Der Golem, wie er in die welt kam - 1920

I didn’t like it. It was interesting, specially from a scholar’s point of view, but I didn’t like it. I thought it was boring and annoying. Visually there were interesting scenes indeed, specially the house, but I didn’t like the story. 

The story in details:

Chapter 1

A rabbi sees in the stars that something terrible is about to hit their community, and soon enough there is the order that every jew must leave their homes, leave the ghetto, the judenstadt, and go away. Rabbi makes a golem, believing that it will save his people. 

The emperor, the kaiser, sends a count to deliver the news. He’s incredibly smug, in fancy clothes, white horse, even with a flower in his mouth... the big door is opened for him so he can enter the ghetto, and he flirts with the rabbi’s daughter.

Chapter 2

The golem is made. The count comes with a new message and then flirts some more with the girl - it seemed quite a sensual scene I didn’t expect to see in a silent movie, with the two of them breathing heavily and touching each other’s hearts... but I often forget that they seemed to be more free in the 20s than in the 50s/60s.

The emperor accepts to see the rabbi. The rabbi tells his daughter that she’ll soon have a guard, and then he finishes the golem, putting an amulet on his chest, with a word that gives it life, the shem.

The golem is now alive as long as he wears it.  To do that the rabbi read a necromancy book on how to give life to the dead or to inanimate objects: if you know the right spell you can force Astaroth to tell you the right word, when planets are in the right way... so he does the spell, there’s a circle of smoke and a green light, flying flames all around, and he calls Astaroth. A big, smoke-breathing-face appears, only the face, and the demon reveals the word. The rabbi writes Aemaet and puts it inside the amulet and then on the golem, and it finally opens its eyes, and moves.

The golem pushes the assistant on the floor, so the rabbi takes the amulet away for now.

Chapter 3

The golem is working as a servant, they need to explain it what to do and it does it: chopping wood, going shopping making everyone scared... whatever.

The rabbi goes to see the emperor taking the golem with him. The daughter exchanges secret messages with the count, who sneaks out to go meet her while her father is at the court festival.

Everyone’s open-mouthed-scared at seeing the golem, but then a girl gives it a flower. The rabbi shows them images, illusions, for them to better understand his people. 

He asks the emperor not to laugh or speak while he’s working his illusions, but he does and with him everyone else. The place starts breaking but the golem won’t let them out, and some of them try to escape jumping off the window. The roof is coming down on them, and the emperor promises to show leniency with his people if he saves him, so the rabbi calls the golem and it holds the roof up over their heads. 

Chapter 4

The rabbi goes home, tells the people they are safe now. His daughter wakes up in bed with the count. The golem won’t let the rabbi take away the amulet now, he seems angry, but also slow and the rabbi manages to get it. 

Now the rabbi reads more about what he did, and it says to be careful because if you give life to something then one day Astaroth will claim it back and it will bring death and destruction...

His servant goes to call Miriam, and he’s waiting outside her room when he hears a male voice, and he’s so jealous because he wanted her for himself, so he activates the golem again. 

The count tries to fight but of course he can’t kill a man made of clay, so he can only run. The golem reaches him and throws him off the tower, killing him. 

Miriam faints, the golem sets the house on fire, fighting off the servant who now wants to take the amulet off. 

Chapter 5

The golem takes the girl away by the hair; the servant goes to warn the others about the fire.

Everyone’s looking at the rabbi to save them, to do a spell against the fire or else they’ll die... :-/ not one of them actually trying to do anything though :-/

The rabbi does, and then he finds Miriam alive. The servant promises to keep her secret if only she forgives him. 

The golem goes out of the ghetto, and all the children run away scared, only a little child stays behind and gives him a gift - an apple?

The golem lifts the child up and the child takes the amulet. The golem falls backwards, now inanimate.

They thank God who saved them for the third time in a day and bring the golem inside.

The end

:-/

I loved the shot of the cat walking on a roof at the beginning, the inside of the house, a few scenes visually interesting.

ITA il golem, come venne al mondo

Nosferatu eine symphonie des grauens - 1921

Well, obviously it looks so old, and the story has been represented so many times that it can’t surprise anybody anymore, so the scary-effect is now lost, but in 1921 or 22 it must have been something! The shots were very good, pity I didn’t like the actor playing Hutter the husband (Gustav v. Wangenheim), but the women playing his wife Ellen (Greta Schroeder) and Ruth, rich Harding’s sister (Ruth Landshoff) were better, and Nosferatu was very effective - Count Orlok=Max Schreck. It must have been something, this tall figure so pale, appearing and disappearing, coming out of the coffin all stiff with his white hands with long long fingers, his shadow approaching slowly... that was the best part of course. Very effective, all the scenes with Count Orlok were truly impressive. 
The story is obviously based on Dracula, although he had to change all the names because, as I read on the internet, he couldn’t get the rights to Dracula, and was later sued by Stoker’s heirs and lost. 
A real horror movie in 1921, one hour and a half with a complex story, well developed plot, all very interesting and well done, I can clearly see why director Murnau made history. 
The story:
Set in Wisborg in 1838. Real estate agent Knock reads a letter from Count Orlok, from Transylvania: he wants to buy a house here, so he sends young Hutter to arrange the deal, and to offer him the house in front of his own. Hutter calls Transylvania the land of thieves and spirits, or ghosts, I don’t remember exactly, and his wife Ellen is so worried for this long journey that she goes to stay with their friend Harding and his sister. She cries and hugs him as if he was going to war.
Hutter reaches the place, and in the village everybody falls silent when he names Orlok, and they refuse to take him to the house itself. 
Count Orlok appears to be rather eccentric, he sleeps during the day and they can only talk before sunset; when Hutter cuts himself while slicing a loaf of bread, Orlok sucks his finger totally shocking him. He then falls asleep and wakes up to find two small wounds on his neck, and writes to Ellen to say that the place is full of insects. When he meets Orlok again to talk business, the count sees a picture of Ellen and says she has a beautiful neck, and yes he’ll take that isolated house right in front of his own...
Ellen has terrible nightmares and sleepwalks. Hutter has nightmares too, and searches the place for Orlok, and finds him sleeping in a coffin, whose lid is broken and he can see the face. Hutter is locked inside and sees outside Orlok loading coffins full of earth on his carriage, and then he lays in the last one and goes away. Hutter tries to escape but hurts himself and is cured at a hospital (I guess, or some place anyway). While loading the coffins, a sailor opens one of them finding it full of earth and rats and is bit by one.
Knock is locked up in an asylum, talking about his Master and eating spiders..
Aboard the ship that is transporting Orlok, the men die one after the other. It is believed to be the Pest, but it’s Orlok killing them all. The scene when a sailor went down to the coffin, and saw him appearing and disappearing, and then saw him rise up all stiff with those hands.. it’s a great scene, I guess it must be real horror back then. 
As soon as Hutter is well enough he leaves to go back home. They get to Wisborg roughly at the same time. We see Nosferatu carrying again his own coffin full of the earth in which he was buried and that he needs to maintain his power. A powerful image, no man could carry it as if it was as light as a feather. Ellen reads about Nosferatu in the book Hutter brought with him: it says that the only way to stop him is if a pure girl offers him her blood so to make him forget the sunrise. 
Eventually she does just that, at the cost of her own life, and he’s still in her room when the sun rises, and disappears leaving only smoke behind. From that moment the ‘pest’ stopped making victims....
I saw a version made in 2005/6, restored by “L’immagine ritrovata”-Bologna, combining various versions available: a French 1922 copy, a Czechoslovakian 1920s copy, a 1930s copy, and a copy from 1939 kept in the Berlin archives. That is if I understood everything correctly..
ITA Nosferatu op. Nosferatu il vampiro