The double faces scene


Anyone who's seen the film will remember the scene just before "You and Me", with the four singers who switch between male and female faces - visually striking and a cool summing up of a theme of the entire film. But how did they achieve that? It does look to me as if most of the faces, or all, are genuine, not some kind of masks worn on the back of their heads. The female faces, or rather that front side of their heads, are clearly genuine, though some of them could be drag, and some of the gent faces look alive too, not masks. I've seen it many times; is it done by skilful editing so that there are really two teams of singers or is it actually done with masks facing the audience?

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All dancers are male, half are in drag (wearing "male" masks), and all are wearing masks.

Chaos reigns

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Yes, exactly. Half are in drag, wearing male masks on the back, and half are in tuxes, wearing female masks on the back. Each has matching clothing for the masks on the backs of their costumes.

It's a very clever (and cleverly subversive and visually unsettling) number. The choreography must have been a doozie to pull off, though.

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The two-faces bit traumatized me as a kid. It was downright creepy and to this day has always remained the clearest thing in my mind about this film aside from the restaurant scene and Norma's scenes. I wish I could un-see those awful masks!

The faces are clearly masks on the backs of the men's heads (they don't look all that convincing) so I am surprised that anyone could look at this and be confused as to how it was done (maybe because two were facing forward and two were facing back is why you wondered about it). Maybe before HD and on smaller TV's and whatnot it looked more mysterious? Although I saw this movie many times as a kid in the 80's and I knew even then that these were masks.


"Why couldn't the monkey arrange this from INSIDE the garbage can?"

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At first I thought that for some drag queens, they were not pulling the look off. Though I was relieved when they were just masks.

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