O Golem

Although this 1920 German silent does not really rank alongside the truly great silent films, it remains a fascinating oddity. Based on European Jewish folklore, it tells the story a Jewish community in Prague which is threatened with expulsion from the city. In an effort to protect his people, Rabbi Loew creates a man-like creature made of clay and uses it to impress the Emperor. Unfortunately, the magic backfires, and when the Golem falls into the hands of the Rabbi's perfidious assistant disaster results.

Much of the film's charm is in its visual style. The sets by Hans Poelzig are a strange but cohesive mixture of medieval, nouveau, and surrealism, and the cinematography by legendary photography Karl Freund uses high contrast black and white to truly remarkable effect. The Poelzig-Freund combination would cast an extremely long shadow, and THE GOLEM would influence not only such German films as Fitz Lang's METROPOLIS but the entire cycle of 1930s American horror films that began with the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula.

Several plot devices and the look of the Golem, as played by Paul Wegener, would also prove particularly influential for director James Whale's famous 1932 FRANKENSTEIN. Whether or not Boris Karloff or make-up artist Jack Pierce knew the film is uncertain--but Whale, who was fond of German cinema, certainly did, and traces of THE GOLEM can be seen throughout his most famous works.

Over the past several decades a number of film historians have attempted to reinterpret THE GOLEM in light of the Holocaust. There may actually be a certain validity to this, for although the Jews are portrayed sympathetically they are very clearly outsiders, and their religion seems less like religion than witchcraft--and indeed Rabbi Loew might be said to practice black magic in bringing the Golem to life. This sense of social estrangement and religious stigmatism does seem indicative of the anti-Semitism that will ultimately explode into furnaces of Nazi Germany. All the same, it is worth noting that THE GOLEM is a fundamentally Jewish story to begin with, and it is perhaps best to think of it in those terms instead of using hindsight to impose modern meanings upon the film.

There are several home market releases of the film. While I have not seen it, I am told the Timeless Studios VHS release is weak; I have, however, seen the Gotham DVD release, and although there are some quality issues this inexpensive DVD is not at all bad. Still, my preference and recommendation is the Kino DVD. Unlike many Kino editions, it does not have anything significant in the way of bonuses, but the overall presentation is very fine and likely represents a best-possible presentation short of full digital restoration.

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.

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.

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.

At the beginning of the DvD's "scrapbook", there is a quote from Paul Wegener that says he never thought the Golem was an expressionist film. Watching it right after seeing Nosferatu, that statement becomes believable. Despite amazing sets that would have been at home in Caligari, in story, in acting, and in overall tone, The Golem is a much more naturalistic film. Watching it with my son, who is 16, he was struck by its uncomfortable prefiguring of Jewish persecution. I was impressed by the the scarcity of romantic cliches in the story. The golem itself is clearly the ancestor of the Frankenstein monster. Full of wonderful images and interesting as a predecessor of the Universal monster films, The Golem is also very entertaining as a story and as a piece of dramatic film making. Highly recommended.