The Face Behind the Mask

Join us at Finch Café for a Halloween screening of a rarely-seen progenitor of film noir, The Face Behind The Mask (1941, dir. Robert Florey, 68'), reframed through a radical lens of disability justice, as a treatise on the failure of the American Dream for disabled people and migrants.

On his first day in New York, Hungarian immigrant Janos (Peter Lorre) is severely burned in a house fire. Spurned from work and denied housing due to his facial scars, Janos dons a mask and becomes a jewel thief to care for his fellow chronically ill and disabled companions.

Inlfuenced largely by the experiences of its director and stars as migrants to the US, Florey uses the form of crime drama B-movies to deliver an explicitly pro-migrant message, harkening to a time "when quotas were a number, not a lottery prize".

Before the feature, we're showing Florey's most renowned short, The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra (1928, co-directed with Slavko Vorkapich, 13'). Made on a micro-budget, the film showcases the roots of American avant-garde cinema in migrants' cinema, and details Florey's dissatisfaction with the Hollywood system and the exploitation of its workers' dreams for fame.

Tickets are available on a sliding scale from £0-8. Total runtime 82 minutes. This screening was curated by Tomer Levy @metrolevy.