Alraune

I guess my feeling is what you may hear about this film before you watch it, is actually more interesting than watching the film itself.

Not only are virtually all the scenes in this film dialogue scenes, there is very little going on visually other than photographing these scenes in a static way. To explain other problems I need to go vaguely into some details but they don't contain any real spoilers, no specifics will be gone into.

So you know going in, this is a sort of Frankenstein film, meaning a man creates a being in this case a female. So you'd expect a creation scene? Nope, not in this film. There is an escape scene later, you'd expect that'd be an exciting scene. Nope they tell you about the escape afterwards. The film is just not interesting in anything purely visual, the exception being a couple shots of the Mandrake root. Kind of like Vertigo, which is a film whose unspoken subject in Necrophilia, this film's unspoken subject is Incest. But also like Vertigo the film isn't really about this "unspoken" subject really, it's just there for as Hitch might say, "naughty" people to think about outside the real content of the film itself.

As a talky film and lacking the ability to talk the film moves at a very slow pace. This is the type silent film where they show people's lips and mouths moving for a long time, you cut to the intertitle to explai what they say, then you cut back to the scene and watch them still speaking. This is not a unique thing to this silent film, but the smarter filmmakers didn't do this.

The lead female Alraune is acted pretty well, but all the acting is pretty surface level and pretty "Big," again not something that can be common in silent films, but not in the best of them.

Also as I write this in 2025, no good version of the film exists so the translations I could find from German into English were pretty bad and the visual quality also poor. I hear a restoration exists in HD. That would certainly help the film. It will however remain a static and talky film.

Being a product of the Silent era, this German variation on the Frankenstein theme actually preceded the definitive James Whale pictures; a rare (the copy I acquired was culled from an old Italian TV broadcast that I somehow missed out on) and still very little-known film – despite the involvement of Henrik Galeen (THE GOLEM [1914 and 1920], NOSFERATU [1922] and THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE [1926]), Brigitte Helm (METROPOLIS [1927]) and Paul Wegener (THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE [1913], THE GOLEM [1914, 1917 and 1920] and THE MAGICIAN [1926]) – this is probably due to the fact that, in spite of some clear Expressionist trimmings, the plot is mainly treated as sophisticated melodrama! Especially disappointing for genre buffs is the fact that the creation scene is completely by-passed – shown only in a split-second flashback towards the end when Alraune (Helm, a veritable femme fatale spawned from the mandrake root by ambitious alchemist Wegener) discovers her unnatural origin when she happens upon the scientist's diary! Galeen, however, demonstrates a sure eye for pictorial detail throughout (particularly when dealing with the carnival and casino settings) and the basically 'incestuous' relationship between creature and creator is treated with amazing sensitivity and depth for its time. The ending, then, is equally non-horrific as Alraune, resigned now to her soulless existence, goes away with her creator's long-infatuated nephew while Wegener pays the price for his tampering with nature by being left all alone.

An unscrupulous doctor (Paul Wegener) creates a living 'mandrake', the soulless offspring of a prostitute inseminated with the semen taken from an executed criminal. The unnatural progeny, Alraune (German for mandrake), is played by temptress extraordinaire Brigitte Helm, best known for playing the saintly Maria and her evil Maschinenmensch avatar in Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' (1927). Although the film is sometimes classified as horror/science fiction, it is more of a romantic melodrama, as the doctor slowly becomes infatuated with his creation, who is beginning to aspire to human feelings. Human artificial insemination had been around since the late 1700s, so other than the choice of sperm donor, there is nothing particularly novel about the premise, which is essentially a test of the frequently overly-simplified 'nature/nurture' dichotomy (in reality, it is nature 'plus' nurture, not nature 'or' nurture). The eponymous 1911 novel by Hanns Heinz Ewers had been films twice before this version and several times afterwards but the 1928 silent is considered to be truest to the original story. The film has not aged well - not a lot happens and the silent acting comes off as a bit theatrical. There are several versions on-line, with and without music. The image quality in the one I watched was not great but the score, a mix of recognisable 'classics', helped pass the time spent watching the relatively boring film.

Hanns Ewers wrote the original screenplay for 'The Student of Prague', the finest version of which is generally considered to be that of 1926 directed by Henrik Galeen. Here Galeen directs this extremely loose adaptation of Ewer's novel 'Alraune' which reunites him with star and co-director of 'The Golem', Paul Wegener, who plays mad scientist Jakob ten Brinken. The role of the soulless femme fatale Alraune who drags men to their doom is tailor-made for Brigitte Helm, following her impact in Lang's 'Metropolis'.

By the time Ewer's novel was published, news of Russian experiments in artificial insemination involving animals had already reached the West and seemed the stuff of nightmares. Such a pity therefore that this film fails to fulfill expectations.

Although it contains some Expressionist flourishes it lacks the overall visual style and imaginative flair of Galeen's contemporaries, early scenes are victims of censorship cuts, the succession of men who fall under the spell of Alraune's sexual charisma are little more than ciphers and it is weakened by a lame, unsatisfactory ending.

The real fascination of the piece lies in the dynamic between Paul Wegener and Brigitte Helm whose scenes together are riveting.

Despite its weaknesses the influence on Hollywood's mad science/creation films is there for all to see although its depiction of destructive female sexuality would never be replicated.

There can't be a review giving this silent movie any proper judgement. One star is as possible as ten stars are since you are guessing anyway, because whatever version you watch, it is incomplete: The longest version up to date, being merged from Russian and Italian analog material, is still missing 400 m. Especially a dance performance of vanguard artist Valeska Geert is totally lost, among other scenes. And this might also explain why we don't see laboratory scenes of Alraune's making.

So this movie lacks coherence, though the acting of Wegener and Helm is superb and subtle, unlike common silent movies. Still, if you are not (yet) into silent movies or Brigitte Helm's eyes, better start with one that wasn't so much tampered with. But if you'll watch this one, then you are to enjoy a great allegory about humanity being proud of a creation of its own making, then falling for it which works on the destruction of its creator.