If the film displays all the pitfalls of the average Hollywood biopic, James Cagney's performance as Lon Chaney certainly doesn't; he's superb even if he was a bit too old for the part. "Man of a Thousand Faces" is a handsome, prestige production co-starring Dorothy Malone, fresh from her Oscar-winning success in "Written on the Wind", and Jane Greer as the two women Chaney married while Robert Evans pops up as a too baby-faced Irving G. Thalberg. Perhaps in this case it might have been better if the kid had stayed out of the picture.
If today it feels a little antiquated in its attitudes you have to remember it's set in the early years of the last century which were certainly not the most enlightened of times and it's probably at its best in recreating some of Chaney's more famous roles, (the Make-Up Department certainly deserved kudos). Unfortunately Joseph Pevney isn't the most imaginative of directors and ultimately it's just another addition in a long line of such biopics, no better, if no worse, than the rest.
If today it feels a little antiquated in its attitudes you have to remember it's set in the early years of the last century which were certainly not the most enlightened of times and it's probably at its best in recreating some of Chaney's more famous roles, (the Make-Up Department certainly deserved kudos). Unfortunately Joseph Pevney isn't the most imaginative of directors and ultimately it's just another addition in a long line of such biopics, no better, if no worse, than the rest.