Directed by Robert Florey
Written by Allen Vincent and Paul Jarrico
Starring:
- Peter Lorre as Janos “Johnny” Szabo
- Evelyn Keyes as Helen Williams
- Don Beddoe as Lt. Jim O’Hara
- George E. Stone as Dinky
- John Tyrrell as Watts
Release Date: January 15, 1941
Rating: 
Robert Florey’s downbeat spin on American romanticism isn’t entirely successful—there’s more style than substance—but its hard-nosed empiricism gobbles up the story with such cynical bite that the film still stands as a rough demolition job on the American Dream. Peter Lorre plays Janos, a Hungarian immigrant whose hopeful grin tells him America will be a paradise of opportunity. That fantasy goes up in smoke when a savage fire at the hotel where he was staying burns his face clean away, leaving him with no recognizable human features. The job hunt instantly becomes hopeless; prejudice and ignorance shove him out of society, gradually turning him into a villain manufactured by the very world that rejects him.
The parallels are striking and the metaphors flow with poetic bite. Robert Florey, one of the great unsung European avant-gardists smuggled into the Hollywood studio system, directs this bleak tale of broken dreams with pitiless intensity and suffocating expressionist style, leaving no space for hope or redemption. Even the simplest gesture—like the mask Janos wears to conceal his mutilated face—turns into a metaphor for the immigrant’s optimism crashing headfirst into cold social reality. Florey and Peter Lorre, both European émigrés navigating life in America, bring a palpable authenticity to the film’s sense of alienation. The movie never fully sustains the nihilistic force it hints at—the shadowy opening atmosphere clashing awkwardly with the soft glow of a hesitant romance—but it still marches stubbornly toward a fatal end that no amount of moral resolve can ultimately avoid.
