Same for James Whale, who made "Frankenstein".
The horrible mask was a face he had seen in the war. An officer or soldier got caught in the barbed wire
a bit into no man's land, when he tried to get back to their trench. He was shot dead by the Germans.
But nobody dared to climb out of the trench to recover the corpse, and the guy was hanging in the wire,
and he seemed to stare at them. Day after day, night after night.
Whale said, the face became pale and then it began to decay. All that, even amplified by the light of
flares, was engraved into his mind and gave him nightmares.
He described that face to the makeup artist, who created one of the most famous film masks after that.
Deja vu - could it be, that we had almost the same discussion two years ago? From Murnau to Whale?