It seems that my attention span is suffering severely if temperatures in my flat rise above a limit of about 24 °C (75 °F), right now it's more. I know that sounds weird to others, but I have never been a fan of heat.
Anyhow, I have been struggling a bit. It was also the first time I abandoned a chosen movie (The Student of Prague) for not talking to me, pun intended even if it's a bad one, and making me fall asleep more than once.
If the film quality was to blame - the picture was very blurry - the looks of the protagonist - very superficial of me, I know - the heat which plays havoc with my sleeping pattern or something else, I can't tell you. Maybe I should give it another try some other time.
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| Original release poster, public domain via Wikimedia Commons |
You know the drill, here's the plot with spoilers.
A young poet is at a carnival where he's supposed to create stories for some waxworks.
The proprietor and his beautiful daughter show him the three wax models - Caliph Haroun Al-Rashid, Czar Ivan the Terrible, and Spring-Heeled Jack (as the censors weren't happy to have him called Jack the Ripper). He points out that the Caliph has lost his arm which immediately gives the writer an idea for the first story in which ...
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| Emil Jannings as the Caliph, Wilhelm Dieterle as the writer/Assad, Olga Belajeff as the daughter/Maimune |
... the Caliph is on his roof playing a game of chess, well, actually losing a game of chess. His mood is not improved by the smoke coming up from the chimney of the baker Assad and he sends his vizier to bring him Assad's head.
The vizier takes some men, sharpens his sword too, but then he is distracted by Assad's wife Maimune and her beauty, so instead of killing him he goes back to the Caliph to tell him about her.
Meanwhile the jealous Assad and Maimune get into an argument, and to prove that he's a real man, Assad sets out for the palace to steal the Caliph's wishing ring while the Caliph goes to his house to pay beautiful Maimune a visit.
Assad enters the palace and cuts the sleeping Caliph's arm off to get the ring. Really it is a wax model, though, left behind to hide Haroun's escapade of trying to seduce Maimune.
When Assad comes home, Maimune hides the Caliph in the oven. Assad confesses to his crime and is about to be arrested by the bodyguards, but his wife uses the fake wishing ring on the wax arm to bring the Caliph "back to life".
She also "wishes" Assad to become the baker for Haroun who protectingly takes them under his wide coat.
Happy with the story, the writer starts on the next one for Czar Ivan the Terrible.
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| Conrad Veidt is a great Ivan the Terrible - I'm sure his incredible eyes helped with that! |
Ivan isn't call the Terrible for nothing. He likes to have his prisoners poisoned and watches them die while the last grains of sand run through an hourglass with their names on it. When the court astrologist warns him that his name could end up on a glass, Ivan has the poisoner killed, but he has written the Czar's name on a huge hourglass before he dies.
The next day Ivan is invited to the wedding of a noble's daughter. Fearing assassins, he changes clothes with the noble and indeed the man is killed.
At the wedding he forces all the guests who are in grief about the bride's father to dance and celebrate. When he finds the bride crying over her father's dead body, he abducts her and the groom.
Back at the Kremlin, he has the groom tortured when the bride refuses to give in to his advances. When she has almost given up, the astrologer comes in with the huge hourglass bearing the Czar's name. With Ivan distracted by the thought of his death, the bride and groom escape.
Ivan, believing that he has been poisoned, has the idea to prevent the last grains of sand falling and so he keeps turning the hourglass over ... and over ... and over ... until the end of his days.
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| Werner Krauß as Spring Heeled Jack (Jack the Ripper), very spooky! |
When starting the last story about Spring Heeled Jack, the writer falls asleep and begins to dream that he and the propietor's daughter are being followed through the carnival by Jack who means to kill them.
Just when they think they have escaped Jack, he catches up with them and stabs the writer.
The proprietor's daughter wakes him up from his nightmare and he finds he has poked himself with his pen. He admits that he had dreamed Jack had taken her away from him and gets a happy ending to his own story when they kiss.
What you will definitely notice first is that "Waxworks" is one of those early German expressionist films.
The cast is impressive with great actors of the time, Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt, and Werner Krauß, wearing elaborate costumes, and the set built by director Paul Leni (together with Walter Maurischat) enhances each story.
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| Assad's escape from the palace. Does the set remind you of something? The strange angles of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari perhaps? |
There's the small home of the baker and his wife which looks even smaller with the huge Caliph in it. Actually the couple looks quite small standing next to him, too.
The tall Czar made the Kremlin cellars look even more claustrophobic. Veidt was 6'2 or 6'3 (I found both) and also had that burning look that was perfect for this role. Of the three stories this was my favorite one because of him although Iwan is really not a nice guy.
The third story was the shortest, but impressive. I think we would all be able to relate to a nightmare like this one.
Werner Krauß chasing the writer and his love through the carnival could easily be one of my own (luckily rare) bad dreams. The atmosphere is not only emphasized by the set, but also the double exposure with a ghostly Jack following the lovers.
I've read that this is one of the early horror films, but I can't fully agree to that because the Haroun story which took up half the movie is not horror in my opinion.
Unfortunately tyrants who jump from one mood to the other and act on it without thinking about other people have always been around.
The Ivan story is eerie and frightening ... and unfortunately not that far-fetched if you have a look at history.
So that leaves the six minutes with Jack that would fit the category in my opinion. Had that story been longer, there could have been some fine horror, but it got laughed off quite quickly at the end when the writer woke up.
Originally, four stories had been planned, but the story around highwayman Rinaldo Rinaldini after a novel from 1799 had to be dropped for lack of money. Rather ironic, don't you think, if you know Rinaldini was cheated out of his heritage in the book.
I think it would have been better to have a shorter first and a longer third story, but nevertheless I enjoyed the movie.
Sources:
1. Fritzi Kramer: Waxworks (1924) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, February 3, 2013
2. Alex Humphrey: Waxworks [Das Wachsfigurenkabinett] (1924) Review. On: Love Horror, November 6, 2020
3. Graham Fuller: Blu-ray: Waxworks (1924) review. On: theartsdesk.com, November 24, 2020
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