Paul Wegener was one of the greatest German actors of the beginning of the 20th century. And if he is not known today, as Emil Jannings or Conrad Veidt, is because his preferred medium was theater and not cinema. Anyway he's one of the faces of German expressionism. Directed, produced and starring by Paul Wegener, "Der Golem" is a masterpiece of the so called German Expressionism. It's a disturbing and polemic movie, precursor of all the man-made creatures and monsters movies. The story goes around a Jewish community, in old Prague, threatened by exodus by the Emperor. The leader of the inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto build a enormous man of stone and clay and through magic gives him life, to help finishing the oppression they are victims. He becomes their frightful protector. The Golem is a mythic being, associated to the Jewish tradition, eventually the cabala. This movie is symbolic in all his essential elements and premonitory in the persecution to the Jews that Nazism will transform in the Holocaust. The film has the three basic elements of expressionism: distorted and claustrophobic scenarios, contrasted illumination suggesting shadows and a narrative that don't need words to be of a notable effectiveness in the management of fears.
Review of The Golem
