The German Expressionism movement informed some of the most interesting filmmaking of the early 20th century with it's highly artificial style characterized by exaggerated acting, bizarre sets, and camerawork marked by menacing shadows and weird angles to suggest a world out of kilter—all nicely represented in this boxed set of four silent films. The most important is the granddaddy of them all: Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), the story of a murderous somnambulist controlled by a mad hypnotist—featured here with an excellent restoration that includes the original tinting. Bonuses on this particular disc include an abbreviated version of Wiene's female vampire movie Genuine (1920), behind-the-scenes footage of Wiene, and a gallery of stills, posters, and production sketches. The other films in the collection are Wiene's The Hands of Orlac (1924), about a concert pianist whose hands are amputated after an accident and replaced with those of an executed murderer; Warning Shadows (1923), an interesting experiment by Arthur Robison that foregoes intertitles in telling the story of a traveling puppeteer whose performance at a dinner party inflames the guests' passions; and Secrets of a Soul (1926) by G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), an attempt to dramatize the Freudian interpretation of dreams through a tale of a man tormented by past trauma. All of the transfers are quite good, and the disc with The Hands of Orlac also contains several extras, most notably a comparison between two prints with different takes of various scenes, and the trailer for the Peter Lorre Hollywood remake Mad Love (1935). Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)
German Expressionism Collection
Kino, 4 discs, 348 min., not rated, DVD: $69.95 Volume 23, Issue 3
German Expressionism Collection
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