Seven Faces (1929)

Interesting facts

Seven Faces is a 1929 American sound (All-Talking) pre-Code drama film with fantasy elements that was released by Fox Film Corporation in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system on December 1, 1929. Based upon the piece of short fiction "A Friend of Napoleon" which was published in the June 30, 1923, issue of The Saturday Evening Post magazine by popular writer Richard Connell, it was directed by Berthold Viertel and stars Paul Muni in his second screen appearance. Seven Faces is a lost film, with no excerpts from its footage known to exist.

Production

The female lead, 18-year-old Marguerite Churchill, was also Muni's co-star, six months earlier, in his first film, Fox's The Valiant, although they were not cast as a romantic couple in either production. Their sole scene together in The Valiant comes at the end of the film and consists of an extended dialogue sequence in which condemned prisoner Muni, in reality Churchill's long-lost older brother, seeks to protect her and their mother, who was…

Before filming started, the early working title for Seven Faces was "Lover Come Back" and a full color poster was created using that appellation, with a note stating "(Temporary Title)" appended directly underneath. Additionally, while the poster was already intended, even in the film's pre-production stage, to highlight, in fonts smaller than those reserved for Muni's billing, the name of second-billed ingenue Marguerite Churchill, the listing f…

Impressed by Paul Muni's gift for characterization under makeup, which led a number of critics to designate him "a young Lon Chaney", Fox prepared another such vehicle for him — two years before MGM's opulent 1932 production, Rasputin and the Empress, with studio contractee Lionel Barrymore as "The Mad Monk", Muni was set to portray the character in a production, helmed by top director Raoul Walsh, with a title which intended to utilize another o…

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