(1920)
Dir - Carl Theodor Dreyer
Overall: MEH
The third full-length from Denmark's most celebrated filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer, Leaves from Satan's Book, (Leaves Out of the Book of Satan, Blade af Satans bog), is his more fantasy-laced version of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, yet was also inspired by Marie Corelli's 1895 novel The Sorrows of Satan. Broken up into four chapters which are told in a linear fashion as opposed to Griffith's more ambitious style to increasingly cut between as many narratives, Dreyer and co-screenwriter Edgar Høyer focus on Satan's divine assignment to temp mankind through the ages. For ever person who succumbs to his scheming, the Devil is delegated to spend another century on Earth. Yet if any of his victims resist, a thousand years are reduced from his sentence. The first story concerns Judas betraying Jesus, the second takes place during the Spanish Inquisition, the third during the French Revolution, and the last is set in Finland during the Russo-Finish War of 1918. At a hundred and fifty-seven minutes in its original length, this is a challenging watch in such a respect since the pacing is arduous at best. The performances are less melodramatic than usual from the time period, but besides some intense close-ups, the film is visually flat and does not match its sprawling aspirations.
(1921)
Dir - Fritz Lang
Overall: GOOD
One of many striking works in the filmography of Fritz Land, Destiny, (Der müde Tod: ein deutsches Volkslied in sechs Versen, Behind the Wall, Between Two Worlds), was considered by the director to be one of his most personal, inspired both by a fever dream that he remembered having when he was a child, as well as the recent loss of his mother. The Indian folk tale of "Savitri and Satyavan" provides the basis for Lang and wife/collaborator Thea von Harbou's script where a woman loses her lover to a mysterious stranger, standing in for Death itself. Three other tales are introduced, all with similarly bleak outcomes where Lil Dagover tries in vain to save other doomed souls in order to be reunited with her better half. Though the camera stays stationary, Lang still evokes a haunting mood with excellent set design that recreates an unassuming German village, Jerusalem, Italy, and China, as well as a staggeringly high wall surrounding a cemetery and a hall of candles which represent living souls on their way to being extinguished. As the personification of Death, Bernhard Goetzke makes an equally melancholic and intimidating figure, but as a whole, the film overcomes its sense of tragic fable and is more of an uplifting saga of love overcoming death.
(1927)
Dir - Géza von Bolváry
Overall: MEH
Besides the 1925 American film The Phantom Express baring narrative similarities to it, Ghost Train, (Der Geisterzug, Le train fantome), was the first official cinematic retelling of Arnold Ridley's stage play of the same name. A German and British co-production, it would go on to be adapted in various mediums well over a dozen times in the ensuing decades, this one being the only surviving silent version. A comedy-crime hybrid that teases supernatural elements, it holds up a bunch of people in a train station overnight, where the local legend is that a unearthly locomotive comes barreling down the tracks on the regular, and also, there may or may not be some ghosts wandering about. Most of these things are talked about instead of shown, as women melodramatically faint or nearly faint, and everyone mildly bickers with each other until a twist reveals that the group's unlikable and dopey foible is actually a police detective who has been tracking down a criminal in their midst. It is silly business that manages to never be amusing, but this could be due more to the dated sensibilities than any fault of the long-winded plot. The movie at least runs a mere fifty-three minutes, plus director Géza von Bolváry and cinematographer Otto Kanturek utilize some flashy shots and camera movements that keep things less stagnant than they otherwise would be.
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