The French Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and the Harvard Film Archive are proud to present a very special screening of Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs at Sanders Theater. Recently restored by the Cinématheque Française and the Cinéteca del Commune di Bologna, The Man Who Laughs features a new score by Gabriel Thibaudeau, who will conduct the nine piece ensemble, the Octuor de France Orchestra. Kenneth Turan of the LA Times has written that "The Man Who Laughs strikes the kind of excessive and overwhelming emotional chords impossible to even imagine today. As an extended and ecstatic standing ovation testified, it was a moment of pure cinema that nothing else in Cannes 1998 could come close to rivaling."

After making Waxworks, one of the great films of the German silent cinema, Expressionist master Paul Leni came to Hollywood in 1927 to direct horror-suspense pictures for Universal. Before his sudden and mysterious death in 1929, he directed four American films, including this stylish and atmospheric tale of a man with a smile literally carved on his face. Adapted from a Victor Hugo novel, it is an enduring classic of the grotesque—a macabre, erotic, and flamboyant melodrama, rich in visual mystery, awash in pain and pathos.