Mandragore

I've just seen the world theatrical premier of the Munich Filmmuseum's restoration of this classic, presented by University of Chicago's Documentary Film Group in cooperation with Chicago's Goethe Institute and Lufthansa. Live piano accompaniment was provided by the excellent Aljoshe Zimmerman with an introduction by Stefan Drößler, director of the Filmmuseum. Zimmerman composed the score for the Filmmuseum and additionally accompanied "Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens" (also restored and presented as a double feature). The restoration was pieced together largely from surviving reels from Russia and Denmark, which focused on Alraune's mother and father, respectively. The restoration sports quite a few intertitles, in German, some of which were present in the original. Absolutely remarkable, and a must for anyone who appreciates excellent cinema.

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.

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.

Two monsters meet in this second adaptation of Hanns Heinz Ewers' novel: Paul Weneger, actor and director of "Der Golem" (1920), and Brigitte Helm, diva of Fritz Lang's masterpiece "Metropolis" (1927).

Classified as science fiction and horror, the film was more of a fantasy to me. A scientist decides to inseminate a prostitute with a mandrake root that grew thanks to the semen of a murderer who was hanged on a tree. In the first scene, we learn that it is a full moon night and that someone will dig directly under the hanged man's body to remove the root. It will be used for the experiment. The result will be a living creature: Alraune.

The film (or the copy I saw) makes a discreet ellipsis when the prostitute enters the scientist's experiment room, and in the next scene, we see young Alraune (mandrake, in German) in a boarding school ruled by nuns, from which she will escape with the scientist's worthless nephew. In the story that continues, there is no science fiction or terror, but the drama of a woman who ignores her origin. Her attempts to love and live freely are frustrated every time her "father" intrudes. He is convinced that Alraune has inherited anti-social traits from her prostitute mother and murderous father. However, what Alraune really wants is to enjoy life: she escapes with a magician to a circus, flirts with the animal trainer and meets a good viscount who falls for her and proposes marriage. But papa scientist does not give up, so she decides to take revenge.

Brigitte Helm, who, as in "Metropolis", alternates between innocent sweetness and malicious eroticism, contributes to the fascination of the story. Director Henrik Galeen uses expressionist images, although the realistic approach predominates. It is a pity that the restored version is not available and what circulates is a vile copy of a VHS edition in English, with music often out of place and with the name of the protagonist changed to Mandrake. However, curiosity is curiosity and there is no one who can beat our archaeological passion for cinema.

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.