He Who Gets Slapped

Victor Sjöström's searing melodrama — and one of Lon Chaney's most emotionally powerful performances, achieved almost entirely through facial expression rather than physical transformation. Chaney plays Paul Beaumont, a brilliant scientist whose discoveries are stolen by a treacherous baron, who also runs away with his wife. Broken and humiliated, Beaumont reinvents himself as a circus clown — "He Who Gets Slapped" — whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly by the other clowns while the audience roars with laughter. The metaphor is almost too perfect: a man whose real suffering becomes entertainment. When he falls in love with a young bareback rider (Norma Shearer) threatened by the same kind of exploitation that destroyed him, the result is both heartbreaking and explosively violent. The first film produced by the newly formed MGM studio, and a stunning artistic statement of intent.