Post by George Willson on Oct 26, 2005 17:41:38 GMT -5
I watched the 43 minute condensed version included on the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari DVD. Apparently the full version can only be viewed in the German film museum in Munich.
This was a really strange story that I really didn't "get." I understood the following: it was about a girl who was captured by a violent tribe, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery when the violent tribe was defeated, and subsequently bought by some rich old guy to live in his house as...whatever. Never understood why he bought her. Anyway, her experiences make her violent, but not a vampire in the sense that we understand today (1920 predates the earliest Dracula film, and the book itself was just over 20 years old by this time).
She entices a nephew to kill his uncle and wants him to kill himself to prove his love. He disappears, but shows up later, so he apparently didn't do it. The next guy she's with freaks out, and I don't understand why.
The intertitles in this film were waaay too long, and delivered too much information for a silent film. To make this point worse, they never gave the right kind of information to get the film to make sense. A lot of the scenes appeared to be dialogue scenes, also completely wrong for a silent film since, well, the dialogue cannot be recorded in 1920.
Overall, while I was curious enough to watch the movie, the questions the movie was raising in my mind never ended up answered, so when it ended, I was left kind of confused.
This was a really strange story that I really didn't "get." I understood the following: it was about a girl who was captured by a violent tribe, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery when the violent tribe was defeated, and subsequently bought by some rich old guy to live in his house as...whatever. Never understood why he bought her. Anyway, her experiences make her violent, but not a vampire in the sense that we understand today (1920 predates the earliest Dracula film, and the book itself was just over 20 years old by this time).
She entices a nephew to kill his uncle and wants him to kill himself to prove his love. He disappears, but shows up later, so he apparently didn't do it. The next guy she's with freaks out, and I don't understand why.
The intertitles in this film were waaay too long, and delivered too much information for a silent film. To make this point worse, they never gave the right kind of information to get the film to make sense. A lot of the scenes appeared to be dialogue scenes, also completely wrong for a silent film since, well, the dialogue cannot be recorded in 1920.
Overall, while I was curious enough to watch the movie, the questions the movie was raising in my mind never ended up answered, so when it ended, I was left kind of confused.