La découverte d'un secret

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.

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

I knew going in this was not a horror film, in spite of the English title: while not uninteresting in itself, it emerges as a very minor Murnau. Little of the director's trademark stylistics are present here; the film does constitute an early use of flashback, as it slowly divulges the events behind a past crime for which the wrong man was accused – but the characters don't exactly set the screen on fire.

The Sinister Cinema edition I watched was a mere 56 minutes in length, as opposed to the restored 74-minute version of the film; not surprisingly, the choppy editing (full of phony-looking transitions and an equally pointless establishing shot of the castle used ad nauseam throughout) made the plot somewhat hard to follow – and the lack of detail in the print itself, not to mention the absence of an accompanying music score, didn't help matters either!

Even so, the film is worth watching for the unethical way the elderly hero goes about discovering the real identity of his brother's killer and for a couple of brief – if irrelevant – dream sequences, one expressionistic (and which can now be seen as a dry run for NOSFERATU [1922]) and the other surreal. Some years back, Image Entertainment had announced a DVD release of THE HAUNTED CASTLE but, for reasons known only to them, it was summarily cancelled and has yet to appear officially on any digital format.

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.

"The Haunted Castle" is one of the lesser known and rather unpopular – judging by the other user comments – earliest accomplishments by the great visual artist F.W. Murnau ("Nosferatu", "Faust", "Der Januskopf"). Personally I fail to comprehend why it's so obscure and neglected, because I watched an ambitious and even convoluted whodunit/mystery thriller with eerily atmospheric set pieces, intriguing characters and a few nicely elaborated moments of suspense. Okay, first and foremost, the English title is misleading and even downright irrelevant. The titular caste isn't haunted or besieged by ghosts whatsoever. It's merely the gathering place of a selected clique of prominent aristocrats on the evening before they go fox-hunting. The cozy ambiance is disturbed when the uncanny Count Oetsch shows up at the castle uninvited. Oetsch is accused, especially by the widow, of murdering his own brother. His former sister-in-law arrives later at the party, together with her new husband, and tension rises among the group. The countess goes to confession with another guest, namely the honorable Father Faramünd from Rome. When he mysteriously vanishes as well, Count Oetsch is suddenly suspected of two murders, especially since he behaves so arrogantly and strange. "The Haunted Castle" certainly isn't the visually astounding and hypnotizing expressionist masterpiece that "Nosferatu" was. It's more of a straightforward thriller relying on plot instead of Gothic atmosphere and experimental choreography. This movie is, in fact, released one whole decade sooner than it should have been released. The script is overly "talkative" and contains more interruptions to display dialog and descriptions than any other silent movie from that era I have seen. And then still it seems as if Murnau needed more opportunities for text, as too many sequences show characters talking without their conversations being translated in writing. I really think that F.W. Murnau craved for sound technology here, more half a decade before it became possible, to let his characters express themselves and to generate the apt mood. Nevertheless, a more than interesting and warmly recommended piece of antique for cinema fanatics to check out.