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Review
| The Face of Evil, directed by David Tosco, 52 minutes. New York: First Run/Icarus Films, 2006, video. Sale $390. Rental $100.
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| Evil fascinates. The image of the villain as representative of the dark side of human nature has continually both horrified and attracted us. From the early story of Cain and Abel to the horrors of twentieth century genocides, scholars are left to ponder the nature of evil, its power and its seductiveness. Is it psychological or social in its origin? Does the capacity to create evil reside in every human being, awaiting only a toxic combination of circumstances to activate it? How can one resist its temptations? Is it recognizable and therefore preventable? What is the face of evil? In his documentary film The Face of Evil, director David Tosco explores the history of the representation of evil as a recognizable physical type, from the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch to the sciences of physiognomics, phrenology, and criminal anthropology. His underlying premise is that we have always feared the "other," and that in seeing "others" we instinctively anticipate danger and prepare our defense. This explains our perceived need to detect quickly the character of a person from his physical characteristics. Throughout the film, in interviews with scholars and artists, he surveys the work of the pioneer criminologists (including François Joseph Gall, César Lambroso, Alphonse Bertillon, and Eugene François Vidocq) who "scientifically" investigated the relationship between the physical and the moral. He shows how these researchers have deeply influenced our conception of evil with their work on establishing a recognizable code of the good and bad face, and a theory of the natural born criminal. |
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To illustrate the doubtfulness of their enterprise, Tosco presents the specific case of Bruno Lüdke, a mentally impaired man who became known as the worst serial killer in German history. Arrested in Nazi Germany in 1943 and charged with the murder of a woman found strangled, "dumb Bruno" (as he was known in his town) had previously served jail time for petty theft, but had no murder evidence against him. According to Berlin police files, he aroused suspicion and was arrested because he had the physical appearance of a natural born killer (a monkey-like face, stocky build, and low, rambling gait). After his arrest, criminologists scrutinized Lüdke's body "as if it could, on its own, be proof of his guilt," and proceeded to build the case against him as a monster, "image after image." Goebbels exploited his case as proof of Nazi theories of the biological determination of criminal behavior. After confessing to fifty unsolved murders (Lüdke's sister insists that the confessions were coerced), he was taken to the Vienna Institute of Legal Medicine where Nazi doctors conducted inhumane experiments on him to validate their theories, until he died some months later (official cause of death was listed as heart failure). His case had never gone before a court, he had never been convicted. No one knows where his remains are. Now, many years later, researchers investigating the case (including Jan Blaauw, retired head of the criminal investigation department in Rotterdam) assert that he was completely innocent of the all the murders to which he had confessed. |
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The Face of Evil treats a fascinating topic, but not in a fascinating way. Tosco's method is to intersperse the narrative of Bruno Lüdke between long segments surveying the history of the representation of evil. He introduces complex material on physiognomics, phrenology, and other sciences through tedious interviews conducted in German, French, and Italian, accompanied by rapidly vanishing subtitles. Students will find it difficult to simultaneously absorb the unfamiliar material, take notes, and follow the narration of the film through the subtitles. Similarly, the sporadic narration of the Lüdke story makes both the chronology and the details of the story difficult to follow. It does not allow for the case to be presented in sufficient depth. If students are to reach an informed opinion about Lüdke's guilt or innocence (which is important for the premise of the film), more detailed archival information about the murders, arrest, and subsequent events, would be necessary. Finally, although the title of the film suggests that it deals with evil, in fact, it deals primarily with criminality. Because the concepts of criminality (breaking the law) and evil (morally wrong infliction of pain or misery) are not identical, their conflation in the film does not help in furthering our understanding of the nature of evil. |
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| California College of the Arts |
Amy R. Sims |
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