The Hound Salutes: Claude Rains Movie Review
Claude Rains will always be remembered for one brilliant role, the “poor corrupt official” Capt. Louis Renault in Casablanca. But in his long and distinguished career as one of Hollywood's best character actors (and leading men) he also played key roles in science-fiction, horror, and fantasy films.
His screen debut was in one of the all-time sf greats, The Invisible Man. In the title role, Rains couldn't use a film actor's most important tool – his face. He's either masked or off-camera for virtually the entire movie. Instead, Rains made full use of an equally effective talent, his voice, an instrument that could be authoritative, sly, funny, plaintive. On screen, he could convey just about any emotion or action except clumsiness.
He went on to play the gentle angelic guide in Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Lon Chaney Jr.’s unbelieving father in The Wolfman, and the title role in the 1943 The Phantom of the Opera. Like most people who have worked in the field, his career has been checkered. He was Arthur Conan Doyle's Prof. Challenger in the 1960 The Lost World (unavailable on home video), and then made the rarely seen Italian Battle of the Worlds in 1963.
But Rains was a product of the Hollywood studio system, and that was a world which, for all its unfairness, created a host of brilliant actors – both men and women – who had the screen presence to carry a film in the lead, but also had the talent and training to shine in important character roles. Claude Rains could do that. He brought a feeling of grace to any role he played.
In the book Horror Films (Simon & Schuster, Monarch Film Studies), author R.H.W. Dillard makes a point of Rains’ “rigidly controlled performance” in The Wolfman. In analyzing the film's structure, Dillard notes that the moral focus of the action shifts to Rains’ character at the conclusion, and that transfer lessens the film's emotional and intellectual power. It's a valid point, but at the same time, it demonstrates how effective Rains could be with flawed material. And with the right stuff – even when he was invisible – Claude Rains was one of the best. His limited contribution to screen science-fiction is still significant.