BUY

General		Extras
Category	Horror	Menu Audio and Animation Gallery - Photos, Ads, Arts Featurette - Genuine: A Vampire's Tale Audio Commentary - Mike Budd (film scholar)
Rating
Year Released	1919
Running Time	71:38 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Robert Wiene
Studio Distributor	Decla Film-Gesellschaft Force Video	Starring	Werner Krauss Conrad Veidt Friedrich Feher  Lil Dagover Hans Heinz von Twardowski
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$32.95	Music

    The story is set in the small town of Holstenwall, where a fair is being held. One of the exhibitors is the mysterious Dr Caligari (Werner Krauss) whose show is the presentation of a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt), supposedly in the midst of a sleep that has lasted for twenty three years. The act is to raise the somnambulist to answer questions asked by the crowd. When a man who asks a rather simple question - "when am I going to die?" - is given an answer that says by dawn the next day, obvious suspicions are aroused when he is actually found murdered the next morning. This is the second mysterious murder to blight the town during the tenure of the fair. Turns out of course that Dr Caligari has the somnambulist under his control. Under the blanket of night, and by wearing darkened clothing, the somnambulist is able to wander the town murdering his victims almost at will - at least until his target is a beautiful young woman (Lil Dagover). The townsfolk think they have the case solved when her murder is averted by dint of the vigilance and enthusiasm of them. Naturally, despite the fact that one enthusiastic fellow (Friedrich Feher) has spent the night watching Dr Caligari's caravan and seen "Cesare" lying in his cabinet all night, Cesare is proven to be the felon. However, the film is blessed with a substantial twist at the end and for first time viewers...well perhaps you best watch the film without anything further being said.

   There is no denying that the twist comes as a substantial jolt to the viewer, for otherwise this looks to be a very simple story that predictably proceeds towards an inevitable conclusion. That in itself is enough to make the film a cut above the norm, but when you see the Expressionist settings used in the film, this becomes a very unique film. With all sorts of weird perspectives, distorted angles (check out Dr Caligari's caravan for instance) and just about anything else that could assault the normal perception, this is visually one of the most amazing films ever. Whether it works or not is very much a personal taste, though. The acting is the usual hammy style that we expect from early silent films, and the female of the film goes about with her eyes looking as if they have had the eyelids surgically removed, so big are the whites. Marty Feldman would have been normal-eyed compared to this!

    Apparently Fritz Lang was approached to direct the film, but in the end Robert Wiene was given the task and produced what some consider to be a masterpiece. A masterpiece I might add that he never managed to attain anywhere near again. Given the stature of Fritz Lang's work, it would have been interesting to see what he did with the film, for I cannot help but feel that the masterpiece tag applied to the film is not due to the direction per se, but rather due to the uniqueness of the presentation.

   Whilst I would not be willing to suggest that this is a masterpiece, and I certainly do not agree with the current voting on the Internet Movie Database, there is certainly little doubt that this is visually a different animal to just about every other film ever made. I personally do not have much good to say about the Expressionist setting, but appreciate that it was an experiment that ultimately has not been repeated often, if at all, and certainly was pretty much a failure in trying to subvert the narrative reality of film that we have all taken for granted over the last ninety years or so. If you are into experimentation in film, then this is an essential acquisition. However, there is something to be said about the presentation that does command all to have a gander at this film at least once. You may not enjoy the experience but you certainly cannot ignore it either.

Video

    There are still obvious limitations in a film of this age and these limitations are shown in abundance. Once again, this is a slightly inconsistent transfer, with some segments that are quite sharp and well-defined, and others that are quite diffuse and poorly defined. Overall, this is a decent enough transfer for the age of the material, which is actually a restoration done in 1996 - which certainly accounts for the generally better-than-expected transfer. Overall detail is a little variable, although this also reflects the rather flat Expressionistic settings provided for the film. Shadow detail is slightly better than expected although still little more than adequate. The main issue here is that there seems to be something of a plague of grain in the transfer at times that does get a little bothersome just once or twice. This is not an especially clear transfer, although again perhaps no worse than could be expected in a transfer of this age.

    This transfer is described as tinted, and a rather nice looking tint it is, too. Thankfully it has been kept to just three or four tint colours, a least as far as I can ascertain, with each tint colour sort of indicating the nature of the scene. The underlying black and white film is quite good with a reasonable degree of definition in the colour scales.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer, nor did there appear to be any significant film-to-video artefacts. However, as is to be expected there are film artefacts galore on display here, ranging from small white dirt marks to dirty great white splodges. To say they at times were somewhat distracting is perhaps understating the situation by a factor of about ten. The film is blessed with substantial amounts of jitter and wobble, but these all seem to be original camera movement and not introduced by the transfer process.

    The transfer is also blessed with a significant black line across the top of the picture for much of the film. From what I was able to find out, this is common to some prints of the film and is the result of sprocket misalignment in the original transfer process. Rather than chopping off the image to hide the flaw, it has been rather obviously left in situ, so that a full image transfer can be presented. Whilst quite obvious and occasionally downright annoying, its presence is better than losing up to 15% of the image through matting. It should also be pointed out that according to the Internet Movie Database, this transfer probably comes from a 1923 German re-issue that is presented at the correct speed of 18 frames per second.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Since it is a silent film we have all the lack of dialogue and audio sync that anyone can handle.

    The original music score is uncredited as far as I could ascertain from the DVD. It is a fairly typical silent movie soundtrack for a film of this type, even if done somewhat later than the film itself, but as suggested I found the presentation to be somewhat grating. The music is rather banal really, but not unexpected for this sort of film of the era.

    Thankfully the soundtrack does not seem to have any major problems at all apart from the slight edginess in the violin strings in the upper range. There is of course no surround channel nor bass channel use here at all.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Gallery - Photos, Ads, Art

Featurette - Genuine: A Vampire's Tale

Audio Commentary - Mike Budd (film scholar)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
21st December 2000