Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam

I caught this restored version of the 1920 German silent classic at Lincoln Center where a new musical score was premiered by the Chamber Music Society. I had never seen the film before and was frankly amazed at the imagery in the sets and costumes and editing of the film. The film's director, Paul Wegener, wearing a thickly padded outfit and wig and high-heeled boots plays the main character, "The Golem". A mythical character from Jewish folklore. For its day, the special effects were also intriguing. I resist describing the movie as anti-semitic but I believe that the portrayal of the jewish ghetto was depicted so dramatically to show that the jews in Prague were outsiders and not welcome in mainstream society. This is evident in the fact that when a nobleman comes to the ghetto, he is greeted by a mammoth closed gate that looks like a precursor to the one used in King-Kong. And most notably, during the creation sequence, a satanic figure appears on screen that would coincide with the European belief a that time that Jews walk hand-in-hand with the Dark forces.

As far as the Golem's performance- this film is really a precursor to "Frankenstein" that Boris Karloff must have seen in its original release - there are so many similarites.

Biggest Image - at the conclusion, the Golem is surrounded by a group of "blond" Aryan-looking children that clearly distinguish them from the ghetto children that we see earlier in the film.

When I see these old attempts at what amounted to a horror film back then, before my time and I'm an old duffer, I'm always struck at the marvelous Gothic quality wrought by the twisted buildings, the gnarled stairways, the open balconies and the weird angles of things such as doorways, arches, street, bridges and the like. The monstrosities are stark, hardly terrifying by today's CGIs and often terrifying their victims in an almost comical, stylized way. This marvelous film together with Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are marvelous pieces of art. There is an ageless quality to them that transcends the hoary and often corny plots and acting. Each must be taken as a whole because that product is always greater than the sum of their parts. Compare the magical Indian Love Call of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, two rather mainstream singers whose voices blend into something greater than either of their individual talents. So too it is, I contend, with these old Gothic classics. Horror? Hardly. But, their starkness and darkness with its twisted surroundings are still eerie and provoking.

Imagine shooting a feature-length horror movie with the camera built into your mobile phone. Now imagine disabling sound and colour on your phonecam, only being able to shoot a few seconds at a time, each minute costing a small fortune in recording material, imagine that phonecam being large and unwieldy and kind of knackered so that the already low-resolution image is flickery and erratically exposed, and it plays back too fast so that people look like wound-up dolls. It also exposes blueish light more than reddish light, so each shoot is unpredictable, but of course you'll only know that the next day when the film has been processed.

Welcome to movie-making in the year 1920 AD.

Now go shoot a masterpiece that will still be watched, talked about and revered in a hundred years.

I watched this out of historic interest and expected to be colossally bored. But far from it, this is actually a gripping horror flick, and one with a deep side to it to boot. The Golem himself is an immensely scary horror figure en par with Freddy Kruger or the Alien, kind of a proto-Frankenstein's monster -- and he's actually played by director Paul Wegener himself!. I'd like to know how they made his eyes so scary.

Anyway, what can I say, a stupendous film. Watch it from the edge of your seat.

"Der Golem" is surely one of the best German expressionist silent movies. It may be second only to "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari"; I enjoyed it as much as Murnau's "Faust", and, truth be told, more than "Nosferatu".

You probably already know the story: it's a well-known Jewish folk tale about a rabbi who constructs a stone creature (a golem) to protect his fellows from an anti-Semitic government in medieval Prague. The creature impresses the gentiles, but then it turns on its master.

These movies aren't really about plot, nor characters. They're about mood, setting, and mise-en-scene. The golem itself is an indelible image; surprisingly it was played by the writer-director himself, who must have been a massive person. You can see the influence on James Whale's classic "Frankenstein". The settings are also sumptuous and fitting.

My mind did wander, but not as much as when I watched Swedish silent "Korkarlen", also a horror film based on local myth. I appreciated that the story was easy to follow and interesting.

This is, currently, the only silent movie I have ever seen, and I was unsure how I'd take it. I had heard a lot about this movie and was expecting big things, and I must say I was impressed.

The only major complain I have is that, as with many older classics, I read a review of it prior to buying in which the reviewer gave WAY too much away (the ending sequence, namely).. this has happened to me far too many times. I really wish reviewers wouldn't assume that everyone has already seen the movies they are reviewing, just because they are 'classics'. It really dampened my experience with the ending of both this movie, and The Man with X-Ray Eyes, just to name a few.

Anywho, the version I saw (the Kino remaster) was great. The picture quality was about as good as you could expect from a film more than 80 years old. The score was very good, maybe a tad repetitive, but it suit the film. The acting is quite good, very reminiscant of the acting style from the mid-to-early 20th century.

The scare factor? Well, probably not much these days. The Jewish ghetto is very well constructed, and really suits the setting. The golem himself is not so scary, more goofy to me, but to people in 1920, I can imagine he could have been quite scary. This is more of an 'interest' movie, than an all-out scare fest. You can really see where so many of the great horror/scare films over the years got their ideas from after seeing early films such as this.

I would definately recommend everyone who is interested in horror to track it down. Don't be put off by the fact that it's a silent film, it took all of 20 seconds for me to forget that completely, and to just enjoy the film.