Film Review
The comparative obscurity of
The Student of Prague (a.k.a.
Der
Student von Prag) totally belies the fact that it is one of the most
important films to have been made in the silent era. Released in 1913,
it challenges the commonly held view that German expressionism was a product
of the First World War, but more importantly, it laid the foundation for
the entire horror movie genre, with many of the familiar icons and themes
of film horror readily traceable back to this incredibly influential work.
The Student of Prague is also noteworthy in that it was the first
independently produced film to have a significant impact. In any chronological
listing of the world's most important horror films, this should appear right
at the top of the list, made more than half a decade before the film that is often
credited as the first true horror film (and the one that it directly inspired):
Das Cabinet des Dr
Caligari (1920).
The Student of Prague was the result of an improbable collaboration
between three very colourful characters - one of Germany's most prolific writers
of the time, a German stage actor of considerable repute and a Danish playwright
whose burgeoning career would be tragically curtailed by WWI. Paul
Wegener was the project's instigator, a leading actor with Max Reinhardt's
theatre company who had become excited by the possibilities of the new medium
of cinema. For his big screen debut, Wegener enlisted the services
of Hanns Heinz Ewers, a prolific writer, poet and philosopher renowned for
his interest in the supernatural.
The starting point was a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann entitled
Das
verlorene Spiegelbild (
The Lost Reflection) contained in the anthology
Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht (
The Adventures of New Year's
Eve), published in 1814. In developing the scenario for what was
to become
The Student of Prague, Ewers drew on other sources, including
the famous Faust legend, the Edgar Allan Poe story
William Wilson
and Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray. The bleak and
sadistic character of Ewers' writing would be strongly reflected in the final
film, which was unusually pessimistic for its time, with evil for once
triumphing over good. You would never see anything like this in an
American or British film, but then the situation in Germany in the dying
days of its empire was uniquely grim, and would get a lot grimmer as the
decade progressed.
Although Wegener and Ewers undoubtedly had considerable artistic input into
the film, Stellan Rye was its principal director - the first of 16 films
he made in a short but impressive career. At the outbreak of WWI, Rye
was conscripted into the German army and served with distinction on the Western
Front, before sustaining a fatal injury. He died in a French hospital
in November 1914, a prisoner-of-war. Already known for his work as
a playwright and screenwriter, Rye had a keen visual sense which reveals
itself in some of
The Student of Prague's more memorable passages.
The graveyard sequence is particularly creepy, with a spinechilling
Gothic feel that has echoes of so many later horror films.
Another key contributor to the film was Guido Seeber, an important pioneer
of early German cinema who originated and perfected some of the special effects
that would become widely used for decades afterwards. The shots in
which the main protagonist (Wegener, barely convincing as a student) and
his Doppelgänger appear together showcase some of Seeber's most impressive
work and were a major cinematic innovation. This was the first time
a character and his double appeared on screen together, played by the same
actor, through the miracle of split-screen photography. Seeber's deft
handiwork comes into its own for the scene in which the student fails to
cast a reflection in a mirror - how many vampire films used the same effect
subsequently?
The Student of Prague's most significant impact over the decade following
its release was on the emerging horror genre. It was whilst working
on this film that Wegener conceived his next film,
Der Golem (1915),
another important piece in the development of the expressionistic style in
German cinema.
Der Golem sadly no longer exists, but Wegener
later remade it as
Der Golem, wie
er in die Welt kam (1920), the film with which he is now most readily
associated.
The fact that every complete print of
The Student of Prague and
Der
Golem had been lost by the mid-1920s led film historians to attach more
importance to Robert Wiene's
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari than it perhaps
deserves. Wiene's boldly expressionistic film is often cited as the
first horror film, the first monster movie, indeed the first example of German
expressionism in cinema, but it is in fact none of these things. It
owes so much to
The Student of Prague that it comes close to being
a blatant rip-off, and it is indeed a curious thing that
the two lead actors of
Caligari - Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt -
would be rematched in the 1926 remake of this film, directed by Henrik Galeen.
The most flagrant point of connection of
The Student of Prague and
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari is the presence of an identical Satanic
fiend in the guise of a dapper old professor. In the former film, John
Gottowt's Scapinelli fulfils the role of Mephistopheles in the Faust story,
and he is reincarnated almost identically by Werner Krauss as Dr Caligari
in Wiene's later film. The costume is exactly the same - top hat, frock
coat, cravat, spectacles - and both characters carry the same sense of gleeful
malevolence. Not only that, but as the mechanically moving Doppelgänger,
Paul Wegener resembles the sleepwalking fiend Cesare in Wiene's film.
Throughout
Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari, there are scenes that (for
want of a better word) mirror those in
The Student of Prague, and
whilst the stories may differ somewhat, there is an uncanny similarity
between the two films.
The Student of Prague's influence can be clearly seen in other German
expressionistic films, notably F.W. Murnau's
Nosferatu,
eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), where the indelible image of the
vampire stalking the streets of Wisborg evokes the sequence in the earlier
film in which the unfortunate Balduin is relentlessly pursued by his menacing
alter ego. Would Wiene's film be held in quite such high esteem if
Stellan Rye and his debut film had not fallen into obscurity by the mid-1920s?
It was not until the late 1980s that an attempt was made to resurrect Rye's
'lost' film. Now digitally re-mastered and almost completely restored
(only a few minutes are still missing from its original 85 minute runtime),
The Student of Prague has finally awoken like a thing from the tomb,
returned to reclaim its status as cinema's first important horror movie.
This is where all our celluloid nightmares begin...
© James Travers 2016
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Prague, 1820. Balduin enjoys the reputation of the wildest student
and best swordsman in the city but his poverty makes him a miserable soul.
Whilst his friends are happy carousing in a beer garden, he entertains the
company of an old man named Scapinelli, who believes he has the solution
to his problems. That same day, Balduin comes to the rescue of the
Countess Margit whilst she is out riding with her fiancé, Baron Waldis-Schwarzenberg.
The student at once realises he has found the woman of his dreams, but how
can he dare to hope that she will love him in return? As promised,
Scapinelli comes up with the answer. Visiting Balduin in his bare lodgings
that evening, the old man offers him 100,000 gold coins in return for just
one item in the room. The student readily agrees to the contract and,
to his surprise, Scapinelli removes his reflection from a mirror before departing
with it. Balduin wastes no time using his newfound wealth to work his
way into Margit's milieu and it is not long before he is on intimate terms
with her. The student does not know that he has another admirer.
For some time, the penniless street dancer Lydushka has been pursuing him
and, on discovering he loves another woman, she jealously betrays him to
Margit's fiancé. Outraged, the baron challenges the student
to a duel, but, at the insistence of Margit's father, Balduin resolves to
spare his rival's life. Alas, Balduin arrives at the scene of the duel
too late - his reflection has already slain the baron! The poor student's
nightmare is far from over...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.