Loosely adapted from Gustav Meyrink’s novel transcription and telling of the sixteenth-century Jewish-Polish folklore legend, reminiscent of the Greek tale of Pygmalion, Carl Boese and Paul Wegener’s The Golem: How He Came Into the World was quite possibly the greatest influence upon two of the most renowned works, not only of horror, but of cinema in general: F. W. Murnau’s Faust and James Whale’s Frankenstein. For that alone, the film merits viewing but the work is also a great story shot in a visually stunning manner which has lost little over the course of time.
In sixteenth-century Prague, Rabbi Löw (Albert Steinrück )–after Emperor Luhois (Otto Gebühr) passes a decree which will banish all Jews from the city after the first moon–resorts to black magic, calling upon the powers of a demon spirit named Astraroth to issue the word which will bring his larger-than-life clay statue, which he calls Golem (Paul Wegener), to life. After word spreads of The Golem, having heard of the Rabbi’s gifts, the Emperor invites Löw to the royal palace where the Rabbi uses the opportunity, via his alliance with Astraroth, to project a picture onto a galley wall of his people and their suffering. Suddenly, the palace begins to collapse and, in a fit of desperation, the Emperor requests that the Rabbi save them. Löw calls upon the Golem to keep the rafters from crushing those enclosed inside. In gratitude, the Emperor lifts his edict upon the Jews. Just as Löw is about to take the life from the Golem, regret at having to destroy his creation is compounded by vanity as he is requested at the Thanksgiving festival. Meanwhile, the Rabbi’s assistant, Famulus (Ernst Deutsch), finds Löw’s daughter Miriam (Lyda Salmonova, Wegener’s wife), his love interest, in an act of betrayal. He commands the Golem to seek revenge on his behalf. The Golem kills Miriam’s suitor, Florian (Lothar Müthel), by throwing him off the top of a building. The Golem then captures Miriam and the city peruses the rampaging monster.
The film holds up well against the test of time. It is quickly paced, unlike most of its contemporaries. Boese and Wegener retains the audience’s attention by presenting lavish, grand set pieces rarely seen during the time while alternating between red, green, blue, and yellow gels, thus creating a color theme throughout the film. Furthermore, though a horror film, The Golem does possess its fair share of comedic moments in the form of the temple servant (Max Kronert) who delivers messages between the Emperor and Löw. Now considered a gay stereotype, the servant is rather light on his feet and always portrayed with a flower constantly dangling from his fingers. During the animation of the Golem, Famulus cannot quite handle what he is witnessing, especially after being confronted with a demon and–after a gallant effort to sustain consciousness–finally collapses out of exhaustion after a dramatic display of overacting and heightened exaggeration.
From a critical perspective, it is interesting how well the main themes of good and evil, humanity’s desire to create life, and the consequences of attempting to control the products of either culminate, not in an over laden, convoluted storyline, but a simplistic narrative that is as effective as either of its successors. Obviously, The Golem doesn’t afford itself the time to delve into either topic to the degree that Frankenstein or Faust do, but considering this is the cinematic impetus for the latter two works, it presents a cornucopia of ideas which leaves the viewer to contend with after the film’s close.
In regards to the film’s influence on later horror masterpieces, its sway over the production of Frankenstein wasn’t so much an impression upon the director as much as it was on Boris Karloff. The atrophied gait of The Golem is mimicked by Henry Frankenstein’s creature to the point of plagiarism. Also, the stacked boots of the latter was first seen on celluloid after Löw put his finishing touches on his sculpture. Also of genealogical note, the tale of The Golem predated Shelley’s penning of her gothic classic by approximately 400 years.
Now, even though Goethe was composing Faust during the time when the legend of The Golem first appeared, the cinematic rendition of The Golem upon Murnau is highly, almost embarrassingly, evident. The director virtually lifts, part and parcel, the animation sequence from Boese and Wegener’s production and transplants it in his masterpiece, Faust. From having Faust first drawn a circle in the dust, which then glows prior to catching aflame, to the appearance of mist shortly before the emergence of a demonic creature upon his protagonist’s calling its forbidden name, one of the penultimate scenes in early horror cinema came directly from Boese and Wegener’s work.
Also, cinematographer Karl Freund would later take the techniques he learned from The Golem and apply them to such productions such as Metropolis and Browning’s Dracula.
Alongside Murnau’s Faust, The Golem is one of the greatest works of early silent horror cinema which is easily accessible and a must-see for people with a historic interest in the creation and evolvement, not only of the genre, but of cinema in general.
-Egregious Gurnow
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- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
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