Does THE MAN WITH TWO FACES really feature shoelaces? It might was well, as nearly everything but the kitchen sink is tossed into the mix by writer Tom Reed, in an apparently desperate effort to see what will stick. It's never really made clear exactly WHY svengali Stanley Vance (played by Louis Calhern) left his cash cow wife Jessica Wells (Mary Astor), over whom he exerts a never-explained hypnotic control. Further, it's not really clear how and why he faked his own death on the west coast. Furthermore, the white mice or rats he brings to the house of Jessica's Aunt Martha on his return to Manhattan are poorly explained. Are they the agents of his power over Jessica? Did he possess pet rodents when the pair got married? Are the little white creatures a breeding couple? (And why, by the way, does Jessica have to live with her Aunt Martha? If she and her brother Damon--Edward G. Robinson--are such hotshots on Broadway, couldn't they afford their own digs? And why does Damon spell the family surname "Welles," though Jessica's is listed in the movie credits as "Wells"? Does some sort of mental defect doom this family, in similar fashion to Edgar Allan Poe's ill-fated house of Madeleine and Roderick Usher?) Finally, a case broken by a mustache in a Gideon Bible? Like most of the plot points in this film with any resolution, this one is telegraphed from a mile away. I better stop reviewing this movie, before I have to downgrade my rating from "7" to a "5" or "6."
Review of The Man with Two Faces
