L'étudiant de Prague

"The Student of Prague" is an early feature-length horror drama or, rather, it is an "autorenfilm" (i.e. an author's film). It's a piece of a movement of many movements that tried to lend cultural respectability to cinema, or just make a profit, by adapting literature or theatre onto the screen. Fortunately, the story of this book with moving pictures is good. Using Alfred de Musset's poem and a story by Edgar Allen Poe, it centers on a doppelgänger theme.

Unfortunately, the most cinematic this film gets is the double exposure effects to make Paul Wegener appear twice within scenes. Guido Seeber was a special effects wizard for his day, but he's not very good at positioning the camera or moving it. Film scholar Leon Hunt (printed in "Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative"), however, has made an interesting analysis on this film using framing to amplify the doubles theme: characters being split by left/right, near/far and frontal/diagonal framing of characters and shots. Regardless, the film mostly consists of extended long shots from a fixed position, which is noticeably primitive. Worse is the lack of editing; there's very little scene dissection and scenes linger. None of this is unusual for 1913, but there were more advanced pictures in this respect around the same time, including the better parts of "Atlantis" (August Blom, 1913), "Twilight of a Woman's Soul" (Yevgeni Bauer, 1913) and the short films of D.W. Griffith.

An expanded universal film vocabulary by 1926 would allow for a superior remake. Furthermore, the remake has a reason for the Lyduschka character--other than being an occasional troublemaker and spectator surrogate. Here, the obtrusively acted gypsy lurks around, seemingly, with a cloak of invisibility. I know their world is silent to me, but I assume, with their lips moving and such, that their world would not be silent to them, so how can Lyduschka leer over others' shoulders and not be noticed?

Nevertheless, this is one of the most interesting early films conceptually. Wegener, who seems to have been the primary mind behind it, in addition to playing the lead, would later play the title role and co-direct "The Golem" in 1920--helping to further inaugurate a dark, supernatural thread in German silent cinema.

(Note: The first version I viewed was about an hour long (surely not quite complete) and was in poor condition, with faces bleached at times and such. I'm not sure who was the distributor. I've also since seen the Alpha DVD, which, at 41 minutes, is missing footage present in the aforementioned print and also has fewer and very different title cards, but is visually not as bad. The repetitive score is best muted, though.)

There are hints of Expressionism on display in Germany's August 1913 "The Student of Prague." Because this was the first motion picture exemplifying an aesthetic found in later Continental movies, historians label "The Student of Prague" as the first Expressionist film. It certainly qualifies as Germany's first art movie.

Based on Edgar Allen Poe's short story "William Wilson," "The Student of Prague" contains several expressionistic features. Its set lighting, especially in the card-playing sequence, where the actors are highlighted at the table while the background is completely dark, was unique in 1913. This contrasting light/dark Chiaroscuro lighting would become a trademark in future German Expressionism films.

Also, the story lends itself to an expressionistic idea: a financially struggling student unwittingly accepts money for what turns out to be a soulless Doppelgänger (a mirror image of lead actor Paul Wegener, the student). Cinematographer Guido Seeber was able to create the double image within a single frame seamlessly, using the special effects split screen to convince his audience the witnessing of a real spiritual being whose ultimate existence is to ruin the student's life.

The director, Stellan Rye, who died early in World War One (November 1914) in a prisoner of war camp, used the landmarks of Prague to make his fantasy tale more believable, another Expressionist imprint. Lastly, the German obsession with traits that are ripe for expressionistic examination, narcissism and greed leading to ultimate destruction, are all addressed here as well as future German classics such as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1921)," " Nosferatu (1922)," and "Metropolis (1927)."

This early version of the tale 'The Student of Prague' was made in Germany in 1913, starring Paul Wegener (who was also in 'The Golem' a few years later). In this film he plays a dual role (technically impressive for a 95 year old film to see them in the same shot) after meeting a mysterious old man who makes a pact with him for gold - the gold he needs to woo a countess he's previously saved from drowning.

Moving at a fast pace (the film runs just over an hour) and fairly well written and characterised, 'The Student of Prague' has echoes of the Faust legend as well as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, starting as it does with a pact with a mysterious figure of potential evil, and developing into good and evil sides of the same person.

Director Paul Wegener also stars as Balduin, the student of the title who is short of funds and so agrees to humor the strange offer from Scapinelli (John Gottowt) to sell his reflection for a large amount of gold. Balduin is stunned when, after signing the contract, his reflection steps out of a mirror and follows Scapinelli out the door. Balduin uses his new-found fortune to try and woo the Countess von Schwarzenberg (Grete Berger), but his mirror doppelganger causes much trouble and confusion.

This is fairly primitive stuff, with an immobile camera, stage framing, and zero close-ups or medium shots. There are a number of basic doubling effects used for when Balduin and his evil twin are on screen together that surely wowed audiences of the day. The sets and costumes are fine. I'm not sure this would be of much interest to anyone outside of film historians, though, as it lacks any sense of pacing or even character beyond the most arbitrary.

Predating the German Expressionist movement in film (predating even World War I), this is the granddaddy of them all: the very first full-length horror movie. Being the first, we do not demand perfection from it; this film is as raw as William Burroughs's debut novel "Junky" or the first Stooges album, and suitably so. But the viewer will be pleasantly surprised that "The Student of Prague" still packs a punch after more than a century. From Paul Wegener's haunted, compelling performance as Balduin to the imposing backdrop of Prague with its spectral spires, there is much to appreciate in this film...and on its own terms, not just in its perceptible influence on numerous later productions. (Those who have seen "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", however, will note the visual debt that film's title villain owes to Scapinelli, the leering, top-hatted sorcerer portrayed by John Gottowt in "The Student of Prague".) A must-see for all students of film history.