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Dis­cov­er the alle­gor­i­cal ter­ror of this land­mark silent era horror

18 Nov 2019

Words by Anton Bitel

Robed figure with a star emblem, gesturing amidst flames.
Robed figure with a star emblem, gesturing amidst flames.
Paul Wegener’s night­mar­ish take on the Golem of Jew­ish folk­lore intro­duced Ger­man Expres­sion­ism to the world.

While on loca­tion mak­ing his debut fea­ture, The Stu­dent of Prague, in 1913, actor/­co-direc­tor Paul Wegen­er first heard sto­ries about the Golem of Jew­ish folk­lore, and the cre­ation of one of these ser­vants of clay by the late-16th-cen­tu­ry rab­bi of Prague, Judah Loew ben Bazelei. His inter­est piqued, Wegen­er devot­ed his next fea­ture, Der Golem, to the sub­ject. This he co-wrote and co-direct­ed with Hen­rik Galeen, who would lat­er write FW Murnau’s Nos­fer­atu and Paul Leni and Leo Birinski’s Wax­works. In oth­er words, the raw mate­ri­als of Der Golem would recon­sti­tute them­selves to form and inform much of the Ger­man silent era hor­ror that followed.

Still, the orig­i­nal Der Golem is now lost – as is its com­ic fol­low-up The Golem and the Danc­ing Girl, which Wegen­er wrote and co-direct­ed with Rochus Gliese, and which was an ear­ly exam­ple of both hor­ror spoof and post­mod­ern hor­ror in that it starred Wegen­er as a hor­ror actor (which he real­ly was) who uses his Golem cos­tume (which he real­ly had) to help woo a woman. Unhap­py with some of the pro­duc­tion com­pro­mis­es that had beset his 1915 film, in 1920 Wegen­er joined forces with co-direc­tor Carl Boese and (again) with co-writer Galeen to remould the Jew­ish folk­tale into a part remake, part prequel.

Known in full as Der Golem, Wie er Kam in die Welt (The Golem: How He Came into the World), the film is con­fus­ing­ly often referred to as Der Golem for short, just like the orig­i­nal. Recon­struct­ing medieval Prague with paint­ed, angu­lar, heav­i­ly stylised sets in a Berlin stu­dio, this extant Der Golem would, along with Robert Wiene’s The Cab­i­net of Dr Cali­gari from the same year, intro­duce Ger­man Expres­sion­ism as the night­mar­ish, neu­rot­ic mode of hor­ror cinema.

This lat­er Der Golem comes brim­ming with a sense of fore­bod­ing, of apoc­a­lyp­tic doom, and of impend­ing ter­ri­ble calami­ty’. The stars reveal to the revered Rab­bi Löw that the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty is threat­ened by severe harm,” reads the open­ing inter­ti­tle, as we see Loew (Albert Stein­rück) perched atop his tow­er with tele­scop­ic appa­ra­tus and astro­log­i­cal tomes. Sure enough, the fop­pish envoy Flo­ri­an (Lothar Müthel) is about to vis­it the ghet­to with an impe­r­i­al edict for the expul­sion of all Jews from the city before the New Moon.

The rea­sons behind the edict are a typ­i­cal blood libel’ – although it is iron­ic that among the charges list­ed against the local Jews is a claim that they are able to use black mag­ic”, since it is the exis­tence of the edict itself which will dri­ve Loew to turn to the ancient Kabal­lah and resort to such black mag­ic to ani­mate a Golem.

While the hulk­ing, lit­er­al­ly stat­uesque Golem (played again by Wegen­er), restored to life in part through an Astaroth-rais­ing rit­u­al, comes with great strength, Loew ini­tial­ly plans to use it only for house­hold chores and as a prop in his peti­tion to the Emper­or (Otto Gebühr). When the impe­r­i­al palace starts col­laps­ing, the Golem’s inter­ven­tion will save the lives of all those inside, earn­ing the Jews a reprieve from the grate­ful Emperor.

Yet the Golem quick­ly switch­es from sav­iour of the Bohemi­ans to bringer of con­fla­gra­tion to the Jews, as its demon­ic ori­gins and destruc­tive impuls­es lead it on a ram­page of crush­ing and burn­ing. The cat­a­lyst for this is a for­bid­den love affair between Loew’s daugh­ter Miri­am (Lyda Salmono­va) and the Chris­t­ian (i.e. goy­ish) Flo­ri­an – the kind of mar­ry­ing out’ which has always been per­ceived as a threat to the integri­ty of the Jew­ish community.

While it seems obvi­ous that the doom-laden anx­i­eties of Der Golem look back to the First World War, it is also tempt­ing to read, in this film full of seers, astrol­o­gists and prophets, ear­ly signs of a future in which (ever-present) anti­semitism would flare up again, forc­ing Jews into exile or con­sum­ing them in flames. For Der Golem, from its Weimar-era van­tage, looks ahead to some­thing like the rise of the Third Reich – while also, more straight­for­ward­ly and less per­ni­cious­ly, antic­i­pat­ing many of the motifs that would be found in James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein.

Der Golem antic­i­pates cin­e­ma in anoth­er way too. Asked by the Emper­or to per­form anoth­er act of illu­sion­ism, Loew says, Let me show you our Jew­ish fore­fa­thers, O mighty Emper­or, so you bet­ter come to know our peo­ple.” In the phan­tas­magor­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tion that fol­lows, the Rab­bi mag­i­cal­ly projects mov­ing images (depict­ing Exo­dus and the Wan­der­ing Jew) onto the palace’s inner walls, in what is not only a clear pre­cur­sor to cin­e­ma itself, but also a mise en abyme of the very film that we are watch­ing, which in its own way is also expos­ing Euro­pean view­ers to Jew­ish cus­toms, lore and his­to­ry. The ridi­cul­ing response of the Impe­r­i­al audi­ence lit­er­al­ly brings the house down, and serves as a warn­ing about the poten­tial con­se­quences of dis­re­spect­ing oth­er cultures.

In the end, the Golem smash­es apart the gate that sep­a­rates the Jew­ish ghet­to from the rest of Prague. It is an ambigu­ous act: in part an escape attempt, in part a bid to spread pre­vi­ous­ly con­tained hav­oc, in part a lit­er­al break­ing down of eth­nic and cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers. The film too equiv­o­cates in its rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry, cast­ing Jews in a sym­pa­thet­ic light as belea­guered vic­tims of arbi­trary oppres­sion, while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly oth­er­ing, even demon­is­ing, them as wiz­ard-hat­ted occultists who dab­ble in necro­man­cy and oth­er Satan­ic practices.

These are two very dis­tinc­tive per­cep­tions of Judaism, one of which would come trag­i­cal­ly to dom­i­nate in Europe over the ensu­ing decades. So it’s a com­pli­cat­ed pic­ture – much as the Golem itself embod­ies domes­tic drudgery, super­heroic deeds and indis­crim­i­nate holo­caust. As the stony crea­ture with the page­boy cut, Wegen­er some­how con­veys both indig­nant con­fu­sion and sin­is­ter men­ace – and the final scene in which he encoun­ters a fear­less lit­tle girl is all at once ten­der and ter­ri­fy­ing (inspir­ing the most famous sequence in Whale’s Frankenstein).

Lov­ing­ly restored in its full tint­ed glo­ry, The Golem is avail­able with three sep­a­rate musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ments (four if you include the one with the short­er US ver­sion of the film, also includ­ed in Eureka!’s pack­age). Though it may be anachro­nis­tic (for a film both set and made in eras that pre­ced­ed the inven­tion of elec­tron­ic instru­ments), Wudec’s score works par­tic­u­lar­ly well, both for the dark vibe of dread that it brings to the mate­r­i­al, and for the implic­it con­ti­nu­ity that it forges between the anti­semitism of yes­ter­year and of today.

The Golem: How He Came into the World is released by Eure­ka! Video, as part of its Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma Series, on Blu-ray in a new 4K restora­tion of the orig­i­nal film neg­a­tives on 18 November.

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