He Who Gets Slapped (1924) - full review!
Directed by Victor Sjöström, who co-adapted Leonid Andreyev’s play with Carey Wilson (Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)), this silent was the first film produced by the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), and the first to be released featuring (Leo) the lion. Edward Arnold & Bela Lugosi (as a clown) are reported to appear, uncredited, as extras in this film.
Paul Beaumont (Lon Chaney) is a brilliant scientist who makes some (unnamed) earth-shattering discoveries while, unbeknownst to him, his wife Maria (Ruth King) keeps company with Beaumont's wealthy benefactor Baron Regnard (Marc McDermott). After announcing his success, he locks up his papers and goes to bed, but his wife takes the key from him while he's sleeping. At the Academy presentation, the Baron announces the discoveries without giving Beaumont the proper credit. In fact, he claims that Beaumont was merely his assistant and slaps him to the uproarious laughter of the Academy's members. Afterwards, he learns of his wife's infidelity and gets slapped by her as well.
So, Beaumont punishes himself for his own stupidity by becoming a clown in the circus. His act, which involves him getting slapped more than a hundred times in each performance, becomes a big hit over the course of 5 years. One day, Count Mancini (Tully Marshall) brings his daughter Consuelo (Norma Shearer) to be a horseback rider in the show. Bezano (John Gilbert), another horse riding performer, is captivated by her beauty and courts her. Though she is at first standoffish, she eventually falls in love with Bezano. Unbeknownst to her, Beaumont, now known as HE (who gets slapped), has also fallen in love with her, something he didn't believe was possible given his unfortunate past.
Baron Regnard happens to take in a performance and is overcome himself by Consuelo's beauty. He then negotiates with her father the Count to "obtain" her. Meanwhile, after her father had left that morning, Consuelo was spending the day with Bezano and the two agreed to be married. But Consuelo returns to find that her father has "sold" her hand in marriage to the Baron, with the wedding to occur after that evening's show. She had also learned of HE's love for her as well, but she too left him brokenhearted per her love for and plans with Bezano. However, when HE learns of the Count's arrangement with the Baron, he will have none of it.
*** SPOILERS ***
HE is angry, and flies at the Count with his rage. The Count stabs him with his cane sword and then, with the Baron, they push him out of their backstage meeting room. HE positions the lion's cage in front of the door, opens it, and then goes around and enters the room through its other door, which he then locks. HE gets the Count to open the unlocked door so that the lion rushes into the room and kills, in succession, the Count and then the Baron. Their screams are masked by the audience's applause. But before the lion, at HE's beckoning, can finish him off too, the lion-tamer discovers his act is missing and ushers it from the room and back into its cage. So, wounded and nearing death, HE performs his act one last time only this time, instead of pretending to die (and lose his heart to a woman, e.g. Consuelo), he really does. Naturally, Consuelo and Bezano are free to live happily ever after for HE's sacrifice.
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