The root of all evil? Alraune (1928) with Stephen Horne and Martin Pyne, Barbican

So good to be back at the Barbican for a rare silent screening and with expertly inspired accompaniment from the two-man band of Horne and Pyne: four hands, ten instruments?

Directed with sure-footed competence more than style by Henrik Galeen, Alraune doesn’t rank with the best of Weimar cinema but it is still a very interesting film and one I’ve always wanted to see projected with live accompaniment. There are long passages when little happens but human interactions and the music sustained the film in these quieter moments. Variously known as Unholy Love, Mandrake, or A Daughter of Destiny, Alraune is missing a few key segments and again the accompaniment stepped in to offer thematic uplifts as well as emotional context throughout.

The music was eloquently varied, featuring more than just the duo’s prime instruments of drum and piano. Martin’s vibraphone, played with bow as well as soft mallets, lead the line in plaintive and eerie interplay with Stephen’s piano and as the two switched instruments they worked superbly well in support of the events on screen. There was magic in the air on and off.

On screen the magic stemmed from the Germanic Middle Age legend of the Mandrake root (the Alraune of the title), which – and listen carefully here - if left to absorb a hanged man’s “essence” in the ground under his execution, was capable of giving life either by enabling pregnancies or helping witches produce children without the aid of a living sperm donor. Such progeny were said to have no souls and sound far more trouble than they’re worth but, you know, there’s always someone ready to give it a go: to mess with Nature.

First of all, find a hanging man.

Step forward our mad scientist for the day, former Golem of this parish, Paul Wegener who plays Professor Jakob ten Brinken who has become interested in the nature versus nurture debate and this has somehow led him onto the legend of the root. By using the mandrake, he hopes to engineer a human being in order to establish “whether the parents’ genetic make-up, has a purely random effect on the offspring.” Can he create something pure and free from hereditary conditioning? I think you know where this is heading.

The professor grows the Mandrake as required and gets his nephew Franz Braun (Iván Petrovich) to help him find a lady of the “lowest order” - Die Dirne (The Whore) played by Mia Pankau - to act as the incubation chamber for the new being. Just as the woman arrives at the Professor’s apartments, turning in shock to see him emerge in white coat, the film jumps forward almost two decades… some sense lost through censoring perhaps?

Oh, mother... Mia Pankau

Alraune ten Brinken (Brigitte Helm) is the fully grown experiment, now at boarding school and is first seen toying with fly as it attempts to escape from a glass of water, she reaches out, not to rescue but to push it back; not the behaviour of a well-educated young woman. There is more to come as she leads her classmates into acts of rebellion, she dances, wears cologne and plants a stage beetle on the mother superior’s robes.

Clearly Alraune has out-grown school and to facilitate her escape has lured a young man, Wölfchen (Wolfgang Zilzer) into loving her: he is to steal money from his family and they are to run away. Once on their train to freedom she orders champagne and starts flirting with a likely lad who spies her from the corridor. Wölfchen tries to fight him off but there’s to be no respite as a troop of circus performers join the train. Alraune is immediately impressed by the magician’s sleight of hand especially when in one sexually obvious moment he lets a mouse run up her skirt; she leans back and looks him straight in the eye when even Bad Maria might think twice.

Paul Wegener and Brigitte Helm

At the circus things move on and Alraune is seen sharing a cigarette with the lion tamer (Louis Ralph) standing so close that she can light his fire with her own as it were. Chided for her wanton troublesome-ness Alraune walks into the lions’ cage challenging the beasts to come and have a go if they think they’re cat enough. The animals don’t move until the Tamer rushes in with his whip.

So, a heartbreaker with nerves of steel and a twisted sado-masochistic streak… is this what the Professor wanted to find out? How would a woman born from the human stew of a prostitute, a murderer and the mysterious root vegetable work out?

He’ll soon be able to find out as he finally catches up on his “daughter” after years of searching. He whisks her off to polite society where she plays tennis with Der Vicomte (handsome John Loder out of The First Born) who soon proposes… But, he’s not the only man to have fallen for Alraune and the Professor blackmails her into staying under his “care”.

He's behind you... 

From this point one it’s a battle between the scientist and his creation and we all know how those usually turn out or do we? The film has more than a few tricks and turns up its sleeve … there’s an irony in the impact of the Professor’s own true “nature” on the “nurture” of his subject perhaps?

 Alraune is worth watching purely for Brigitte Helm’s performance alone. I love her physicality and dancer’s contortions: she seems almost too frail to be an evil thing and yet there’s considerable strength behind her movement as the Professor will find out. She has the range too and whilst it’s fun to watch her evil contortions we also see hints of a growing humanity… or do we? Paul Wegener is pretty good too, mad science-ing with consummate abandon and obsessing intensely about his creation, Frankenstein with a mid-life crisis and unrealistic expectations.

But, as with all the very best silent film screenings, it was the mix of film, music – excellent audience! – and, of course this wonderful venue! There’s more to come at the Barbican in the New Year and here’s to more screenings like this!!

Details on the Barbican website!