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

Richard Oswald's house of horror... Uncanny Stories (1919)

From the enduringly-disturbing Dead of Night (1945) through to the Hammer comic-thrillers Tales from the Crypt (1972) and Vault of Horror (1973) I’ve always liked horror compilations: short-sharp shocks featuring tales of the mildly unexpected with enough time to develop an idea without over-staying its welcome. Most horror films lose their impact after the scene setting or maybe I just don’t like long drawn out un-pleasantries which have increasingly relied upon prescribed physical shocks for visceral impact.

The same is true of the genre in fiction and from the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Robert Louis Stevenson onwards, horror has been a dish best served in controlled portions. That way, even if the entrée fails to excite the pallet there is always the main course left… and maybe just desserts…

Reinhold Schünzel, Richard Oswald and Conrad Veidt

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 Uncanny Stories or Eerie Tales (Unheimliche Geschichten) in 1919. He made the film directly after Different from the Others and, whilst he may have wanted a simpler project, he took two of that film’s main performers for this project, rubber-faced Reinhold Schünzel and the angular Conrad Veidt. They were joined by Anita Berber who was just 19 at the time and already no stranger herself to the outer limits of Weimar self-expression… (she was posthumously described as the "Devil's spawn" by Adolf Hitler: well, he’d know…)

Anita Berber

A small but perfectly formed cast for these five tales of mystery and the imagination…

The stories are framed by a sequence in an antiquarian bookshop in which The Devil (Schünzel), Death (Veidt), minus his horse Binky… and a Strumpet (Berber), animated after closing time from oil paintings on the wall, relax by leafing through the stock for the most sinister stories.

 The Apparition by Anselma Heine

Reinhold Schünzel

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

Conrad Veidt

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…

The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

Three's a crowd...

Next up is a classic from the man who may well have invented both the detective and horror genres: The Godfather of Ghoul anyone? (With apologies to James Brown….)

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 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…

I watched a copy of the 2002 restoration which was aired on ARTE which is a little better than the version on YouTube… The film is now available on DVD from Amazon.de but with German intertitles only… a staging post on the route to Caligari and proof of Oswald’s diversity.

Berber back to the day job in The Hand

Of the players, Veidt’s versatility needs little exposition and here he is matched by Schünzel. Anita Berber has arguably the least to do (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.

Justice through knowledge! - Different from the Others (1919)

This is a remarkable film and one that survives only in partial form: that it survives at all given what was to come is all the more extraordinary…

Paragraph 175 in the German Criminal Code made homosexuality illegal and contributed to the loss and wreckage of so many innocent lives whilst also acting as a fertile area for blackmail and extortion. Shockingly it wasn't repealed until 1994 (after decades of amendments) which shows, in nothing else, how incredibly advanced this film was and how brave. In an age when many leading straight men, like Conrad Veidt, might still think twice about playing a gay character, the future star of Caligari took up the challenge for director Richard Oswald’s film.

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld

The script was co-written by Oswald with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld a “sexologist” who also part-funded the film through his Institute for Sexual Science… Hirschfeld was a man on a mission to educate people about the normalcy of the homosexual condition – its existence in nature across, species and for humans across class and the social divide:

“Love for one of the same sex is no less pure or noble than for one of the opposite. This orientation can be found in all levels of society, and among respected people. Those that say otherwise come only from ignorance and bigotry.”

His words could be from decades later and indeed there are similarities in story with the 1961 British film Victim in which Dirk Bogarde’s married lawyer is blackmailed over his sexuality. Sadly there are probably still some who would find the film shocking: this is still a hot topic as the recent debate over equal marriage has illustrated.

Paul and the parents

Chunks of the film are missing but the restoration viewable on the Kino DVD pieces the story together with additional title cards and the odd still. The film was censored from the get go and became something only fit for scientists to watch and study which makes it strange that what’s left focuses so much on the male interactions and not their family members of both sexes: too inflammatory?

Conrad Veidt plays successful concert violinist Paul Körner and the film opens in his well-appointed flat as he reads newspaper stories describing inexplicable suicides of young men. He suspects he knows the reasons for their demise and has a vision of great homosexual men who were victimised for their orientation: Leonardo da Vinci, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Oscar Wilde and others.

Fritz Schulz and Conrad Veidt

He is approached by a young violinist Kurt Sivers (Fritz Schulz) who wants to become his pupil and,  after getting agreement from his parents the two begin working together and very quickly form an attachment.

Meanwhile Körner's Father (Leo Connard) and mother (Alexandra Willegh) try to push him towards marriage and he refers them to his specialist, Dr Magnus Hirschfeld (who plays himself) who explains his sexuality to them: “… he is not to blame for his orientation. It is not wrong, nor should it be a crime…”

Bollek spots his opportunity...

Körner and Kurt get spotted out walking by one Franz Bollek (Reinhold Schünzel) someone we learn very quickly has been blackmailing the violinist and who decides to pump him for further funds in the light of this new “evidence”.

Körner tries to hide this from Kurt but after the two surprise Bollek in their flat a fight breaks out and all is revealed. Kurt runs away leaving Körner heartbroken. He thinks back to his days at school and his expulsion after being found kissing another male student, then onto university where he couldn’t connect with any women.

School days

He tried hypnotherapy as a cure but it was only when he met the Doctor that he was able to respect his own sexuality.

Kurt’s sister Else (Anita Berber), has her own feelings for Körner but he takes her to one of the Doctor’s lectures in which he espouses his theory of graduated sexuality – men with female elements and vice versa with some frank photographs of "virile women" and "a man with female feelings...".  Obviously research into human sexuality has advanced but how would this have played to audiences 95 years ago? Else starts to understand and to support her friend in different ways.

Virile women and a man with feminine thoughts

Mild spoilers: Körner reports Bollek for blackmail and the two have their day in court in something like a dual trial one for extortion and the other for breaking Paragraph 175… how will the two gain justice?

Too much of the film is missing to judge its overall direction but I like Oswald's settings and the way he deals with the romance. The lack of episodes involving the families does diminish the broader drama but that's nobody's fault but the censors. There is however, more than enough of Veidt’s acting to be convinced of his excellence. He’s an extraordinarily protean performer not only using his shallow cheeks and electric eyes to convey emotion but also the torture expressed through his malleable physique.

Conrad Veidt

Reinhold Schünzel makes for a thoroughly dis-likable rogue whilst Fritz Schulz is good as the vulnerable young man who might just provide hope for a better future.  As the good Doctor implores:  “You have to keep living; live to change the prejudices... …restore the honour of this man… and all those who came before him, and all those to come after him. Justice through knowledge!”

An appeal made all the more poignant given the ensuing decades in which intolerance was refined into a grotesque art form in Germany. Justice will out and you have to keep on believing that...

Available from Kino and Amazon.