October 12: Genuine: The Tragedy Of A Vampire

 

One of Robert Wiene's forgotten horrors, Geniune: The Tradegy of the Vampire is worth a mention this October. It is not well known today and only a 45 minute condensed version is available for public screening. While it may not be one of Weine's finest efforts, it is a solid supernatural thriller. It also worth seeking out for the simple reason that it shows that not every German expressionist film is  brilliant by default. As a cinema experience, it is a deeply unsettling film; not in that it's scary, it has something more like a fun house effect. It's sets are highly graphic, in the artistic sense; they were overly garish even by contemporary expressionistic standards of 1920. Many of them don't seem to fit or match in a way that allow the eyes to easily settle into the viewing (set pieces include a skeleton with a clock for head).  Since it was directed by Robert Wiene, it is obviously going to be compared to his masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Even if we, as movie fans, tried to keep from doing this, it is really inevitable. Of course, when we talk about our experience of the film, it comes with the understanding that no one outside of screenings at the Munich City Film Museum has seen the full print in decades. What we have is the condensed 45 minute version, and if you have the Kino release (as in extra on their Dr. Caligari release) you at least get the original tinting. 

As mentioned above, the film was released in 1920 well after The Cabinet of Caligari, but met with much less success. Screenwriter Carl Mayer (who penned a number a surviving and famous silents, including Cabinet & Murnau's Sunrise) wrote the script solo and the cast is sparse. The story is quite simple, the narrative not being much at all; rather the story is told through a lot of physical acting. As for the monster;  Genuine is in fact not a "traditional" vampire as we have come to categorize them as undead immortal beings, but rather a succubus. In that regard the movie is harkening back to the older "vamp" movies of the 1910's--a very American film trope really. And yet, Geniune is more vampiric than those earlier vamps--and significantly more supernatural. So, I would say that the film falls somewhere in the middle of old and new female monsters: not quite human, but but not quite immortal either. She is described as ancient and her behavior leads one to believe that she is actually a real succubus of some sort, not just a cruel woman out for men's wealth. And yet, she is also deeply manipulative like many of the vamps in films like the famously lost Fox production A Fool There Was, starring the vamp herself: Theda Bara. She bares closest resemblance to what we would call an "energy vampire."

If you haven't already seen it, the is the perfect season to seek it out for a watch. It may not scare you silly, but it is a funky little curiosity from one of Germany's finest early directors.