Claude Rains was born on 10 November 1889.
Most people know him for playing Captain Renault in Casablanca. And, of course, Senator Paine in the tedious Mr Smith Goes to Washington. And I quite like him in The Paris Express — an unusual and enjoyable film noir.
But we are here for The Invisible Man. Just because it’s in the song “Midnight Double Feature Picture Show“? Of course not! Well, maybe a little. But it is a remarkable film. And Rains’ first feature.
(Before moving on, there is a parody of the film as “Son of the Invisible Man” starring Ed Begley Jr in Amazon Women on the Moon. It gets to the heart of one thing that is always on my mind when watching the original: Is Claude Rains’ penis swinging around as he runs naked?)
It isn’t close to my favorite Universal horror film. But it’s still really good. Of particular note is the quality of the special effects. But Michael Weldon noted something I had never noticed, “A major technical flaw: when the naked Invisible Man runs through the snow, he leaves shoe prints.” I just think it’s interesting. It really doesn’t matter.
Another good thing is that, like most of the Universal horror films, this one is short: just 70 minutes. It moves along at a brisk pace. No time to get bored.
And even though you almost never see Claude Rains (for good narrative reasons, I think we can all agree), he’s really great. He’s possibly the most unlikeable character in any of the other Universal films. So let’s celebrate his birthday by watching this iconic film.
Claude Rains via Wimimedia. It is in the public domain.
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A weird thing — Rains grew up with a Cockney accent. And a speech impediment. Which is so odd, because you think of him as just the smoothest-voiced guy of all time. But he definitely worked at it.
I love him so much! I don’t know of too many other actors from the era who could really kill it in SO many different roles — bad guys, good guys, you name it. That’s what made him so great in Casablanca and Lawrence of Arabia; he could play someone who was both charming and rotten, and you completely bought it. I love how in Invisible Man, he’s basically high on how completely he can f**k with people and freak them out.
Fun Wiki thing I just learned — Preston Sturges wrote a draft of this screenplay, and turned it in, and got immediately fired. Well, he landed on his feet alright.
That is a great observation about the snow footsteps being shoed. But that’s the thing about being an Invisible Man; it’d actually be really tough, if you had to be naked to do it. You could steal a lot, but you’d have to overpower people with your bare hands, or sneak into fancy stores and rob rings/watches, but this stuff is a pain when you’re naked — you’d have to hang around jewelry stores and snatch rings/watches when employees opened the case, and how could you avoid bumping into them, and it would just be fully unpleasant and a pain in the butt.
It would be best for invisibility to be a woman with very small breasts. The idea of my junk bouncing around is unpleasant. I can’t even do boxers. I must be constrained!
Anyway, Rains is amazing. Look at Casablanca. We like the character because of the way he plays it. But he is horrible! But he didn’t need to be charming. He could also play uncharismatic characters just as well. Thanks for the factoids; they’re very interesting!
Notorious might be one of his best parts. He’s charming, and he’s evil, and at the end we still DO feel a little sorry for the slime. Name me another actor who could pull THAT off! (And tell the auteur critics that if Hitchcock had fewer great actors, they’d still regard him as a genius… oh, I don’t think so.)
That film is vaguely in my mind as something from childhood TV. It’s hard for me to watch Hitchcock because I go in with an attitude. And I hate that. Although I do think I was pretty even-handed when I recently watched Rear Window. So maybe I should!
It’s that rarest kind of Hitchcock movie — one that actually looks good. Granted, every 50s movie in color looks pretty bad…
Ben Hecht wrote it, so that’s something. Although I sense some anger in Hecht sometimes. In Notorious he has Cary Grant be angry with Bergman for sleeping with Rains. But that’s what he asked her to do, be a spy! Sometimes I wonder if Hecht had a really nasty divorce or something.
I can see a little of that in his work. Wikipedia has a great section on his political activism, which is laudatory. But no one is perfect. But he walked out on his first wife and daughter. So I don’t think it should be him with a bad attitude toward divorce!