Nosferatu (1922)

Might as well review Nosferatu now; hopefully I'll get a good few pageviews after Mark Gatiss' documentary is screened on BBC 4 on Thursday...! My version has a rather splendid electronic / industrial soundtrack which suits the mood of the film superbly, although the death metal growling after an hour and seven minutes is somewhat unexpected! There are some wincingly bad translations of some intertitles (and there are a lot of intertitles) but the picture is excellent, and it's good to see the sepia tint.

I'm surprised that this is only the third version of Dracula that I've reviewed- not, of course, that F.W. Murnau or anyone making it at the time would have admitted any such thing. The film is blatant version of the novel and, in particular, the stage play: Count Orlok is Dracula, Ellen is Lucy, Hutte is Harker, Knock is Renfield, and so on. Transposing the action to Germany in 1838 doesn't change any of this. There are differences in emphasis combined with other versions, perhaps, and the ending is unexpected, but there's no mistaking this as anything other than a version of Dracula.

This is a film very much in the German Expressionist style, although the style does not dominate as it does in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; for the most part there is realism, with Expressionism being used only to emphasise the evil and sinister, notably in the depiction of Knock's office, a distorted room with along-legged chair and wring proportions, accompanying the deeply sinister and melodramatic acting and make-up through which the character is shown. Nosferatu is shown through bizarre camera angles- one shot from below, on the ship, is particularly effective, as is a scene towards the end where we see his distorted shadow attacking Ellen.

Max Schrek gives us a deeply unsettling and nightmare-inducing Count. His performance and appearance alone makes this one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen. The appearance of Count Orlok is far more terrifying to me than any amount of gore. The flip side of this, of course, is that the monstrously ugly Count is de-sexualised. The erotic subtext of the novel and most adaptations is pretty much discarded in place of chills.

There is some impressive special effects work here for 1922- Orlok's lack of any underlings whatsoever is compensated for by magic, as his coffin loads itself on to a cart and a shop sails as if by magic. The emphasis on "plague", with much Black Death style imagery, and the extended, claustrophobic sequences on the ship are highlights, and a nice change from the more traditional adaptation that we would later come to expect.

Nosferatu looks great, as we would expect, and is probably the only film I've reviewed for the blog so far that I've found genuinely scary. I recommend it hugely.

Frau im Mond (1929)

"Learned ignoramuses, lacking in fantasy, whose brains work in inverse proportion to their level of calcification…!"

I can't watch Metropolis yet, as I still haven't got around to buying the restored version, including all the recently recovered clips. But I do happen to own this, a very different science fiction film by Fritz Lang, from just a couple of years later and grounded very much in "hard" sci-fi. And it's a fascinating document of film history as well as of space travel in popular culture.

For all that it's very much of its time and very German (the car number plates are recognisably German even in 1929, and I was amazed to see that the credits and intertitles use the long "s", something which I imagined had fallen out of use during the eighteenth century!), this reminds me very much of Bollywood films in one important respect. Bollywood films tend not to specialise, but to be aimed at a very wide audience of all ages and backgrounds, and both genders. Hence films tend to include action, romance, comedy, songs, etc. This film may not have any songs (a silent film hardly could!) but it ticks pretty much all the other boxes.

We have science fiction, obviously. We have romantic drama in the form of the love triangle between Helius, Friede and Windegger. We have an extended comic sequence at the beginning, in the Professor's flat. Most of the first hour is devoted to a bizarre, but entertaining, conspiracy theory thriller. There's even a quick shoot-out. This is several films in one; no wonder it's so bloody long.

It doesn't feel too long, though, strange though it can feel for a silent film, to feature so many sequences of people talking. It's never boring; the acting style sees to that. This is very much a melodrama, with all that entails. This is probably essential, and it works; the characters are all extremely well-rounded. We have the brave, determined but worry-prone Helius, whose name seems to evoke the Icarus myth, rather appropriately. We have the decent but cowardly Windegger. We have Friede, the bravest, most loyal and most collected of the whole of them, and the epitome of the strong woman. She's the heroine of the film. We have the Professor, our requisite comedy character. We have Gustav, the boy in short trousers with his sci-fi pulp magazines.

But perhaps the most interesting character is Walt Turner, he of the superhuman powers of disguise. The hairstyle and mannerisms evoke Hitler very, very strongly, and in the Germany of 1929 this can be no accident. Interestingly, the Hitler character is the only one who isn't German, and he hasn't got a moustache (that would be too blatant!), but it's hard to escape the conclusion that Fritz Lang was not exactly a fan of Hitler's; it's hardly a flattering portrayal. Not only is Turner incredibly sinister and villainous, but he's by far the most cowardly (and dishevelled!) during the g-force section. Hitler is being treated as a contemptible Nick Griffin figure which is, of course, exactly what he was in 1929. The Nazi party didn't exactly come to power by promising to shove people into concentration camps and murder six million Jews; they kept rather quiet about that. That's something which should be borne in mind by anyone who imagines the BNP or the like are remotely less dangerous.

Still, it's weird to see the Hitler figure as the one who's part of the sort of conspiracy which, in Germany between the wars, can hardly not have anti-Semitic overtones. This cabal of four rich men and one cigar-chomping woman is utterly ridiculous and not remotely believable. Then again, there are depressing numbers of people today who believe even more obviously stupid conspiracy theories, so perhaps I shouldn't judge.

It's hard not to be impressed by the prescience with which manned space flight is depicted, with two caveats, both forgiveable. Yes, to have the Moon (or even just an unseen part of it) be breathable and habitable is a bit dodgy. But there are, I think, very good grounds to plead artistic licence here. It's 1929; everyone knows that actual travel to the Moon is decades away, and at least they're acknowledging that the known part of the Moon is airless. Besides, there's a literary tradition of a habitable Moon from Verne and Wells (whose novel is echoed in the strong element of greed here).

The other odd thing is that this is a private expedition, not state sponsored, although surely only a nation, and a major one at that, could possibly be able to fund such an undertaking, especially back then? But, those little things aside, there are so many amazingly correct predictions. An unmanned vessel, equipped with a camera, was sent first. Travel is by rocket, and it has three stages. There's a countdown, the first ever example of what would become a well-worn trope. There's a sort of spacesuit which, rather logically, looks like a deep sea diving suit. There's even weightlessness, with people walking by aid of footstraps in the floor!

There are things to raise eyebrows, of course. The Moon has an atmosphere as strong as the Earth's, which is not only a problem in itself but raises the question of how they can take off again. The different stages of the rocket have to be jettisoned manually during a period of strong g-forces, which seems rather risky. But the film gets so many things right that it seems churlish to complain; I'd be amazed if Werner Von Braun didn't turn out to have seen this film...

The film may have dated a little, it's very long for a silent movie, but it held my interest throughout and is a fascinating little historical document.

Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari (1920)

“…”

Well, that was interesting. It’s not the first time I’ve seen this, and not the only silent film I’ve ever seen. But I haven’t seen all that many, and it’s many years since I last saw this. I found it very, er, visual (duh!) and hard to follow the plot at times; all these young grey besuited men look the same!

Still, I love the overall look. The tint is very noticeable, and so is the over-the-top acting style, much as this seems effective and even necessary, given the lack of dialogue and the practical restrictions on how many captions you can have. And aren’t the captions on screen for just aaages? Some of us can read perfectly well, you know.

It’s fascinating to think this was made in 1919 and 1920, in the early days of the Weimar Republic and just after Germany (and indeed all of Europe and much of the world) had experienced a rather traumatic four years. It’s tempting, but possibly unwise, to read all sorts of things into the style and themes of the film because of this. I shall tread carefully, as I’ve deliberately not researched much about the film’s background so as to come to it fresh.

We start with a framing sequence as our narrator, Francis (why not Franz?) relates the bulk of the film to us. I know I’m always banging on about unrealistic narrators, but the expressionist style of the film is in hindsight a bit of a clue that all may not be as it seems. I like the spotlight technique that often opens and closes scenes, drawing our eye to things that the director wishes to highlight. And the expressionist style is fantastic. All of the buildings in the film are grotesquely distorted, and remind me very much of the sort of paintings Picasso was doing at the time. This is nicely alienating, and gives us what turns out to be a highly appropriate dreamlike quality. There are lots of nice stylistic touches; it’s noticeable that the town clerk, the police, and officialdom generally, are seated on massive tables that completely dwarf the mere mortals who are our protagonists.

More interestingly, though, this is a total rejection of realism. I know this is another thing I keep banging on about, but in the best possible way everything looks more like a theatre set than reality, and the effect of this is heightened by the fact that the camera never, ever pans; the effect really is that of looking at a dressed theatre stage. And, interestingly, to compensate for the lack of any movement by the camera, we get a great sense of depth on screen, with corridors, roads and crowds stretching in front of us.

The whole set-up with Caligari and Cesare is an historical curiosity these days- this sort of travelling freak show is very much a thing of the past, and it’s strange to imagine people queuing up for something as random as a somnambulist! Unfortunately, the plot is agonisingly slow, slower than I remember from other silent films I’ve seen- is this because it’s an early film? Does the storytelling get pacier throughout the ‘20s? It’ll be interesting to find out.

I was particularly struck by the scene where Cesare fails to stab Jane; he looks so Goth it’s unbelievable. It’s like a member of the Misfits nearly sixty years early. In fact, is it just me who’s reminded of a particular chap in the background to the video for Marilyn Manson’s version of Tainted Love? Jane is unbelievably sexy, by the way. Then again, all women in silent films are unbelievably desirable.

The bit where Caligari is “revealed” to be the director of the madhouse is agonisingly slow; exposition scenes are not pleasant to sit through when it means reading a series of captions which are on screen for what seems like minutes! I love the twist ending, though; it rather cleverly puts the dreamlike quality of the film in quite a different light.