Seven Faces (1929) Review: Paul Muni tries way too hard

If you have about an hour and you want to see a guy try to win an Oscar in his very first movie, this is for you.

It is probably not for you if you actually like realistic acting or movies where the plot doesn't feel like a thin excuse for a costume party.

Seven Faces is basically a Paul Muni highlight reel before he even had a career to highlight.

He plays Papa Chibou, this old, kind of sweet caretaker of a wax museum in Paris.

He treats the statues like they are his kids, which is very creepy if you think about it for more than two seconds.

But the movie wants you to think it is charming, so I just went with it.

The whole gimmick is that Muni plays seven of the statues too, like Napoleon and Don Juan and some others.

It’s 1929, so the sound technology is still pretty clunky and everybody talks like they are trying to shout over a lawnmower.

I noticed that whenever the camera moves, the background noise changes slightly, which is kind of distracting once you hear it.

He is doing so much acting with his eyebrows that I thought they might fly off his face.

His Napoleon is especially funny because he stands so still that you actually forget he is a real person for a second.

Then he blinks, and it kind of ruins the illusion of him being a wax figure.

There is this one scene where he is talking to the statue of Marie Antoinette and he gets all misty-eyed.

It goes on about 30 seconds too long, and the silence starts to feel awkward rather than emotional.

I found myself looking at the background of the set instead of his face.

The museum itself looks pretty cool, though it clearly only has about four rooms.

They keep reusing the same hallway and just changing the lighting a bit.

Speaking of lighting, it is way better than I expected for a movie this old.

It doesn't have that dreamlike, blurry look of The Fall of the House of Usher, but it works for what it is.

The plot involves a girl named Elaine and some guy who gets accused of a crime he didn't do.

Honestly, I stopped paying attention to the crime stuff because Muni was busy putting on a new beard every ten minutes.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Seven Faces (1929) through its definitive frames.

He plays a tough guy in a courtroom scene and his accent is just... well, it's something.

It’s like he’s trying to do every European accent at the same time.

The movie gets noticeably better once it stops taking itself seriously and just lets Muni ham it up.

There is a sequence where the statues "come to life" in a dream or a vision, and it’s actually pretty neat.

It reminded me a bit of the energy in The New Babylon, but much less political and more about showing off the lead actor.

I did find myself wondering how long it took him to change his makeup between shots.

You can almost feel the movie trying to convince you this moment matters when he’s playing the old man again at the end.

But it’s hard to feel bad for a guy who spends all his time talking to candles and wax.

The crowd scenes in the street have this oddly empty feeling, like half the extras wandered off to get lunch.

There are maybe six people in "Paris," and they all look like they are waiting for the director to tell them to move.

It isn't as cozy as something like The Old Homestead, which felt like a real place.

This just feels like a stage play that someone decided to film because they had a new microphone they wanted to test out.

One reaction shot of the judge in the courtroom lingers so long it becomes funny.

He just stares at the camera with this blank look like he forgot his next line.

I think I liked it more for the mistakes than for the actual drama.

It’s a weird little artifact of a time when Hollywood was obsessed with "prestige" but didn't quite have the tools yet.

If you like Paul Muni, you’ll probably find it fascinating to see where he started.

If you don’t care about film history, you’ll probably think it is a loud, confusing mess.

I’m somewhere in the middle, mostly just impressed by how many fake mustaches one man can wear in an hour. 🥸

The ending is kind of abrupt too.

It just sort of stops once the main gimmick is over.

I guess they ran out of faces to show us.