The Golem [Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam] ***** (1920, Paul Wegener, Albert Steinrück, Ernst Deutsch) – Classic Movie Review 2909

Director Paul Wegener and Carl Boese’s stylish, captivating and influential 1920 German silent version of the monster story is one of cinema’s great classics.

Albert Steinruck stars as a rabbi, Der Rabbi Löw, who is building giant creature from clay, Der Golem/ The Golem (Paul Wegener), and brings it to life by sorcery to help the Prague Jews to battle against persecution in a 16th-century pogrom.

The Golem is beautiful looking and powerful thanks to the German Expressionist production designs, Karl Freund and Guido Seeber’s cinematography and the gothic style of direction. It is written by Henrik Galeen and Paul Wegener.

Director James Whale screened it before he made Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, and they bear its German Expressionist hallmark visual style that he so admired, as well as many actual similarities, especially concerning the monster. Therefore The Golem can confidently be said to have influenced most monster movies thereafter.

The American National Film Museum got New York company Hypercube to restore the movie digitally and provide English inter-titles. It has a piano music score composed and performed by Douglas M Protsik and runs 68 minutes. The 2002 Alpha Video DVD version runs for 101 minutes. It is the most complete version currently known, maybe actually a complete version of the film.

It was not the first, following a couple of previous silent movies, and certainly not the last of The Golem films, among them Julien Duvivier’s 1936 version made in Prague itself, one in 1951 and another in 1992 with Hannah Schygulla.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2909

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