The Golem (1915 film)

The Golem

Scene from film
Directed by Paul Wegener
Henrik Galeen
Produced by Hanns Lippmann
Written by Paul Wegener
Henrik Galeen
Starring Paul Wegener
Rudolf Blümner
Carl Ebert
Henrik Galeen
Lyda Salmonova
Release dates
  • 15 January 1915
Running time
 60 min.
Country German Empire
Language Silent
German intertitles

Der Golem (German: Der Golem, shown in the USA as The Monster of Fate) is a 1915 silent horror film written and directed by Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen. It is inspired by ancient Jewish legend. It is the first of a trilogy by Wegener, followed by The Golem and the Dancing Girl (1917) and The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920). David Brooks, writing as a columnist for Minnesota Daily, said the film "deals with the tragic issues in life."

Plot

In modern times, an antiques dealer (Henrik Galeen) finds a golem (Paul Wegener), a clay statue brought to life by a rabbi four centuries earlier. The dealer resurrects the golem as a servant, but the golem falls in love with the dealer's wife. As she does not return his love, the golem commits a series of murders.

Preservation status

The Deutsche Kinemathek film archive possesses "108 meter fragments".[1] While many sources consider it a lost film, silentera.com states that a "print exists",[2] and Professor Elizabeth Baer notes in her book The Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction that Donald Glut claimed in The Frankenstein Legend that "European film collector" Paul Sauerlaender tracked down "a complete print" in 1958; Baer is careful, however, to point out that "Glut provides no source for this information."[3]

See also

The Golem, a soundtrack written and performed by Black Francis at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival for the 1920 film The Golem: How He Came into the World.

References

  1. ↑ "Der Golem". Deutsche Kinemathek. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  2. ↑ "Der Golem". silentera.com. Retrieved March 27, 2013.
  3. ↑ Baer, Elizabeth R. (April 16, 2012). The Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction. Wayne State University Press. p. 196. ISBN 9780814336274.

External links