In modern superhero cinema, there is no villain as distinctively recognisable as the Joker, DC’s clown-faced agent of chaos who had proven too much for his arch-nemesis Batman on several occasions. Depicted by the likes of Jack Nicholson, Jared Leto, Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix over the course of the character’s cinematic career, whilst the Joker was created on the comic-book pages, he was inspired by one iconic movie from the 1920s.
Long before the terror of Stephen King’s Pennywise in the 1986 novel It or the creepy clown puppet of Steven Spielberg’s Poltergeist, Paul Leni’s silent film, The Man Who Laughs, was terrifying audiences all the way back in 1928. Adapted from Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, Leni’s film is a macabre tale of a man named Gwynplaine, a disfigured guy with a grotesque smile.
Whilst it may be known in critical circles as a classic of German expressionist cinema, The Man Who Laughs is better recognised as the film that inspired Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson to create the Joker in the Batman No. 1 comic book, released in April 1940.
Discussing the creation of the character in a 1994 interview, Kane told journalist Frank Lovece: “Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That’s the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt – you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs, [the 1928 movie based on the novel] by Victor Hugo. … Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, ‘Here’s the Joker’”.
As with any successful property, however, there is much debate as to who it was specifically that created the iconic character, with the comic book artist Jerry Robinson also claiming to have made the character, despite Kane adding in the interview, “Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it, but he’ll always say he created it till he dies”.
Disagreeing with Ford’s recall of events, Robinson later stated in an interview: “In that first meeting when I showed them that sketch of the Joker, Bill said it reminded him of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs. That was the first mention of it … He can be credited, and Bob himself, we all played a role in it. The concept was mine. Bill finished that first script from my outline of the persona and what should happen in the first story”.
Though it can be tempting to hog the glory, let’s just say that all three of the innovative minds were responsible for the creation of the character, which has gone through the creative mangle in the past few decades. Seeing different versions and iterations, the Joker has changed greatly since his first inception in Batman No. 1.
With that being said, Joker purists will always want to return to the character’s source, which is exactly what actor Joaquin Phoenix did for his Oscar-winning turn as the comic-book villain in Todd Phillips’ 2019 film, Joker. While preparing to take on the challenging role, Phoenix analysed the comedic performances of silent-era actors like Buster Keaton, as well as the eerie portrayal of Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs.
