Game of thrones… Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), with Costas Fotopoulos, Kennington Bioscope

 

First Bioscope of the year and it’s an epic evening for one of the cornerstones of Weimar Cinema, one in fact that I’ve been saving up for just such an occasion and, judging from a non-too scientific sampling of the audience, I’m not the only one with the DVD/Blu-ray at home on the shelf, waiting to be watched after a proper screening and the Bioscope made sure that this was indeed a special screening.

 

A 16mm print was shown tonight, slightly shorter the restoration on which our home media is  based but still very impressive, astonishing even given the scale and verve of the film making. Regular KB, MC, Michelle Facey gave her usual high-content introduction, providing the background on director and cinematic visionary Fritz Land and his script-writing partner Thea von Harbou, as well as explaining the film’s link to early 13^th Century Saxon epic poetry, Der Nibelungenlied, written in High Middle German and by unknown hands in Passau in what is now southern Bavaria.  This tale was itself based on oral traditions dating back centuries and mentioning historic events and individuals of the 5th and 6th centuries.

 

There are similar stories across German speaking Europe and up to Scandinavia and, there are some similarities with later Middle English stories such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Le Mort d’Arthur, they are all epics in which it is how the characters live as much as if they die: chivalric romances with logic and outcomes based on magical and religious certainties. The link as a noted medievalist pointed out, may well be the French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who, writing in the late 12^th  Century, told tales of Arthurian legend; setting up a style and subject matter that led to the Extended Chivalric Universe, spreading across borders and language.

Paul Richter provides some scale

Der Nibelungenlied is altogether fuller of dungeons and dragons than usually found in Arthur, it is peculiarly Germanic and this appealed especially to Lang and von Harbou who were looking to take their countrymen out of themselves by presenting a folk-fantasy many would recognise on a grand scale, something even the Americans would struggle to better. There’s no getting over the links between the story and German identity though with elements not only quoted after German reunification in the 1870s, but forming the basis for Wagner’s Ring Cycle, a celebration of the loyalties rather than the more courtly aspects. After the First World War – and Lang’s film – it’s even possible to see Siegfried as literally representing the betrayal of German interests, “the stab in the back”, seen by many at home after surrender in 1918. Politics and culture pick and choose each other in odd ways, for more on this see von Harbou’s output in Germany after 1933…

 

No doubt the primary purpose in 1924 was to deliver rousing entertainment every bit as stirring as Arthurian legends, swords and sorcery. This is something of a superhero epic with a hero who, having bathed in dragon blood, is almost invulnerable. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine two young friends, sons of recently migrated European Jews, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, both ten on this film’s release, perhaps seeing it in the USA and getting a few ideas. The Italians had their own strong man, Maciste, the German Übermensch went back a bit further.

 

The film is huge in scale and features many tropes that are now staples of the explosion in fantasy films, although Lang’s vision is decades before Tolkien or CS Lewis set their templates, let alone Game of Thrones, House of Dragons and all the rest. Like modern blockbusters, Lang’s film was also in two parts and tonight’s screening was only of the first part, still some two hours even on 16mm and well over half an hour longer on the reconstruction found on the Eureka Blu-ray.

 

Siegfried holds aloft his sword

It tells the tale of Siegfried (Paul Richter), son of King Siegmund of Xanten, who becomes an expert swordsmith, fashioning the perfect blade which the artful blacksmith, Mime (Georg John) tests by dropping a feather onto the edge and slicing it in two. Siegfried is a genetically lucky blonde, yes, an Aryan, who attains success through bravery, guile and killing the right dragon. After the sword is struck he leaves on his white charger (possibly called Tonto or Comet the Superhorse) after hearing about the kings of Burgundy who reign at a mighty castle at Worms on the Rhine, where the beauteous Princess Kriemhild (Margarete Schön) awaits just such a knight as he.

 

I shall set out for that place so that I may win Kriemhild!

 

Mime tells our hero how to find Worm but he sends him to almost certain doom as there is a dragon blocking his way. Siegfried is of course fearless and wily and outthinks the, actual fire-breathing creature, who looks a little sad as he’s blinded and then fatally stabbed by the knight’s blade. This blood has magical qualities and a little bird, literally, tells him that if he bathes in it, he will become impervious harm which leads to some  long-distance nudity as Siegfried takes the bath of invulnerability. One last twitch of the dragon’s tail though and a leaf lands on his shoulder meaning that he has one area of weak human flesh… every superhero needs their kryptonite or Achille’s Heel.

 

He also gains additional super powers and wealth after being attacked by Alberich, King of the Dwarves (Georg John, again) who wears a net of invisibility but is soon overwhelmed and forced to promise Siegfried his fortune, the treasure of the Nibelungs, if he will spare him. Naturally Alberich double-crosses but fails and as he dies curses all in his subterranean kingdom to be turned to stone. Siegfried heads off and goes from strength to strength soon conquering 12 kingdoms and presenting a suitably heroic prospect to the Burgundians. 

Margarete Schön

In her introduction, Michelle referred us to Lotte H Eisner’s Haunted Screen¹ for an analysis of the film’s incredible design and mix of the usual expressionist/UFA studio work with stunning location shots; all perfectly controlled by Lang and his team led by art director Otto Hunte. Eisner quotes early film critic Béla Balázs in saying that “the soul of a landscape or milieu did not always present itself in the same way” and so it was up to the director to “seek the eyes of the landscape…” Nature had to be “stylised” for film to become a work of art (Rudolph Kurtz²) and plain nature was not enough in itself to “make man’s destiny understood” and Stimmungsbilder, “mood pictures” had to be used.

 

Lang certainly took control of his landscape and it is very much a major character in this film, reflecting and setting the moods of the characters and the narrative. The studio constructs are huge dynamic depictions of nature; rocky outcrops, dense pine woods and treacherous pathways whilst the building of Worm are massive in scale both for the interiors and exteriors, with huge stairways dwarfing the players, who move across them, black or white, like pieces on a chess board.

 

Talking of which, Lang also micromanages the way his human resource was aligned and where exactly they where in the frame. There are so many examples of this that I was tempted just to leave 150 screen shots in place of all these words. The opening sequence is almost balletic, as Siegfried hammers out his sward and Mint recoils in horror as he sees how powerful he has become and then, when we first see the imposing King’s Castle, the guard are spaced out symmetrically as the nobles walk past, as if the audience, commoners all, are held at a distance. We quickly switch to the interiors and the almost sterile atmosphere.

 

Order in the castle

All this will change when Siegfried strikes a deal with King Gunther of Burgund (Theodor Loos) to help him gain the hand of the fearsome Queen Brunhild of Isenland (Hanna Ralph who is great value!) in exchange for allowing his new friend to give him his sister Kriemhild’s hand in marriage. They head off to Brunhild’s realm and Siegfried uses his net of invisibility to make sure that the puny King Gunther wins the three trials of strength he needs against the woman he wants to marry. Brunhild is down but not quite out and, whilst she has to accede, she suspects something is wrong.

 

All is now set for some court intrigue in Burgundy and, as with other characters who break the code of chivalry, there is always a price to pay and an uneasy peace will not last for long at the King’s castle.

 

It’s hard to think of many films with this kind of scale in 1924, and the direction as well as cinematography are first rate with cameraman Carl Hoffmann, Günther Rittau, and Walter Ruttmann as good if not better than almost anyone in Hollywood. Paul Gerd Guderian’s costumes also match the set designs and there’s a striking mix of strong modern design with traditional folk stylings. Everything is larger than life from the hairy hobbits working in the smithery to the dwarfs and the brown back coiffeurs of Siegfried and Brunhild. There’s also a moody turn from the King of Burgundy’s general, Hagen of Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow), eye patch over one eye and huge black wings attached to his armoured helmet.

Hanna Ralph is not to be messed with

It's operatic, and fantastic with an emotional sweep designed to sweep the audience away. To this end, Costas Fotopoulos’ tirelessly inventive accompaniment also played its part, never flagging during the epic mood and melded to Lang’s vision as everything else. It contributed mightily to the unfolding ultra-drama with lines and themes as intriguingly structured as the architecture and design on screen.

 

Die Nibelungen was premiered in the at the Royal Albert Hall in London, where it played for 40 performances between 29 April and 20 June 1924. A hit and an influence on film for all eternity. It was certainly a hit tonight and here’s to the second part when it can be arranged… no spoilers but it’s called: Die Nibelungen: Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild's Revenge).

1.       The Haunted Screen, Lotte H Eisner, first published in 1952 and updated with translation and new material for Thames and Hudson in 1969.

2.       Rudolf Kurtz’s Expressionismus und Film, published in 1926, was one of the first, if not the first, art historical treatises to examine film as an equal of the other arts.

 

Fever dreams… The Indian Tomb (1921), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray

I want this tomb to be built by a man from whose hands the stones receive a soul.

 

Fritz Lang later described Thea von Harbou’s novel on which this two-part epic was based as a fever dream and those were exactly my thoughts after spending the last few days emersed in Joe May’s visuals and the hypnotic new score from Irena and Vojtěch Havel. It’s 243 minutes of high-quality atmospherics, drenched in bass desire and the magic ethereality of the imagined sub-continent, all recreated on a grand scale in Woltersdorf, a lake land and forested area not far from Berlin.

On the centenary of its opening Eureka are releasing a 2k digital transfer on Blu-ray as part of the Masters of Cinema series and it fully warrants the treatment. Lang co-scripted with von Harbou and expected to direct only for May to tell him, truthfully or not, that he couldn’t get the financial backing for a directorial novice. Lang would later return to the story for two films in the late fifties showing this was an itch he had to scratch near the end of his career. Budget-busting exotica may have been in vogue, when funding was available, but it’s very interesting to hear comments from film preservation student Sreya Chatterjee who, whilst noting that the film draws from a variety of Indian cultures, Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist, sees it as an objective and non-judgemental creation with “respect and fascination” for its subject.

Mr Veidt

Indeed, the depth of characterisation of the “Indians”, including Conrad Veidt’s tour de force portrayal of the conflicted Ayan III, the Maharajah of Bengal, offsets charges of “orientalism”, especially as the whole story is based on love, loss and betrayal not one-dimensional autocracy. It’s also a commentary on British colonialism, certainly a feature of von Harbou’s writing in general, and here the cause of the broken hearts that drive the narrative. It’s even suggested in the excellent video essay from David Cairns and Fiona Watson, that part of the reasons the British kept the writer interned for three months after the second world war, was because of her critique of the Empire. That’s a Nazi party member calling the kettle pot black but these things are complicated… just ask Mr Lang.

Back in 1920, Germany had just lost a ruinous conflict with the British and the film was more escapism for a cash-strapped population who wanted to travel virtually away from their troubles. May’s India was a mix of huge sets of which DeMille would have been proud and the mountains of southern Germany which may or may not have seen the first cinematic use of the wooden rope bridges so beloved of adventure serials from Indiana Jones to Jumanji.

There are still a few properties in Woltersdorf adorned with the remnants off these giant sets

May’s direction is big on grandeur if less on camera mobility but he makes the most of his luminous stars with my hard drive now heavy with screen grabs of close-up Connie emoting. Having seen so much recently of Asta Nielsen’s perfection of the art of screen acting intensity, here we have the next stage of that evolution with a quite incredible range of explosive expression, blood pumping through engorged veins as his heart bursts with anger and utter despair, he’s a stressful watch. Conrad runs the range from unknowingly imperious to devastated wreck always hinting at that vulnerability even when at his most commanding.

The first part is the Mission of the Yogi and here we learn of the maharajah’s plan to recruit a leading German architect, Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fønss) using the mysterious powers of Ramigani 'Rami', the Yogi (Bernhard Goetzke) a fanciful mix of Indian spirituality and a “genie” straight out of the pages of the Arabian Nights. Rami can astrally project, control peoples’ minds and cure the seemingly incurable. Goetzke’s is another remarkable performance with his impassive granite-featured majesty somehow making you convinced of his mystical capabilities.

If you want to obey the command of my lord… you must do so within the hour. But no one must know of your departure, including your bride.

Olaf Fønss and Bernhard Goetzke

The Maharajah wants Rowland to build a huge temple to house his beloved, Princess Savitri (Erna Morena) in a manner echoing the Taj Mahal, built in 1632 by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to house the tomb of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Rowland is shown earlier in the film marvelling at a drawing of the Taj, telling his fiancé, Irene ((Joe May’s wife, Mia, a theatre actor and singer, turned film star under his guidance), how he would love to build something so beautiful. Initially reluctant, the architect agrees to travel out to India with the Yogi under a cloak of secrecy.

 

Irene, however, is a woman to be reckoned with – as are all the female leads – and, despite the Yogi having telekinetically removed Rowland’s illicit note to her, she decides that something is amiss in Rowland’s departure and follows the trial to the coast and from there way out east.

 

Up here, nearer to heaven than earth, I shall raise up the mighty building.

 

Conrad Veidt and Mia May

Arrived in Bengal, Rowland finally meets his new employer who shows him round hid opulent palace, introducing him to his pet tigers and then taking him to the Valley of Sorrow, high up in eth mountains. It is here that he reveals that the person whom the tomb will commemorate, is very much alive… collapsing in grief to the rocks the Maharajah tells Rowland that, you shall not build a tomb for the dead or the living… but for the great love I have squandered, like a god or a fool.

 

It is very much as if destiny has already set these tragic events in stone… a frequent concern of Lang’s work. He even made a film about it with Bernhard Goetzke again uncanny.

 

The players are revealed as the story of Princess Savitri’s love affair with British officer, Mac Allan (Paul Richter) is revealed to Rowland by her faithful maid servant Mirrjha (Lya De Putti) who appeals to him and Irene separately, to save the Englishman from a trap set by the Maharajah. It’s hard not to see the disruption caused by Mac Allan as a reflection of colonial ambition and it’s a classic betrayal that drives the all-powerful Maharajah to punish those who have betrayed him. He’s not going to gain any satisfaction and as the Yogi, the epitome of Indian spirituality, warns, his plans are unconscionable.

 

Paul Richter and Erna Morena

Meanwhile, as Irene walks through the palace’s beautiful gardens and Rowland learns the full story, Mac Allan is ambushed on a tiger hunt by the Maharajah’s henchmen. The officer is an all-action superhero, fighting off dozens with gun and fists before escaping on his horse… all the ingenuity and ferocity that built our Empire and forced the German surrender in 1918. Is he a good guy in the film? He’s as nuanced as the Maharajah in that respect, not everyone in Europe would be rooting for the Brit…

 

Part two, The Tiger of Eschnapur, deals with the coming together of all the players as the action hots up and the full extent of von Harbou and Lang’s vision becomes clear. You don’t want any more of my summary, you need to buy this disc and relax into this moral adventure on a stormy weekend afternoon with a full pot of Darjeeling followed by liberal amounts of schnaps… the later to aid recovery after the tumultuous final segments.

Lya De Outtie and Erna Morena

The release comes with a fulsome collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Philip Kemp along with that superb video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson. It is presented in 1080p HD, from 2K restorations undertaken by the Murnau foundation and does this major film due services.

It’s released on Monday 21^st February and you can order direct from Eureka who very kindly send me review copies. No silent home should be without it!

 

Connie improvises with a curious elephant. Master!

Organised crimes… Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), BFI Weimar Cinema Season

“Expressionism! – it’s a game of make believe! But why not? Everything today is make-believe…”

270 minutes of Fritz Lang on a warm Saturday afternoon is probably the hardcore choice but, it must be done. My first time seeing this film and my hot take is that it’s starts like thunder, sags a little and storms back for the second part and an extended finale which wouldn’t be out of place in the gangster movies of the next decade. OK, maybe I sagged a little and not the film but it’s a lot to take in and the pacing wasn’t meant for single sittings.

After the first super-hero (of sorts) with Der Golem, now it was the turn of the first super-villain and Rudolf Klein-Rogge is mesmeric as Dr. Mabuse who can hypnotise at distance, project a hallucination into the minds of a theatre-full of people and disguise himself with all the alacrity of Eille Norwood’s Sherlock Holmes.  Given the bad Doctor’s ability with mass deception, it’s easy to see why this character was so tempting for those like Siegfried Kracauer, to see him as a foretaste of what was to come; but whilst this may or may not have been a particular feature of Germanic political culture, it is not a unique one.

Who shall I be today?

Mabuse is a one-man army, not just in terms of his protean qualities but also his ability to shape people and events. Klein-Rogge makes you believe in this indomitability with a fierce performance that burns through his exaggerated make up: he is genuinely scary and quite clearly capable of anything…

He had been married to Thea von Harbou but by now she was Lang’s partner and wrote the screenplay for the director’s first major success, based on Norbert Jacques’ popular novel and with the intention of creating a “portrait of the time”. Accordingly, we see Mabuse as master of a whole range of mischief from forgery, stock market manipulation – a disaster capitalist no less – murder, extortion, kidnapping, drug-dealing … you name it. All of this would have been very familiar to audiences suffering from post-war economic misery and a society bitterly divided by the “stab in the back” of 1918 and the failure of the old order.

Panic in the stock market

The opening act is audacious, as Mabuse’s gang rob an envoy taking key industrial documents to Switzerland and the threat of these being revealed causes a Bear Market in which the Doctor buys up stock. They deliver the document as intended though and the market starts to rise, allowing Mabuse to make a killing by selling. After this you wonder why he needs the money from all the other criminal activities but maybe he’s after more than just the money?

Like every supervillain, Mabuse has a colourful group of henchmen; sweaty Spoerri (Robert Forster-Larrinaga) who needs cocaine to function so nervous does his master make him, counterfeiter Hawasch (Charles Puffy), generic loose-cannon muscle Pesch (Georg John) and Fine (Grete Berger) who acts as a lookout and house cleaner. There’s also a dancer at the Folies Bergère – isn’t there always? - Cara Carozza (Aud Egede-Nissen) whose loyalty extends to love even though the object of her desire is clearly disinterested.

For his next trick, Mabuse he hypnotises a young industrialist Edgar Hull (Paul Richter) and makes him lose at cards for his own profit. This attracts the attention of state prosecutor Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke – who has a look of Michael Shannon for me at least...) who has already spotted a pattern of similar incidents.

He's been to Hull and back...

To von Wenk and the authorities in general, there is just enough evidence to suggest a "Great Unknown", and Mabuse’s disguises mean that he is only seen as a psychoanalyst; cutting edge medicine at the time and a magical mix with the practice of gambling – luck and secret knowledge of the subconscious all gathered in one unsettling package with wild eyes and way too much mascara. It’s bordering on the science fiction Lang would follow up with and says a lot for the state of Weimar society in terms of people, how they appear and how they really are. The man of many faces hides his truth and there would, of course, be a lot more of this to come.

Von Wenk persuades Hull to show him the city’s underground to track down his unknown adversary and there are glimpses of nightclubs one of which features and uncredited performance from Anita Berber dancing in a tuxedo. Mabuse has already arranged for Cara to instigate a relationship with Hull and so the cat and the mouse are confused. There is an epic showdown at one card-club in which von Wenk, in heavy disguise, manages to resist Mabuse’s mind control… but, naturally the Doctor escapes.

Gertrude Welcker giving it plenty of "weary blood".

Von Wenk meets a bored countess, Dusy Told (Gertrude Welcker) married to a boring Count, Graf Told (played with foppish glee by Alfred Abel who looks like the Kemp brother’s Uncle – too old for Spandau, but he liked the style…). There are lots of juicy quotes from the Countess about ennui, she can’t even be bothered to join in the gambling and is looking for adventure: von Wenk can offer her that and, rather unprofessionally, falls in love with her…

“We have weary blood, Mr von Wenk! We need sensations of an altogether peculiar kind, to be able to endure life!”

Now all of the pieces are in pace for the grandest of chases and, with less than half the narrative covered, there’s no way I’m tellin’ you anything copper, it’s more than me life’s worth and the Doctor… he has ways of making sure secrets are kept!

It’s well-crafted but long – which is fine! – and there’s a compelling narrative with so many knowing contemporary touches… in 1922 audiences were in need of entertainment, "weary blood" infected so many. As with every true criminal genius, this wasn’t to be the last of Dr Mabuse, who returned with Lang in 1934 and 1960 (the director's last film).

Anthem for doomed love… Destiny (1921), Cambridge Film Festival with Stephen Horne

My first trip to the Cambridge Film Festival and a film projected in Emmanuel College; a sixteenth century venue for a film that features a sequence from around that period. Cambridge and Oxford are anomalies in the UK retaining so much of their earlier architecture in educational powerhouses that ensure that the present always gives way to the past. Fritz Lang trained as an architect and no doubt would have appreciated the additional context provided to his film by this vibrant antiquity.

I spent three years living in a college begun in 1264 – the last in a 1288 quadrangle - and you pass through without even scratching the surface: students haunt Oxbridge, flickering briefly and casting our flitting shadows against its external stone.

Tonight Death came to Cambridge and reminded us all that somethings outlast even the finest sandstone. Made in 1921 when there were over half a million war-widows in Germany, Destiny or Der müde Tod (literally The Weary Death) suggests that love is stronger than death but no less avoidable. To a nation in a devastation of mourning its gothic kindness would have touched so many: fairy-tale frankness masking a more positive than pessimistic message.

Bernhard Goetzke

Death is played rather convincingly by Bernhard Goetzke who carries his dark duties with a heavy heart and weary resolution: it’s not easy being the man in black but he wears it well and is nothing if not fair.

Lil Dagover is the Maiden who tries to reason with The Glum Reaper after the untimely demise of her love (Walter Janssen) her selfless pursuit of his life touching even his grief-drenched soul.

It is interesting that the man is in distress and not the damsel; she is relentless and willing to risk all and give all to save her love. After watching Nell Shipman do the same a few days ago from 1919, it’s interesting to see Lil Dagover also playing the swashbuckling hero.

Lil Dagover

This restoration was making its UK debut and the newly minted tints and tones were a treat, bringing out the film’s sumptuous design and cinematography. The crew worked on many other noteworthy Weimar films and it is no surprise that America and others were watching. Douglas Fairbanks allegedly bought the US rights just so he could copy elements of the Arabian sequence for The Thief of Bagdad and also delay release until after his own film. But the visual influence stretches along way… all the way to a Swedish beach in 1957 when a knight plays chess to stave off his death?

Destiny is a big step forward from Lang’s previous films, Der Spinnen, and it marks the beginning of his audacious fairy tales, spy stories and science fiction.

Meeting the strange dark man

The framing sequence in some un-dated present is relatively stripped back as the young couple travel in a horse-drawn carriage to a small town of Brothers Grimm vintage. They are joined by an intimidating dark stranger who follows them to a local inn. At the inn is a delightful collection of civic grotesquery who recall the story of a dark stranger buying land next to the cemetery and building a huge wall around it with no visible means of entry…

The couple toast the future life together but it is not long before the man is gone and the woman if in despair at the edge of the wall as wraith-like figures pass through her and the wall. She resolves to take her own life and to follow her man: love is stronger than death and she will rescue him.

The hall of candles was inspired by a Grimm’s fairy tale (thanks MD!)

She meets death inside his mausoleum and they walk amongst thousands of candles each representing a brief life that will always flicker out. Death is there for lives lived long and short – he takes a baby’s life with the same endless sorrow as an old man - he is a force of nature tasked by the almighty…

And yet, convinced of the woman’s love he is willing to give her a chance to defeat him and win back her dead man’s life.

She has three chances in three separate vignettes: set in Persia, Venice Carnaval, and lastly a magical China…. She has to prevent Death from taking her three loves in each scenario with their lives represented by a single candle flame:  if but one remains a-flicker she’ll have won but who can hope to beat Death.

A magic carpet ride

The contest thus set out I can say now more without spoiling... the end, when it comes, makes perfect sense and works on many satisfactory levels.

Stephen Horne has previously accompanied this restoration in San Francisco and Bologna and his familiarity paid dividends here with some sumptuous themes one of which lingered long after the film’s conclusion: Death’s theme. Stephen has the most varied kit of any leading silent accompanist and here featured even an Arabic call to prayer along with flute, accordion and Emmanuel’s Steinway. You need soul to make it all work and Destiny met its musical match.

The film was also accompanied by one of the Festival programmers Margaret Deriaz reading out English translation of the German title cards as the film had arrived from the Murnau-Stiftung in its native tongue.  But they have stout hearts at the CFF and Margaret read very well.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Lil Dagover

Destiny is a gothic pantomime performed with relish not just by Lil Dagover and Bernhard Goetzke but also a host of Weimar stars including Dr. Mabuse himself Rudolf Klein-Rogge, M’s Georg John and many more. Not the very best of Lang but a very moving signifier of what was to come and without doubt a very interesting film.

As we walked from the lecture theatre, the old walls of Cambridge were shrouded in dark and we were haunting again sure in the knowledge that love is stronger than mortar (boards).

I trust Der müde Tod is destined for home media release and with Stephen’s accompaniment too!