Schloß Vogeloed
Die Enthüllung eines Geheimnisses
The lovely,
intricate German of the titles bespeaks a lovely, intricate film.
A hunting party,
a widow since remarried.
“The art of
prophecy learned in India,” question of a shot fired on this occasion, or
two.
Disappearance
of the lady’s monkish confessor (“The Revelation of a
Secret”).
“Träume”, a
terrible hand at the window, the good Father suffering little children.
The late husband
had become abstemious to the point of renunciation and otherworldliness.
A certain Count
thought to have killed him, his brother, Count Oetsch.
“Did you ever murder someone,” he asks at breakfast, explaining, “last night I dreamed such a thing.”
The new husband,
a Baron, is accused.
Return of the
monkish confessor. The Baroness’s horror at her late husband’s
sanctity, her longing for wickedness, even murder (the poor man is amazed).
A
malentendu.
Marizza, genannt die Schmuggler-Madonna
The first reel only
is extant, in Italian.
The gypsy girl, loved by a scion of good family out at heels betrothed
“of necessity” to the daughter of an usuraio...
A customs officer
(doganiere)
fancies Marizza, she might be useful to the smugglers...
For her part, she
would over the hills and far away...
Nosferatu
The succinctness
of the Dracula legend is in the stake-and-mallet. Murnau initiates more
fulsomely the series, dare one say, with a more fluent analysis that is
essentially a joke partaking of Pandora and Scheherazade. Its comic
possibilities bubble over at once in simple naïve health and good high spirits,
the theme is worked insistently to a high point of horror that is never far
from the strands of comedy laid out at the very outset.
Hitchcock
transformed the entire work religiously on a “bloodsucker” line as Jamaica
Inn, a major analysis. Robert Wise hews more closely to the center lines of
Murnau’s film in his mounting of The Andromeda Strain. Somewhere
very mysteriously floats a most arcane insight, Denison Clift’s The
Mystery of the Marie Celeste.
Der brennender Acker
Tabu, the Devil’s Ground is an unsuspected field
of oil.
The
farmer’s son goes beyond himself, marries the Countess, overhearing the
geological reports.
The Count’s
daughter loves him, so does the maid.
The farm he
despised is his home after all.
Rohmer
substantially underwrote the reconstruction with its honey-colored and ice-blue
tintings, occasionally rose or charcoal or fire-orange.
Die Finanzen des Großherzogs
Grand Duke Ramon
XXII, ruler of Abacco, a Mediterranean isle.
There is a rather
keen resemblance to Satyajit Ray’s Jalsaghar in several aspects.
“A very
respectable public debt” (einer sehr respektablen Staatsschuld) must be paid, Punta Hermosa might be sold
for a sulfur mine (“niemals,” says the conscientious Grand Duke, thinking
of his people), Grand Duchess Olga of Russia loves him, there are questions of
scandal involving a circus rider and assiduous blackmail and so forth, the
sulfur magnate underwrites a revolution, a successful marriage would save the
economy à la Lubitsch, making Abacco notes a very good investment, meanwhile Murnau goes
on filming delightfully around his Mediterranean locations, delightedly.
Der letzte
Mann
He is always with
us, the last man, keeper of the door,
creating with children a softer, kinder world. Here we see him stripped of his
rank and duties and reduced to a beautician’s task in The Atlantic
washroom, but all is well, a millionaire dies in his arms, a fortune befalls
him.
Readers of Poetry, take note.
Murnau’s
genius is to draw the last ounce of tragedy from this, and Mayer’s, and
Jannings’.
Truffaut noted
the camaraderie with Welles, but Welles saw it first.
Herr Tartüff
Carl Mayer and
Murnau on one of the high number of hypocrites there are and no-one notices,
Molière’s religionist.
A particularly
intimate view, in Murnau’s happy filming.
A
masterpiece of masterpieces that appears out of the mists of time in a
contemporary Berlin domicile.
A theory of
cinema, among other things (a theory of criticism, for instance), the film
within the film, projected by a disinherited actor (Lil Dagover, Werner Krauß,
Emil Jannings).
Of course, this
bears directly on Schloß Vogeloed.
Orgon, whose wife’s tears fall upon his picture in
the locket she wears about her neck, deceived.
And they’re
all named Tartuffe, says the actor.
Faust
A long
extrapolation from the Book of Job, like Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Murnau assigns the credit to the
people.
“Und es war ein Geschrey in gantzen
Aegyptenland.” Virgin Spring
notes the popular discomfort, just as Bergman earlier in Crisis reflects on the form. There are several places in The Twilight Zone where Mephisto
appears, “Escape Clause” and “The Howling Man”, for
example.
The
“one-day trial offer” stretches into infinity. Œdipus Rex and Camus’ Etat de siège are indicated in the cause.
There are a lot
of etchings, and some of them are by Rembrandt. Browning’s
“Apparent Failure” has the same idea of looking to the source.
Grünewald’s
The Temptation of St. Anthony is
cited more than once, and for all one knows may have inspired Hindemith to his
opera.
The point being,
against Job’s or Faust’s despair, “You had a father; let your
son say so.”
Murnau does what
he wants, not what he must. The opening suggests a sire to Terry Gilliam.
The 1995 version
with its excellent score contains a significant error in the English titles
amid various solecisms. “Man belongs to God!” will not translate
“Der Mensch ist gut: Sein Geist
strebt nach der Wahrheit!”
Sunrise
The disaster of a
farm girl with a doltish husband nearly costs her life, but they’ve been
to the city in the end, a place of amusements.
Mordaunt Hall pronounced it a film masterpiece in the New York Times.
A film of mainly cinematic prerogatives, long
before Fellini and Cinecittà.
“Manages
to remain picturesquely soporific for a long evening,” said Time,
if one can believe it.
City Girl
Nobody loves America
like F.W. Murnau, the first half of City
Girl is one of the great works of American cinema.
“I got some
surprise for you! Lem’s went and married a city girl!”
Legendarily, he walked
off the set, an assistant director is supposed to have finished the picture per
instructions. It took a long time to finish, by way of King Vidor’s Our Daily Bread, Elia Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass, and John
Cassavetes’ A Woman under the
Influence.
Tabu
The
Murnau-Flaherty joke on a pearl of great price who has to be paid for all the
way.
Et ego in
Arcadia, filmed in Tahiti lest any
should miss the point.