The Student of Prague [Der Student von Prag] **** (1926, Conrad Veidt, Werner Krauss, Elizza La Porta) – Classic Movie Review 12,087

Conrad Veidt stars as The Student Balduin in the 1926 German Expressionist silent horror film classic The Student of Prague [Der Student von Prag] directed by Henrik Galeen in his most important film and his most significant since The Golem (1915), which was famously followed up in Paul Wegener’s classic prequel The Golem (1920).

The film’s screenplay is by Henrik Galeen and Hanns Heinz Ewers, influenced by the story of Faust. In 1820, Balduin, a student at a university in Prague, joins a student outing to a country inn and encounters the menacing devil-like figure of mysterious money-lender Scapinelli (Werner Krauss), who offers him a fortune in money for very low interest on a strange condition.

It was shot at the Staaken Studios in Berlin, with designer Hermann Warm and cinematographer Günther Krampf, and with impressive special effects for its time.

It premiered in Berlin on 25 October 1926.

The film was made previously as The Student of Prague in 1913, which is considered the movies’ first art film.

It runs 110 minutes. The version restored in 1999 for the Munich Film Archive is based on a copy with Spanish intertitles from the Archivo Nacional de la Imagen y la Palabra – Sodre in Montevideo secured by L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, and a German copy secured by Gosfilmofond, Moskow. The version has been re-tinted, with the tinting only partly matching the Spanish copy. The music is by Stephen Horne, the sound by Orpheus Studio, London. It runs 133 minutes.

The cast are Conrad Veidt as The Student Balduin, Werner Krauss as Scapinelli, Elizza La Porta as flowergirl Lyduschka, Agnes Esterhazy as Margit von Schwarzenberg, Fritz Alberti as Margit’s father the Count of Schwarzenberg,  Ferdinand von Alten as Margit’s fiancé the Baron of Waldis, Erich Kober as Student, Max Maximilian as Student, Sylvia Torf and Marian Alma.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,087

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