Five fingers of fear... Eerie Tales (1919), BFI with Stephen Horne

This was my twenty third Weimar screening of the year in which Europe celebrated its centenary from Kennington, to Cambridge and Bologna to Pordenone via a superb season at the BFI in the early Summer. I’d even seen Claudio Macor’s new play, Different From the Others based on Richard Oswald’s ground-breaking film of the same name and featuring a cast of young performers interpreting the roles of the Weimar superstars, Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schünzel and Anita Berber, a woman who loved life and narcotics all too much but who inspired so many. Eerie Tales (aka Uncanny Stories or Unheimliche Geschichten) was made directly after and featured the same three stars.

For today’s screening we had our own Weimar dream team, with an informed and entertaining introduction from Veidtspert Miranda Gower-Qian and accompaniment from Stephen Horne. Miranda explained the background to the film in the theatre of Max Reinhardt with all three leads well-established in theatre and cabaret. Veidt was already renowned as The Walking Cadaver whilst Berber was a huge and outrageously successful cabaret star, the three knew each other well and, as Miranda said, there’s a sense of familiarity and playfulness informing the film which helps to compensate for its limited budget and the fact that there remain missing segments even after the restoration.

Richard Oswald had already directed a number of literary adaptations (his second name taken in tribute to a character from Ibsen's Ghosts) as well as horror films and the episodic opera Tales of Hoffman before he came to Eerie Tales. The film features five stories all framed by a sequence in an antiquarian bookshop in which paintings of The Devil (Schünzel), Death (Veidt) and a Strumpet (Berber), become animated after closing time and relax by leafing through the stock for the most sinister stories.

The Apparition by Anselma Heine

Here Veidt plays a man who rescues a woman (Berger) from the violent attentions of her former husband (Schünzel). No matter where they go the deranged man follows and the two soon fall under each other’s spell: hero and rescued damsel. They take rooms in a hotel and the woman, feeling unwell retires early… the man goes downstairs to enjoy some after dinner drinks and, returning with un-chivalrous intent in the early hours, he finds her room not just empty but cleared of all furniture and with the walls scorched bare… What madness can this be? The answer is still shocking.

Schünzel clearly relishes the chance to extend his flexible features as the spurned husband – his face contorted by the madness of rejection.

The Hand by Robert Liebmann

It’s Veidt’s turn to show his uncanny expressiveness in the second segment. He and Schünzel are in competition over Anita again and, like gentlemen, they agree to throw dice for her. Schünzel throws a ten but Veidt responds with an improbably eleven – to the winner the spoils! But things don’t quite work that way as the sore loser throttles the victor who falls dead, his hand twisted by the desperate final struggle.

The cheat takes advantage of the girl’s grief but if he thinks he’s in the clear he has another thing coming…

This section gives us a precious glimpse of Anita Berber performing on stage as Schünzel’s character looks on before seeing a ghostly Veidt stage left. Berber has arguably the least to do in Eerie Tales (she dies twice which is unfortunate) but the trained dancer carries herself well and brings a cabaret cutting edge to proceedings: she knows where the next whiskey bar is alright and much more besides.

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

Next up is a classic from the man who may well have invented both the detective and horror genres: The Godfather of Ghoul anyone? Once again, our three are caught in a love triangle and as the debonair Conrad sweeps in to win the maid, Schünzel snuffs out the object of attraction whilst at the same time throwing her precious pet cat against the wall.

Veidt smells a rat but the police are baffled: yet how many lives does a cat actually have. As usual with Poe it’s the very matter-of-factness of his narrative that evokes the greatest chill…

The Suicide Club by Robert Louis Stevenson

Oswald brings a consistent creepiness to all of these stories not just through his use of the same actors but through his expressive visuals and – forced - economy. This tale of a most unusual gentleman’s club is given considerable spin by Veidt’s unnerving turn as the titular club president but the director’s eye for detail has him use repeated motifs of playing cards and an expressionist ticking clock to ramp up an unnatural tension before Stevenson’s more conventionally heroic tale twists its way through.

The Haunting by Richard Oswald

The last tale is written by the director and is the lightest: perhaps he wanted to send his audience away with a spring in their step after the preceding death and disturbance. The intertitles are in verse and the cast dressed in fairy tale garb for the story of an injured knight who takes advantage of his host’s generosity by making merry with his wife. Schünzel plays the bawdy Baron and Anita Berber gets her chance to shine as the girl who can hardly say no. Her husband (Veidt) decides to teach both a lesson and mild amusement ensues… with tension maintained by three far from straight faces!

Stephen Horne matched Oswald’s tones with his usual array of instrumentation and clearly relished throwing gothic chords in the more extreme moments as well as laying down uncanny themes on accordion and flute.

Eerie Tales is clearly a staging post between the major works of Weimar gothic but it’s very entertaining and with a sold out NFT 2, clearly a popular choice in a year in which the BFI has programmed boldly from this era and hopefully seen the returns. Here’s to more in 2020!

Anita dances