{"id":32667,"date":"2015-11-15T18:52:26","date_gmt":"2015-11-16T00:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=32667"},"modified":"2019-12-13T23:05:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-14T05:05:31","slug":"homunculus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2015\/11\/15\/homunculus\/","title":{"rendered":"The return of Homunculus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Homunculus<\/a><\/p>\n

On 21 November, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will be screening a version<\/a> of Otto Rippert’s\u00a0long-lost German serial Homunculus<\/em> (1916). It was reconstructed by Stefan Dr\u00f6ssler and his colleagues<\/a> at the Munich Film Museum on the basis of material from the Moscow Film Archives and other collections. Here’s the background offered by the opening titles on this version.<\/p>\n

Homunculus<\/em> was shown as a six-part series in movie theaters in Germany and its occupied territories in 1916, in the midst of World War I. Each episode was about an hour long. In 1920 the opus was reissued as a three-part version. Scenes were shifted around and new intertitles added. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The following reconstruction adapts the structure of the reissue edition, but it also contains some scenes that had been shortened for the later version and often only survived as photographs. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Fewer than 20% of the original German intertitles have been preserved or are known in their exact wording. Newly worded texts for this reconstruction were based, when possible, on information from contemporary program notes and reviews; also, some were translated back from foreign-language versions of the film and others were created from keywords scratched into the film as montage cues. <\/strong><\/p>\n

For the first time, the current work print makes it possible to recognize the original concept of the entire series.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, as a preparation for this very important event, each of us offers you something. First Kristin sketches the trend of fantasy filmmaking in German cinema of the 1910s. After providing this\u00a0context for the film, David offers some thoughts on this new version of Homunculus<\/em> and its value for us today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kristin here:<\/p>\n

The seeds of Expressionism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many viewers who come to Homunculus<\/em> for the first time may be expecting traits of the most famous German silent film trend, Expressionism. And indeed historians have mentioned\u00a0Rippert’s serial, along with Der Student von Prag<\/em> (The Student of Prague<\/em>, 1913), Hoffmanns Erz\u00e4hlungen<\/em> (Tales of Hoffman<\/em>, Richard Oswald, 1916),\u00a0and others, as forerunners of the Expressionist movement.<\/p>\n

But we don’t have a very concrete account of how these earlier films led up to the more famous trend\u00a0that began with Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari<\/em>\u2019s release in early 1920.\u00a0Moreover, at first glance there aren’t many visual qualities in these earlier films that remind you of Expressionism. They display\u00a0few or none of those Expressionist distortions of\u00a0mise-en-scene influenced by contemporary trends in painting and theatre. Similarly, the acting, while exaggerated in a fashion common during the 1910s, seldom reaches the extreme stylization of the performances in Expressionist films.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0there are clearly some other similarities between the two groups of films. Most obviously, the early films brought to prominence two\u00a0related genres to which many of the Expressionist films would belong: the phantastischen<\/em> film and the M\u00e4rchenfilm<\/em>, or fairy-tale film.The main examples of the latter all starred Paul Wegener: <\/span>Rattenf\u00e4nger von Hameln<\/em> (The Pied Piper of Hameln<\/em>, 1918), <\/span>Hans Trutz im Schlaraffenland<\/em> (Hans Trutz in the Land of Cockaigne<\/em>, 1917), and <\/span>R\u00fcbezahls Hochzeit<\/em> (R\u00fcbezahl’s Wedding<\/em>, 1916).<\/span><\/p>\n

For Expressionist filmmakers, elements of the supernatural or the legendary could motivate\u00a0highly stylized mise-en-scene. In contrast, these 1910s films often used relatively realistic mise-en-scene. Location shooting, straightforward period costumes, and skillfully executed trick photography introduced the fantastic elements into the milieu of a concrete, seemingly everyday world.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A changing view of cinema<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite such differences, the two genres provide a specific link between some of the most prominent German films of the 1910s and those of the Expressionist movement. Moreover, fantasy films seem to have provided a basis for at least a tentative exploration of theoretical issues surrounding the relationship of cinema to the other arts. In Germany, cinema had previously been compared primarily to literary and theatrical arts, but Wegener\u2019s Der Student von Prag<\/em> and other films led to a wider consideration of cinema in relation to visual arts such as painting.<\/p>\n

In a 1916 lecture, Wegener expressed dissatisfaction with most of what had previously been done with the cinema. He sought to establish the cinema as an independent visual art, separated from theatre and literature:<\/p>\n

When a new technology is developed, it is initially cultivated in relation to existing ones, and a new idea does not immediately find its own unique form. The first steamboats looked like big sailing schooners, except that instead of masts they had high funnels. The first railway cars copied mail coaches, the first automobiles kept the large bodies of landaus, and the cinema was like pantomime, drama, or the illustrated novel.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A more broadly based view of the cinema as combining theatrical and graphic arts created a\u00a0newtradition which carried over from the 1910s to the Expressionist movement of the 1920s. These early films may have become models for the development of an \u201cart cinema\u201d movement in the next decade.<\/p>\n

The painterly approach to film promulgated by Wegener lingered in German cinema for about a decade. Starting around 1924, a new approach, based on the moving camera and a more realistic three-dimensional space, would largely replace the older one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Frames and books<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Gravestone<\/a><\/p>\n

Der Student von Prag.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Aside from this specific link created by Wegener\u2019s emphasis on the pictorial powers of the camera, several conventions of the fantasy films of the 1910s look forward to Expressionism.\u00a0Perhaps most notable among these devices is the use of the frame story.<\/p>\n

Expressionist films frequently employ this device: Francis\u2019 tale to the fellow asylum inmate in Caligari<\/em>, the record of the Bremen town historian in Nosferatu<\/em> (as well as the imbedded narratives of the Book of the Vampyres and the ship\u2019s log), the young poet hired to write publicity anecdotes for a sideshow in Wachsfigurenkabinett<\/em>, and so on.<\/p>\n

Yet\u00a0this pattern was already well established during the 1910s. Der Student von Prag<\/em> begins and ends with a poetic scroll (\u201cIch bin kein Gott\/bin kein D\u00e4mon \u2026\u201d), with the final return leading to a shot of Balduin\u2019s gravestone\u2014upon which sit the Doppelg\u00e4nger and a crow. (The 1926 remake, which has some distinct Expressionist touches, begins and ends with a gravestone that summarizes Balduin\u2019s life.) Wegener\u2019s other major surviving film from the mid-1910s, R\u00fcbezahls Hochzeit<\/em>, begins with a scene of Wegener, as himself rather than in character as the titular hero, reading to a group of children from a book entitled R\u00fcbezahls Hochzeit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In some cases the frame story introduces multiple embedded narratives. Richard Oswald\u2019s two main fantasy films of the pre-1920 era, Hoffmanns Erz\u00e4hlungen<\/em> (1916) and Unheimliche Geschichten<\/em> (Uncanny Stories<\/em>, 1919), both use this technique. The first begins with a prologue showing Hoffmann surrounded by strange characters like Count Dapertutto and Coppelius. Three dream sequences show him incorporating these figures into bizarre stories; the transition from the prologue to the the main portion of the story begins with Hoffmann in bed as the three sinister figures stand over him.<\/p>\n

\"3<\/a><\/p>\n

Unheimlische Geschichten<\/em> begins, as an intertitle announces, with \u201cA fantastic Prologue at an antiquarian book dealer\u2019s.\u201d On the wall are three large pictures depicting a whore, death, and the devil. After the proprietor chases away his customers and departs, the three images come to life and amuse each other by reading tales out of a book. The series of embedded tales, adapted from Poe, Hoffmann, and other authors of the uncanny, form the bulk of the film.<\/p>\n

Not all fantasy films of the 1910s contain frame stories or embedded narratives. Characters do, however, often read or write books that contribute major premises or motifs. In Homunculus<\/em>, Richard Ortmann keeps a large diary, which records his shifting and somewhat contradictory thoughts, feelings and goals\u2014and thus conveys them to us. Joe May\u2019s Hilde Warren und der Tod<\/em> (Hilde Warren and Death<\/em>, 1917) also has no frame story. Its opening, however, involves the heroine reading in a book that death is an escape from sadness. This notion becomes a motif, as the figure of Death appears to her at intervals, foreshadowing her eventual surrender. Books would become an important motivating device in Expressionist films, introducing embedded narratives or crucial motifs.<\/p>\n

Hilde Warren und der Tod<\/em> also carries through the pictorial tradition of Der Student von Prag<\/em>. Here the special effects are not used to allow one actor to play two roles through split exposure. Rather, superimpositions introduce the figure of Death into the everyday scenes of Hilde\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\"Ghost<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some early hints of Expressionism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although the fantasy films of the 1910s don’t contain strongly Expressionist elements, a few stylistic touches foreshadow the distortions of the later movement. Some of these relate to performances by actors who were to become central to the Expressionist movement. In Hoffmanns Erz\u00e4hlungen<\/em>, for example, Werner Krauss\u2019s stylized acting in the role of Count Dapertutto suggests why he was later cast as Dr. Caligari. Conrad Veidt\u2019s acting and especially his makeup as Death in Unheimliche Geschichten<\/em> mark him as the ideal candidate to show up in Caligari\u2019s cabinet.<\/p>\n

\"Dappertutto<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Conrad<\/a><\/p>\n

The stylized hand gestures in these two shots are particularly striking, and the same device is carried through in a s\u00e9ance sequence in Unheimliche Geschichten<\/em>. The lighting of the s\u00e9ance looks forward to more famous scenes in Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler <\/em>(1922), Feu Mathias Pascal<\/em> (1926), and The Ministry of Fear <\/em>(1944)\u2014yet here Oswald introduces a twist by including one more hand than there should be for the number of bodies present.<\/p>\n

\"seance<\/a><\/p>\n

There are other major films made in 1919 which contain stylistic and generic elements soon to become far more prominent. Lang\u2019s Die Spinnen<\/em>\u00a0(The Spiders<\/em>, 1919-1920) draws upon conventions of the thriller serial which would soon by transmogrified in his Expressionist film, Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler<\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0Lubitsch\u2019s Die Puppe<\/em>\u00a0(The Puppet<\/em>) and Die Austernprinzessin<\/em> (The Oyster Princess<\/em>), both 1919, could be counted as comic Expressionist films that introduced the style into the cinema months before the appearance of Caligari<\/em>. The exact cut-off date between pre-Expressionism and Expressionism proper is not vitally important. Some 1910s developments in genre and style\u00a0prepared the way for Expressionism. Caligari<\/em>, however great its stylistic challenges were, did not appear in a vacuum.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

Wanted: Love. #Homunculus<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"piano<\/a><\/p>\n

The 1920 reissue of the Homunculus<\/em> serial\u00a0compresses its original story considerably, but the outlines are clear. Some omissions in the Munich reconstruction may reflect gaps in the 1920 version. Still, the basic outline of the tale is clear.<\/p>\n

Very likely the first test-tube baby, the Homunculus arrives on the scene as the result of a pseudoscientific effort to create life. Out of a bubble, properly zapped, comes an infant.<\/p>\n

\"Bubble<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \"Baby<\/a><\/p>\n

The baby is brought up in an ordinary human family, thanks to the classic switched-in-the-cradle device. Known as\u00a0Richard Ortmann, the creature grows up into something of a superman, with extraordinary strength and explosive\u00a0energy. But his core is hollow. Richard discovers that he lacks fellow-feeling and finds himself alienated from his carousing peers.<\/p>\n

\"Table\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When Richard\u00a0discovers his technological\u00a0origin, he sets himself a drastic choice: either discover human love or destroy this worthless world.<\/p>\n

Each episode replays the same dynamic. Somewhere Richard discovers a possibility of uncorrupted love. But that prospect shatters,\u00a0either because of prejudice (would you want your daughter to marry a homunculus?) or his sadistic urge to plunge the world into chaos. Only his friendship with Edgar Rodin, one of the scientists who attended his birth, forms an enduring bond\u00a0across the episodes.<\/p>\n

Richard Ortmann plays many roles in his saga. He\u2019s a scientific tinkerer who invents an explosive, a wanderer who ventures into Africa, and a capitalist who enjoys masquerading as a rabble-rouser bent on fomenting rebellion. No sooner has he provoked a war than he tries his own social experiment, that of isolating a young couple in hope of breeding a new society. All these exploits he records in a mighty book<\/p>\n

\"Writing<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Writing<\/a><\/p>\n

This tome becomes a handy narrative device when the plot demands that other characters learn of his inhuman origins.<\/p>\n

Like those films that clone a Stallone or a Van Damme, the series realizes that one monster can be defeated only by another one. \u00a0The long tale comes to a climax when Rodin creates a second Homunculus and raises him up to conquer\u00a0Ortmann–already somewhat weakened from age and fear of death. The titanic confrontation is played out on mountain craigs.<\/p>\n

\"2<\/a><\/p>\n

Who will win? Or will both perish?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Annihilation, courtesy Homunculus<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Staircase<\/a><\/p>\n

The rocking-horse rhythm of the episodes, with hope for Ortmann’s redemption rising and inevitably falling, takes some getting used to. To the filmmakers\u2019 credit, they vary the prospects for love: an array of women, a dog, and in the fourth episode a woman who wholeheartedly embraces Ortmann\u2019s wicked\u00a0side.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s viewers will also need to accustom themselves to the seething extremes of Olaf F\u00f8nss\u2019s performance. F\u00f8nss was a major Danish actor\u00a0who became famous in Atlantis<\/em> (1913) and who migrated to Germany to star in this series. F\u00f8nss conceives his performance as a matter of ferocious glares, raised fists, and heroically villainous postures. It looks overdone to us today.<\/p>\n

\"Pointing<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"arms<\/a><\/p>\n

His box cape, reminiscent of bat wings, helps the brooding effect.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t merely a matter of old-fashioned hamming. F\u00f8nss\u2019s performance is calibrated to be ragingly different from the other portrayals. Most of the actors exaggerate less, and the pacifist preacher actually underplays. F\u00f8nss goes over the top because Homunculus does.<\/p>\n

\"Arms<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Mirror<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fist<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\"shriek<\/a><\/p>\n

What makes the series compelling? For one thing, it offers a fairly original reworking\u00a0of the Frankenstein premise. For another, its central conceit of a mad, misunderstood supervillain in search of\u00a0love can evoke some empathy. There\u2019s also the effort to convey a world in flames, to suggest a cosmic catastrophe with minimal means. While the Great War devastates Europe offscreen, one can hardly avoid thinking of trenches and bombardment in blasted shots\u00a0like these–which also look forward to the jagged decor of Expressionism.<\/p>\n

\"skyline<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Club<\/a><\/p>\n

The student of film technique will, I think, be struck by the filmmakers\u2019 pictorial ambitions. It\u2019s now clear that by focusing just on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari<\/em> (1920) we have\u00a0limited our sense of the wide-ranging\u00a0visual discoveries of German cinema. Homunculus<\/em> belongs with the splendid string of films that includes Der Tunnel<\/em> (1915), Algol<\/em> (1920), I.N.R.I.<\/em> (1920), and the outstanding pair of 1919 films by Robert Reinert, Opium<\/em> and Nerven<\/em>. Reinert, unsurprisingly, wrote the screenplay for Homunculus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The fourth episode, which I commented on back in the summer <\/a>(based on\u00a0a much inferior copy),\u00a0remains a treat for your eyes, with unexpected camera angles and daring use of depth. In the one on the left, we see touches of Expressionist performance in the orchestration of hands.<\/p>\n

\"Crowd<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Window<\/a><\/p>\n

Elsewhere Kristin has remarked that during the 1910s filmmakers began to go beyond basic storytelling and explore the expressive dimensions of cinema\u2014not only in acting but also in composition, lighting, and set design. The Jugendstil<\/em>\u00a0curves of the incubator gleam inside\u00a0a cavernous chamber you might not expect to find in a lab.<\/p>\n

\"Incubator<\/a><\/p>\n

Other episodes provide both grand images\u2014landscapes, sumptuous sets, crowd scenes\u2014and an arresting, small-scale play of light and shade. A purely expository shot of Ortmann approaching Steffens\u2019 study becomes a little suite of shadow patterns, stressed when Ortmann pauses and swivels to the camera and creates a\u00a0pictorial climax.<\/p>\n

\"Wall<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Wall<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Wall<\/a><\/p>\n

Seeing the three-dimensional lighting effects\u00a0of German cinema of the mid-1910s onward, I wonder whether Caligari<\/em>‘s jutting, broken-up planes and painted shadows are not only a borrowing from Expressionist painting but also a reaction against the rich volumes created by directors like Rippert.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In all, Stefan Dr\u00f6ssler and all the archives and individuals working with him have done world film culture a great service. As with Gance\u2019s Napoleon<\/em> and Lang\u2019s Metropolis<\/em>, more footage may appear and need to be integrated into this version. Perhaps some day we\u2019ll have something approaching the full scope of the original series. For now, we should be thankful that another silent classic steps out of the shadows\u00a0and forces us to rethink what we thought we knew about the history of cinema.<\/p>\n

\n

Many thanks to Stefan Dr\u00f6ssler for his assistance in preparing this entry.<\/p>\n

At Nitrateville<\/a>\u00a0Arndt has posted helpful synopses of all six parts of the restoration. Leonardo Querisima offers a wide-ranging discussion in \u201cHomunculus<\/em>: A Project for a Modern Cinema,\u201d in A Second Life: German Cinema\u2019s First Decades<\/a><\/em>, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Michael Weidel (Amsterdam University Press, 1996), pp. 160-167. Excerpts can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kristin’s discussion of fantasy films is excerpted from her essay “Im Anfang War<\/em>…: Some Links between German Fantasy Films of the Teens and the Twenties,” in Before Caligari: German Cinema, 1895-1920<\/em>, ed. Paolo Cherchi Usai and Lorenzo Codelli (Pordenone: Bibliotexa dell’Immagine, 1990), 138-161.\u00a0The Wegener quotation is from Paul Wegener, \u201cDie k\u00fcnsterlischen M\u00f6glichkeiten des Films,\u201d in Kai M\u00f6ller, ed., Paul Wegener: Sein Leben und seine Rollen<\/em> (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1954), p. 102. Translation by KT.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere on this site we discuss\u00a0other neglected German films of the period: Der Stoltz der Firma<\/a><\/em> (The Pride of the Firm<\/em>, 1914); \u00a0Der Tunnel<\/em><\/a> (1915); Asta Nielsen features<\/a> of the teens; Doktor Satansohn<\/em><\/a> (1916);\u00a0Hilde Warren und der Tod<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>(1917); Die Pest in Florenz<\/em><\/a> (The Plague in Florence<\/em>, 1919, directed by Rippert after Homunculus<\/em>); late-1910s Lubitsch<\/a>; Algol <\/em>and\u00a0I. N.R.I.<\/em><\/a> (both 1920); and\u00a0Der Golem<\/em><\/a> (1920). I have an essay on Robert Reinert’s remarkable films in Poetics of Cinema<\/em>.\u00a0Some day I hope to write more about Paul Leni’s war drama\u00a0Das\u00a0Tagebuch des\u00a0Dr. Hart<\/em> (Dr. Hart’s Diary<\/em>, 1917) and Joe May’s energetic and entertaining serial Die Herrin der Welt<\/em> <\/a>(Mistress of the World<\/em>, 1919).<\/p>\n

\"Homunculus<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 21 November, the Museum of Modern Art in New York will be screening a version of Otto Rippert’s\u00a0long-lost German serial Homunculus (1916). It was reconstructed by Stefan Dr\u00f6ssler and his colleagues at the Munich Film Museum on the basis of material from the Moscow Film Archives and other collections. Here’s the background offered by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,12,137,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1910s-cinema","category-film-history","category-national-cinemas-germany","category-silent-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32667"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43415,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32667\/revisions\/43415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}