La découverte d'un secret

Haunted Castle, The (1921)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

An "old dark house" film from director F.W. Murnau about a group of people staying in an (what else?) old dark house. One night the house's owner turns up missing and later in the night his son, who was accused of killing his own brother, shows up. I read somewhere that this is the earliest surviving work from director Murnau but this here doesn't show any of his wonderful visual style that would kick into high gear the following year with Nosferatu. The film, running just under an hour, takes way too time introducing us to the characters and the actual mystery doesn't start until the very end of the movie. There really isn't any visual style either. There's one character that looks like the Karloff character in Whale's The Old Dark House, which makes you think Whale saw this film (especially since the character here leads to a good twist in the story). Another interesting aspect is a scene that uses the hands of Nosferatu to a similar effect that would be seen in the next year's Nosferatu. I had to view an overly dark, 16mm print without a music score.

This very personal movie from Murnau sets the precedent for the author´s most notorious movie: Nosferatu the vampire.

Murnau demonstrates his superb command of the camera and the illumination while setting the bases of the expressionism.

The suspense distilled in Haunted Castle is well worth a Hitchcock´s movie and the plot is surprisingly complex for a silent.

Do make sure that you see it in a winter stormy night

Directed by F. W. Murnau, in this film Count Oetsch (Lothar Mehnart) arrives uninvited to the castle of Lord von Vogelschrey (Arnold Korff) for a long weekend of hunting and socializing with a group of other high society types. Oetsch had been accused of murdering his brother, but was found not guilty. That dead brother's widow (Olga Tschechowa) has remarried, to the Baron Safferstatt (Paul Bildt), and the couple are also in attendance, making things awkward to say the least. The only thing keeping the Baroness from leaving is the imminent arrival of Father Faramund, a close friend and trusted spiritual adviser. Over the course of the weekend secrets are revealed and the guilty come to light.

My expectations were a bit high for this, based on the title and the director, and I was disappointed that this ended up not being a horror film at all. The acting is fairly typical, if at times overheated, and the story is a bit dull and drawn out, even with a brief ~70 minute running time. The castle set is nice, but there are none of the typical Murnau touches that make things stick in one's memory.

Several people in a house come face to face with a murder mystery -- and one of them is guilty of the crime! This film has no familiar actors, and something of a misleading title (it is not a literal translation of the German). The phrase "haunted castle" clearly implies a horror film and not a detective story, but there is very little horror here.

Lothar Mehnert stars as Count Oetsch, and although I know absolutely nothing about him, I was very drawn to his performance. He has a striking look that I think makes for a good stage or screen presence. What else has he done? I do not know, but should seek it out.

The film is light on humor, though there is a sequence I will call "the kitchen boy dream" that I found funny. What is it implying? What does it mean? How does it connect to the big story? I have no idea.

The Kino DVD contains a book / film comparison and I would recommend this. It shows how radically different the film is in some ways from the book. While the essence is the same, I would almost have to say they are two different creatures altogether.

One character has a dream of a ghoulish hand abducting him, but otherwise, the gobs of eye makeup on the actors, typical then, is as haunting as this film, "The Haunted Castle" (which isn't a literal translation, anyhow), gets. It's more of a mystery picture--a whodunit, fundamentally.

This is an early offering in F.W. Murnau's film-making career, and none of the brilliance of his later films ("Nosferatu", "The Last Laugh", "Faust", "Sunrise") is evident here. "The Haunted Castle" is prosaically filmed, despite the assistance of two competent cinematographers, László Schäffer ("Berlin: Symphony of a Great City") and Fritz Arno Wagner ("Nosferatu" and several of Fritz Lang and G.W. Pabst's films). Additionally, Hermann Warm ("Caligari") was the production designer. The castle interiors are rather rich, at least. But, the miniature used for the exterior views of the castle, as a transition effect, is overused and ineffective. I don't care for the iris openings and closings, either; they're usually too obtrusive for transition editing.

Anyhow, there were some surprises in the plot for me, but that didn't make it worthwhile. Despite having another giant of Weimar cinema, Carl Mayer ("Caligari", "The Last Laugh"), as one of the screenwriters, the plot is slow-paced and never evolves to anything higher than a whodunit--and not even a good one at that. The acting is too obvious and overdone, as well. The talent involved did much better work elsewhere.