Hey, all. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2022 late. I hope it was good for you. I have returned this week with another installment, this time an analysis of “The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao,” from 1964, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer. I had originally planned on just reviewing it, but as I re-watched it for the first time in a while, my English major instincts kicked in and I started analyzing. So, brace yourselves as I take a deep dive in. Spoiler warning in place, for what it’s worth.
To try to summarize the movie: a mysterious circus comes to the old western town of Abalone. The citizens of Abalone are faced with the news that their town will soon run out of water due to decaying water pipers from another town, and wealthy rancher Clinton Stark is willing to buy the town. He says it will help the people and calls himself a philanthropist, but newspaper man Edward Cunningham believes there’s a hidden reason, and opposes him publicly and in the newspaper. When Dr. Lao’s circus arrives, his six sideshows cause the people in the town to confront themselves in different ways and rethink their lives. The sideshows are the magician Merlin, the mythical Medusa, the fortune-teller Appolonius of Tyana, the Abominable Snowman, the Great Serpent, and the Greek god Pan.
So, the first thing that must be acknowledged is that Dr. Lao, an elderly Chinese man, is played by Tony Randall, who was white. Hollywood has had a history of whitewashing. That can’t be easily denied. However, I’m not gonna dive too deep into that, because I don’t have a lot of knowledge in that area yet. For all I know, they may have chosen Tony Randall because he was willing to play seven different characters and they were thinking of saving money. So, having acknowledged that, I’m going to move on to explore this a little more.
When Dr. Lao first shows up, he seems painfully like a stereotypical Hollywood Chinese man, with broken English and an accent that almost grates on your nerves. But once he stops to talk to Ed (John Ericson) and Michael (Kevin Tate), his accent abruptly disappears and he speaks in a dignified and eloquent manner, and you can recognize he is Tony Randall. Later, he switches back and forth between accents and styles, going from a carnival barker to a Scottish accent to his broken English to his eloquent English. So this really hammers home the theme of looking beyond appearances.
For those who are sensitive to derogatory language, there is some, although somewhat mild. The minor character of George G. George (Eddie Little Sky) is attacked and threatened by hoodlums, who say the old saying “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” The same hoodlums rant later about the “dirty foreigner” who hypnotized the town and ruined their plans. Three old men in town talk near the beginning of the movie about whether Lao is Japanese or Chinese, and when Lao sits down at the town meeting, Mrs. Cassan (Lee Patrick) gets up and flounces away, showing her racism. Ed Cunningham demands to know “What kind of Oriental hocus-pocus is going on around here?” which could hark back to the idea that Asian people are prone to strange magic, which I suppose the whole movie is based on.
Ageism is also examined in the movie, as the three old men mock Merlin for his magic tricks. It’s shown that Merlin is very old and possibly battling dementia, but the way that almost everyone turns away from him and call him a fake… unpleasantly reminds me of how older people are treated even today. Even Merlin’s magic in restoring Mrs. Lindquist to normal from her petrification is unnoticed by almost everyone. It’s interesting that the only person who really treats Merlin kindly is the young boy Michael, who accepts everything with equanimity.
One of the main townspeople in the movie is Angela Benedict (Barbara Eden), the widowed mother of Michael. Ed Cunningham is in love with her and flirts often, but she continually turns him down. Ed tells her that she needs to remember that she isn’t just a mother and daughter-in-law, but a woman. In the circus, Barbara is tricked into going to the sideshow with Pan “The God of Love”. Although she originally sees Pan as just a regular man, he spins around and his face changes to Ed’s face. Seeing Pan as Ed, Barbara is forced to face the reality that she is falling in love with him. She tries to hold herself aloof and cold, but Pan reminds her that she is a woman with desires, that she’s simply very lonely without her husband. You get the idea as he dances and spins wildly that he is dangerous, his music getting wilder and louder. She gets jolted back to reality at the end, but the music still plays at a few crucial junctures, reminding her that she can’t run away from her reality. Because of this, she eventually opens up to Ed and they both acknowledge that they’re in love, and it’s implied that they will marry in the near future.
The character of Apollonius (Tony Randall) is rather a tragic figure, in a way like Cassandra of Greek mythology: cursed to speak the absolute truth of the past and future, but he is not believed. Mrs. Cassan sort of acknowledges that Apollonius tells the truth about her past, that she was never married (unlike what she tells the townspeople), but refuses to listen when he warns her that she will remain alone for the rest of her life. Her silly and flirtatious behavior is obviously annoying to the men she talks to, but she refuses to believe that she won’t be able to snag a husband. She claims that Apollonius is a mean, ugly man for saying things that she doesn’t want to hear (believing him to be a fortune-teller), but he replies, “Mirrors are often ugly and mean. When you die, you will be buried and forgotten, and that is all. And for all the good or evil, creation or destruction, your living might have accomplished, you might just as well never have lived at all.” Mrs. Cassan cries hysterically and runs out, and Apollonius simply sits there in silence, looking as though he grieves the fact that she will not listen and change.
Apollonius also interacts with Clinton Stark (Arthur O’Connell), reminding him of Stark’s great conundrum. He had originally believed in the decency of man and had great compassion for humanity, but learned early in his life that man was broken, ignoble and greedy. He readily admits at various times in the movie that he would gratefully accept a loss in his business dealings (implying he has done this many times before), because a loss would prove him wrong by showing that humans can be noble and make the right choice.
Stark’s conversation with the Great Serpent also reveals some truths in the story of the movie. The Serpent, enclosed in a thorny cage, tells him,”You live in a cage too. You test your bars as often as I do, kiddo.” The Serpent also explains about the circus, that it works like a mirror: “Sometimes you see yourself in it. Sometimes someone else.” So it explains Angela seeing Pan as Ed Cunningham, and Stark seeing the Serpent’s face as his own face.
Greed is a recurring theme in the movie, shown not just in the talks about selling the town, but also in money. Dr. Lao spills coins all over the newspaper office when he’s paying for the newspaper advertisement. Merlin’s magic trick turns Ed’s paper to money. The townspeople must pay to enter the circus, but Michael gets in for free. The coins paid to Appolonius. The cost of 5 cents for peanuts, versus free popcorn. Just some things I noticed.
I’ve analyzed pretty much all of the movie now. I won’t totally spoil the ending for anyone who wants to watch it, as it’s rather interesting, if somewhat deus ex machina. So instead, I’ll just end this with something that Dr. Lao tells Michael, as I rather like it. And catch you on the flip side.
“Mike, let me tell you something. The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it. The way the sun goes down when you’re tired, comes up when you want to be on the move. That’s real magic. The way a leaf grows. The song of the birds. The way the desert looks at night, with the moon embracing it. Oh, my boy, that’s… that’s circus enough for anyone. Every time you watch a rainbow and feel wonder in your heart. Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery, a marvel, there in your hand. Every time you stop and think, “I’m alive, and being alive is fantastic!” Every time such a thing happens, you’re part of the Circus of Dr. Lao.”
(Thanks goes to IMDB, as I could just copy and paste the quotes from the movie here, instead of having to type it all out myself.)
Random English Major Thoughts 