BLINDE SUNGLASSES 88

Pierre Francois Lacenaire was a favorite of the Parisian stage in the opening years of the 20th century and seemed a natural to make the transition from the theater to the emerging medium of film. He had an abnormally large head that for the most part was covered by the elaborate headgear and costuming appropriate for le ancien regime in the popular historical costume dramas of the period which would lessen the startling effect of sa tete gigantesque.

The transition from stage to film forced Larcenaire into a more contemporary wardrobe since the medium was itself a recent technology. Modern clothing was ineffective in concealing his abnormality. Even with this challenge, directors such as Alice Guy-Blache felt that his professionalism and his superior acting skills would overcome the reality of his physical problem, mis-diagnosed at the time as Gigantism, which usually manifests symptoms in other areas and not just the skull.

Guy-Blache and the producers of the film had not anticipated that this head, when projected on a screen many times larger than life and in contrast with the normal heads of the rest of the troupe, wildly exaggerated the effect and frightened nascent movie audiences unfamiliar with the peculiarities of the new medium. During the premiere of the film A Fool and His Money in 1912, children ran screaming from the theater and the audience rioted as a result of the shock and fear caused by the dramatic amplification of Pierre Lacenaire's head. The film was a total failure and ruinous to its producers. Guy-Blache was vilified in the press for her choice of Lacenaire and eventually had to leave France for safer confines in the burgeoning film industry that was emerging on the East Coast of the United States, primarily in the state of New Jersey.

Lacenaire was summarily banished from the French film industry and treated as a leper in the cultural circles and salons that he charmed as a stage actor. He turned instead to a life of crime at which he excelled and where his hat size was no impediment. His new found talents included the art of loan sharking, protection rackets, prostitution and gambling. He amassed a fortune so vast that it eclipsed the combined earnings of the two top actors in French cinema, Abel Gance and Jean Gabin. Lacenaire not only thrived in the milieu of d'avant-guerre Parisien underworld but he maintained his criminal empire and robust health well into his seventies. His luck finally abandoned him permanently when he became the victim of an errant paving stone crushing his most prominent feature. The gendarmes were the intended recipients of this brickbat during the student uprising at the Sorbonne in May 1968 in Paris. Ironically, the cobblestone that felled the thespian and failed movie actor turned master criminal Pierre Francois Lacenaire was intended for a la bete noire de la societe de criminel, the police. The improvised missile was inexpertly launched by the Situationist author and firebrand Ivan Chtcheglov, who claimed that the paving stone was deflected by a similar object in flight heading in the same direction. The Situationist International revered Lacenaire as a precursor to their transgressive activities and admired his anarchic criminality. Chtcheglov was so overcome with the remorse and guilt of having killed a fellow malcontent in Lacenaire that he lost control of his mental faculties and was committed to an insane asylum that he never left.

Another fantastic start of the day. I got the predator staring at me as if he was there for me to click ;)

Something about Owls:
Owls are nocturnal birds of prey with hawk-like beak and claws and large head with front-facing eyes.

Explored #330 on May 7, 2010