Wind and wuthering… Chronicles of the Grey House (1925), with Cyrus Gabrysch, BFI Weimar Cinema

If you’re looking for the Lil Dagover/Kate Bush connection, step right this way. This film was atypical for the Weimar period in being filmed on location and we’re rewarded with magnificent shots of harsh Prussian heathland that kept on reminding me of the Yorkshire moors north of Haworth. To cap it all we also have a ghostly Lil returning to help her Heathcliff, in this case Lord Hinrich, wearing a long flowing dress and waving her arms expressively… although you couldn’t be sure, she may have been singing, “it’s me, your Bärbe, I’ve come home…”

Others have looked further north for comparisons, with Lotte Eisner seeing the film as “full of the poetry of the Swedish open-air…” and British critic, Tony Rayns describing the influenced of Stiller and, presumably Sjostrom, differentiating director Arthur von Gerlach’s style from Lang’s “architectural” cinema or Wegener’s “theatrical”.

Wild and windy moors...

That said, The Chronicles of the Grey House may well be the most melodramatic of the films I’ve seen in the BFI’s Weimar season but it is also one of the best-looking; there’s plenty of the big sky over Luneberger Heath. Von Gerlach directs the extreme emotions so well within the context of his shots, with interior action interwoven with complex lighting and design whilst cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner’s exterior shots use dynamic angles to emphasise the character’s setting and mood.

Based on Theodor Storm’s novel A Chapter in the History of Grieshuus, Thea von Harbou crafted a screenplay that pulls no punches in terms of the dramatic effects of fate and fortune on its characters. It’s the kind of film where a legal notice can trigger imminent death or even a chance remark about your inheritance and yet where even a knife to the chest won’t kill a man with right on his side, not immediately at any rate!

Dramatic framing in the old grey house

Set in a seventeenth century feudal community, the story revolves around the battle to inherit the land and fortune of Burgherr von Grieshuus (Arthur Kraußneck). His favoured son, Hinrich (Paul Hartmann), is handsome, good-hearted, brave and has great hair whilst his brother, Detlev (Rudolf Forster) is, as his father says, a “pen pusher”, sneaky and clearly a stranger to conditioner; his locks are lank and greasy.

Hinrich loves a peasant girl, Bärbe (Lil Dagover) who lives in a humble cottage, working hard on her crops; this woman’s work is never done. A group of ruffians attack her small-holding and Hinrich, after what feels like an eternity stuck in the dreaming, rides to the rescue with his hounds of love – the family crest is a hunting dog and these are like very large dalmatians – routing the rag-taggle band with Fairbanksian good humour.

He takes Bärbe back to the Hall where she can live under his protection but he wants more even though, as a serf, she is completely inappropriate and his father just cannot allow it. The young lord refuses to put his foot on the heart-brake and the baron rips up his will in front of him – there’s a thin line between love and anger after all.

Lil Dagover and Paul Hartmann

Brother Detlev arrives with his grabby new wife, Gesine (a malevolent Gertrude Welcker) and tries to get his father’s assurance about his inheritance. Von Grieshuus is having none of it and assures his worthless offspring that he’ll have to wait a very long time to cash in on his wealth… whereupon, he promptly has a heart attack and collapses. Just don’t count your chickens eh?

The Baron dead intestate, there begins an increasingly desperate squabble between Detlev and Hinrich over which of them should inherit.  Lacking moral or physical courage, Detlev tries to use the law to outwit his brother and after Hinrich and Bärbe marry, he tries to get her to declare the marriage void as her low-birth would render him a serf, just like her (although, presumably this would be a good thing for the sneaky weasel?). Bärbe is heavily pregnant and falls seriously ill when confronted by Detlev’s dodgy document.

Lank-haired Rudolf Forster and Gertrude Welcker

Hinrich is enraged and is next seen running up that hill to confront his scheming sibling, with tragic consequences all round… But, as with Emily Bronte’s book, there’s redemption to come after life as this is not the last we see of Bärbe.

It’s a very highly-strung story that shifts into a higher dramatic gear after the early fun and ends up with an operatic, Germanic romantic ending.

There are some great set pieces, notably a confrontation between the newly-weds and the usurpers in the local church; the Lord and Lady of the manor are placed on a raised balcony with grand staircase, in an unlikely representation of their position – much higher even than the priest at his pew, the locals looking up at their betters in a building that looks like it has grown up out of the soil… Art and set designer Robert Herlth had worked on The Last Laugh the year before and art director Hans Poelzig had done the same for Der Golem.

Lil Dagover is a class act throughout, her eyes just huge with emotion and so very bright: enough to give the film crew reflected “Klieg eyes”. She’s also a very impressive physical actor as you’d expect from someone who has been flung over Conrad Veidt’s shoulder so often (Caligari’s proto hammer horror); no one faints quite like Lil and no one drapes themselves unconsciously out of a bed so convincingly! She brings the heart to this tale and, as the peasant girl stuck in the middle of two rich boys quarrelling over money, she has our sympathy.

At the end she saves the man with the child in his eyes, with her eyes… but that’s enough Kate Bush isn’t it?

Art direction from Der Golem and Der letzte Mann alumni

Cyrus Gabrysch accompanied having not seen the film before but was right on mood as soon as the gothic credits started to run. Cyrus’ playing matched the rhythms of the narrative with powerful romantic flourishes and a game of narrative tag with the film unfolding just over the lid of his piano: it’s pass and move in soccer terms, always giving the strikers on screen the chance to score.

Plenty of moments of pleasure so far in the BFI’s Weimar Cinema season with a lot more to come – details on their website!