los Angeles, California
German actor, art director, and movie director who came to Hollywood in 1927 and directed several influential horror films. A polyvalent artist, Leni debuted in the movie industry in 1914 as an art director and set designer for German directors such as Joe May, Edwald Andre Dupont, and a few others.
He also worked briefly as a painter in Der Sturm (The Storm) movement and as an actor during the 1910s. From his German period, his best movie as a director was Hintertreppe (Backstairs, which he codirected with Leopold Jessner, 1921), made in the realistic, Kammer- spielfilm trend.On his own, Leni also directed a typical expressionist film titled Das Wachsfig-
urencabinett (Waxworks, 1924), which was a strange and rather pale copy of Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinett des Doktor Caligari (1920), made with the same actors (Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt). Invited to Universal Studios by a German- born producer named Carl Laemmle, Leni emigrated to the United States in 1927 and directed four films in less than three years. Among those produced in Hollywood were an influential horror movie, The Cat and the Canary (1927), and a melodrama, The Man Who Laughs (1928), the latter freely adapted from Victor Hugo’s novel L’Homme qui rit (in some points similar to his famous story titled The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), again with actor Veidt. But the ending of Leni’s version of The Man Who Laughs was drastically changed from the original book. While in Hollywood, Leni also directed the first version of The Chinese Parrot (1927) and The Last Warning (1929).
Yves Laberge
See also Hollywood
References and Further Reading
Buache, Freddy. Leni. Paris, Anthologie du cinema, No. 33, mars 1968.
Ebert, Roger. “ The Man Who Laughs.” Chicago Sun Times, January 18, 2004. Available at http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ greatmovies/themanwholaughs.html (accessed May 10, 2005).
Gleizes, Delphine ed.. Loeuvre de Victor Hugo ³ I’ecran. Des rayons et des ombres. Quebec: Les Presses de l’Universite Laval, 2005.
Palmier, Jean-Michel. L’expressionnisme et les arts. Paris: Payot, 1980.