False Faces

1932 Directed by Lowell Sherman

Dr. Silas Brenton is fired from his position at a large hospital, primarily for a lack of ethics, and goes to Chicago and sets himself up as a plastic surgeon and seducer of women; his quack methods lead to an operating-room failure that leads to tragedy for many others.

Lowell Sherman Peggy Shannon Lila Lee Berton Churchill David Landau Nance O'Neil Purnell Pratt Olive Tell Edward Martindel Geneva Mitchell Helene Millard John St. Polis Joyce Compton Forrest Stanley

73 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Allison M. @ Slamdance 2021 🌱 ★★½

Presented by UCLA Film & Television Archive, Hammer Museum
It starts out with an interesting premise of a hack plastic surgeon offering his services. However the execution is fatiguing and the actors are not compelling.
Vegan alert:
Fur lined coat
Review by PUNQ ★★

Always the sleaze, Lowell Sherman. A fake plastic surgeon with no moral scruples. What a court room speech! I'm speechless. I think I would have come to the same conclusion as the jury did. Being a precoder one almost expects he'd get away with it too. That was the beauty of this cheap con.
Review by Kari ★★½

I saw this for Peggy Shannon. Lowell Sherman (who directed as well) was a real sleazeball. The movie wasn't exactly bad but it was a downer. Sadly, several of the cast members had lives that were downers as well:
Lowell Sherman (Dr. Brenton) - died of double pneumonia 2 years later at the age of 46
Peggy Shannon (Elsie) - ruined her career due to alcoholism and died in 1941 at the age of 34
Geneva Mitchell (Florence) - died of severe alcoholism in 1949 at the age of 42
One interesting tidbit:
Nance O'Neil (Mrs. Finn) was close friends for a time with alleged ax murderer Lizzie Borden. There were rumors they had been lovers.
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

Lowell Sherman directing and starring as a charlatan doctor running a fake plastic surgery practice. Sherman plays exploitive crooked man very well and all those scenes of him preying on his patients insecurities are rather good. False Faces has that pre code quality of remaining angry and having a lot of pleasure in depicting corruption. Very mean and blunt.
Review by Rick Burin ★★★½

*SOME MINOR SPOILERS*
What this Pre-Code film gets absolutely right is its anti-hero’s complete conviction and plausibility when challenged – the mark of the charming sociopath. You see it when the chairman of the medical board turns up and Vincent Sherman’s doctor offers to throw open his doors for a full investigation. It’s in the way Sherman presciently pits himself against the establishment in his climactic monologue: less a mere selfish surgeon now than a demagogue.
The film begins in a similar vein to Warren William’s Pre-Code vehicles, with Sherman (a sort of cut-rate John Barrymore who often directed his own films) romancing a nurse, hitting up a dying patient’s family for illicit donations and then being sacked. He leaves…
Review by PollyPrecoder ★★★★

The very best of Poverty Row films made magic on budgets that make "shoestring" look generous. False Faces achieves the miracle of ripping a tale of malpractice from the headlines, playing it as a black comedy, and making a compelling antihero of a doctor who never lets ethics get in the way of his personal interests. All this is capped by a trial scene in which Dr. Brenton defends himself by accusing mainstream medicine of conspiring against an innovative outsider. Variations of this argument (which succeeds in swaying a Chicago jury) are playing out on the Internet as we speak.
Review by AlitaMcFly ★★★

Thanks to UCLA for screening this film! The transfer looks amazing. Lowell Sherman plays a morally corrupt plastic surgeon who just keeps pushing his luck at doing sleazy things. This film is very Pre-Code, although more thematically than in actual content. "False Faces" is neither essential nor a waste of time. Perfectly fine!
58/100. Watched on Vimeo (Laptop; HD).
Monthly Point Count: 139/175 (worth two points).
Review by Nick

i was sold from the worldwide films opening credit
Review by Cipollini ★★½

Hammy. Thanks for the link pre-code Danny.
Review by Danny ★★★½

Kinda tedious, but the wild parts are pretty fun.
Review by Teenagecaveman ★★½

def scandalous but i don't know about being a classic

Recent reviews

Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

Lowell Sherman directing and starring as a charlatan doctor running a fake plastic surgery practice. Sherman plays exploitive crooked man very well and all those scenes of him preying on his patients insecurities are rather good. False Faces has that pre code quality of remaining angry and having a lot of pleasure in depicting corruption. Very mean and blunt.
Review by Cipollini ★★½

Hammy. Thanks for the link pre-code Danny.
Review by Anthony Peronto ★★★★

Sleazy, eerily-relevant pre-code drama about a sociopath who rises in popularity and prestige without any knowledge in his field. Has one of the most memorable opening credits with Worldwide Films, setting the tone for the Poverty Row scandal about to unfold.
Review by Rick Burin ★★★½

*SOME MINOR SPOILERS*
What this Pre-Code film gets absolutely right is its anti-hero’s complete conviction and plausibility when challenged – the mark of the charming sociopath. You see it when the chairman of the medical board turns up and Vincent Sherman’s doctor offers to throw open his doors for a full investigation. It’s in the way Sherman presciently pits himself against the establishment in his climactic monologue: less a mere selfish surgeon now than a demagogue.
The film begins in a similar vein to Warren William’s Pre-Code vehicles, with Sherman (a sort of cut-rate John Barrymore who often directed his own films) romancing a nurse, hitting up a dying patient’s family for illicit donations and then being sacked. He leaves…
Review by Leavingfilmstrk ★

Why did I watch that?
Oh, I know, so I could finally give a one-star rating.
Review by leftnotrace

Pre code movies are awesome.
False Faces is a pre code movie.
Ergo, False Faces is awesome.
Review by Allison M. @ Slamdance 2021 🌱 ★★½

Presented by UCLA Film & Television Archive, Hammer Museum
It starts out with an interesting premise of a hack plastic surgeon offering his services. However the execution is fatiguing and the actors are not compelling.
Vegan alert:
Fur lined coat
Review by VNPryor

Enjoyable melodrama about a completely unethical doctor who decides he's a plastic surgeon and never quite discovers that he's wrong. God bless these pre-code Poverty Row programmers and their utterly cynical and ruthless endings...
Review by AlitaMcFly ★★★

Thanks to UCLA for screening this film! The transfer looks amazing. Lowell Sherman plays a morally corrupt plastic surgeon who just keeps pushing his luck at doing sleazy things. This film is very Pre-Code, although more thematically than in actual content. "False Faces" is neither essential nor a waste of time. Perfectly fine!
58/100. Watched on Vimeo (Laptop; HD).
Monthly Point Count: 139/175 (worth two points).
Review by Danny ★★★½

Kinda tedious, but the wild parts are pretty fun.
Review by Suzanne Scherrer ★★★★

UCLA Film & Television Archive Online Screening
Wow. Just wow.
Rarely does a film showcase so many lowlife, amoral despicable characters. From the moment Dr. Silas Brenton appears he gives an air of sleaze. Upon being roused from a nap by a nurse to perform an emergency surgery, he refuses to go to surgery unless she kisses him. The nurse is his girlfriend, but it's still quite unprofessional.
Ethics violations are just the beginning. He had been extorting money from his patients for special "perks" at the hospital, better food, more personal attention, etc. When one of his patients dies, the doctor is turned in by the family he extorted.
He is dismissed from his position at at charity hospital in…
Review by Darren ★★★

I'm scandalized.