Homunculus

A man who was manufactured in a laboratory is tormented by his inability to feel love and so embarks on a reign of evil. Originally a hugely popular 6-part serial from Germany, Homunculus existed only as this 69-minute film, sections of which are severely degraded. As each episode of the original series was an hour long, this version provides only a fraction of it's story, and clearly suffers as a result. Danish actor Olaf Fonss overacts terribly even for a film this old, and although Homunculus is clearly a tormented figure haunted by his origins, it's impossible to feel any kind of sympathy for him. A new 200-minute version which will undoubtedly provide more depth and clarity has now been pieced together from fragments found in various archives

This was originally a super-serial, composed of feature-length episodes, and like Feuillade's LES VAMPIRES, was meant to play not only as a serial, but as a series. However, the only remaining copy of this is a cut-down of all six episodes, about an hour and a quarter in length, held by the George Eastman House and available at the moment for viewing on their website. My thanks to them for making this and several dozen other movies of the Teens and early Twenties more generally available.

While the are some great technical strengths to the movie, including some wonderful photography (notice the strong use of framing not by irising, as was still very common at this time, but by using structure and set decoration to change the effective frame size) and toning (a process in which the black silver nitrate is replaced by other compounds with colors, resulting in white whites, black blacks but colors instead of grays) and a good story which asks the question: is the soul born with the body, or the gift of god? Unfortunately, I find the style of acting to be rather over the top, involving a lot of rolling eyes. The net effect is very watchable, but not great.