By
Kristin Battestella
There's
no better way to top off a blustery autumn evening than with a late
night viewing of these sometimes bizarre, often eerie, mostly
Expressionist, and always chilling silent film essentials.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – Sleepwalking, hypnosis, and a
demented carnival atmosphere are just the beginning for this
influential 1920 paragon. From the German intertitles complete with a
madcap, unreliable narrator font to the eerie, off key merry go round
score, the distorted perceptions and exaggerated visuals force the
viewer to pay attention. Green patinas, teal evening scenes, golden
up close shots, and opening and closing irises layer on the dream
like retelling alongside askew, Expressionist angles and a stage like
design – a play within a play to which we the audience are
willingly privy. Contrasting triangles, shadows, lighting, and more
surreal architecture parallel the lacking reality, for there is no
external frame of reference and forced perspectives belie a fun house
whimsy. The actors, makeup, and abstract period styles are fittingly
macabre, and the stilted contortionist movements evoke a poetic but
unsettling ballet where a misused seemingly innocent, forgotten pawn
needlessly dies once his job no longer computes. Though very
indicative of its early interwar time, this remains immediately
progressive – man is misled, controlled, even compliant in his
misdeeds but not willing to be responsible for his actions when it is
easier to be led astray and defer your killing hand to the
orchestrating puppeteer. Do we not let popcorn entertainment and
social media dictate our needs because someone somewhere told us so?
Are we living in a fantasy if we think otherwise? Maybe so. The mass
sheep consequences are indeed frightening, and some may find it tough
to view this picture objectively knowing the catastrophic calamities
to come. The appropriately named Cesare, deadly predictions, a
perceived loved triangle, escalating murders, and crazy case
connections twist and turn while satirical police sit on high up
stools like toy soldiers waiting to be told what to do – like us in
our 9 to 5 cubicles. Ignorance is bliss, and that is mighty scary.
This is must see genre at its finest thanks to heaps of real world
fears and social commentary for horror fans and classroom studies.
Faust
– This 1926 F. W. Murnau biggie waxes on all the good and evil one
can muster thanks to its Old World appeal, supernatural
surreal, and timeless story. Familiar strings and sweeping
orchestration ground the Expressionist horror framework with frenetic
ills or melodic tender as needed while stunning images of angels both
light and dark are fittingly disproportionate with oversized wings.
So maybe the mounted skeletons may seem hokey, but the smoke and
mirrors, creepy eyes, and evil horns make for superb overlays and
superimposed shadows. Why do we toy with spectacular effects when
each frame here is like a seamless painting – unlike contemporary,
noticeably shoddy CGI. Ghoulish makeup, severe looks done with very
little, dark hoods, rays of light, and religious iconography loom
large, telling the tale with symbolic light and dark objects dueling
for our attention – just like the delicate titular ballet. The
battle for one man's soul is set amid our earthly plague fears, and
despite the torment and somewhat odd, dragging domestic humor, the
acting is not over the top but subdued for the weighty subject. This
macabre is closer to the past than the present, setting off the
repentance questions and plague as divine retribution debate. His Old
Testament gives no answer, and evil enters in on Faust's doubts,
trading decadence with quills to sign in blood, hourglass measures,
alchemy, superimposed flames, and mystical books to match the thee
and thou spells. Our deceiving little old man becomes more
traditionally devilish looking with each lavish temptation,
duplicitous with his immediate tricks of pleasure and unfulfilling
youthful elixirs that cannot be sustained. Could you do good with
such power? Flight and winds show not how high one goes but how far
we will fall, and despite a somewhat overlong hour and forty minute
full length edition, the grim sense of dread here snowballs as the
looming evil drapes the bedchamber within his robes. Will innocence
and love triumph and restore the divine? This stunning attention to
detail not only makes me want to tackle Goethe again, but shows what
can be done when time is taken to ensure a picture lasts 90 years
rather than be a consumed and quickly forgotten 90 minutes. The
multiple versions and assorted video reissues will bother
completists, but we're lucky to have these copies at all and horror
fans and film students must see this still influential morality play.
The Hands of Orlac – Art and music meet the grotesque for this
1924 tale of pleas, surgeries, and will power. Precious few newspaper
clippings and streamlined, made to look old intertitles accent the
ominous locomotives, vintage vehicles, smoke stacks, and well done
but no less hectic disaster filmmaking before the macabre executions
and madcap medicine. Doctors in white coats with terrible news, a
saintly woman in white, bleak black trees against the clouded white
sky – rather than our beloved silver screen, the picture here is
truly a black and white negative with bright, symbolic domestic
scenes and nighttime outdoor filming. Overwhelming buildings loom
tall, and the sharp, gothic arches of a sinister father's house
reflect his uncaring. Eerie superimposed faces, phantom feelings, and
impatience to remove the bandages build toward the eponymous
hysterics, but the simple agony of handwriting changes and crooked
hands so skilled with a killer blade but unable to master the piano
wonderfully increase the torment and self doubt. Is it the mind doing
these fatal repeats or the appendages themselves taking over? The
full near two hour restored version feels somewhat overlong, with
melodramatic scenes and unnecessary transitions interfering with the
anguish. At times, contrived fingerprint exposition and solving the
crime clichés pull the rug out from under the horrific hands
possibilities, but fortunately, the blackmail, murder investigation,
and bittersweet love anchors the monstrous appendage swapping. Where
today we would have all kinds of bent, hairy, or special effects to
hit the viewer over the head with how evil these hands should be,
it's amazing how these wicked hands psyching out our pianist don't
look evil per se but actually fairly normal. With our contemporary
pick and choose genetics and scientific advancements, the concept of
these influential limbs out for themselves is perhaps more
disturbing. Could you loose your art and livelihood when calamity
takes your hands or would you use extreme science to restore your
limbs, accepting the inadvertent trade of music for something more
barbarous? This is an excellent must see both for the ghastly what
ifs and the inner turmoil at work.
2 comments:
The "Night on Bald Mountain" segment in Disney's "Fantasia" pays homage to some scenes in Murnau's "Faust".
Hi Dar!
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment! And yes! I should look online for some scene by scene comparisons. Great music there, too. ;)
Thanks again for visiting and dropping a line!
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