THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE
Germany, 1913, 85 minutes, Black and white.
Paul Weggener, Lyda Salmonova.
Directed by Stellan Rye.
The Student of Prague is an interesting example of very early German film-making. It is very competent in comparison with silent films of the period - pre-Griffith. Paul Weggener - later to appear in such films as The Golem and to be a Hitler-supporting actor in The Third Reich, is effective as the student and his double.
While the sets are romantic and realistic (with some Prague locations), the atmosphere of the film is of the supernatural and the psychological: the reckless hero, selling himself for money, the evil genius taking possession of him and producing his mirror image, his double. The focus on the split personality and the conflict of good and evil was to become a mark of German surrealist films after the war, starting from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. In fact, the film was remade in the '20s with Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss, the stars of Caligari. The film has some power despite its being one of the early pioneer German films.
1. The quality of the 1913 production, impact in its time, today? German cinema history? Interesting and entertaining?
2. Black and white photography, fixed camera, movement and tableau, special effects, editing? The acting and styles - rhetorical, naturalistic, stage influence? The added score?
3. The background of the realism and the romanticism? The Prague locations? Yet the foreshadowing of the surrealistic films after the experience of World War One? Sets, costumes?
4. The spiritual and psychological themes: the double, the doppelganger, the good and evil facets of the one personality, the split personality, the nature of the conflict? Sin, the need for redemption, love and salvation? Destruction? The pessimistic end of the film? The evil outside controller? The importance of the de Musset about the double, the name, the mirror image, the sitting on the grave -and its visualising at the end?
5. The conventional aspects of the plot and their interest: the student as the man-about-town, ability to fight, recklessness, the woman in love with him, the need for money? His selling himself to the opportunist and deceiving himself? The evil owner and his manipulation? The girl and her love? The presentation of the nobility: the Earl, the Baron, the daughter, romantic complexes?
6. Baldwin in himself, wild, loving, fighting, giving himself away? Falling in love, the danger to Margit, the neglect of his lover, being accepted into the nobility, the confrontation, the truth for himself, wanting to be rid of his double? Killing his double yet dying? The evil Baldwin and his dramatisation? Symbol of evil?
7. The characters and their being sketched in silent style: the Baron, the fiancee, the heroine, the lover? The evil genius and his appearance?
8. The exploration of good and evil in the pre-war German context?
