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German ExpressionismFilm 9 of 19
Waxworks
Das Wachsfigurenkabinett
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Paul Leni, 1924. A poet is hired to write lives for three figures in a fairground cabinet: Harun al-Rashid (Emil Jannings), Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt), Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss). Each episode has its own scale, from joke to corridor to smear. Leni left for Universal not long after and made The Cat and the Canary. You can see him packing.
In two programmes
Three figures, three scales: a joke, a torture chamber, a chase. The Jack the Ripper section, a few minutes of double exposures and streets that will not hold still, is Leni's audition for Hollywood, and it worked.
The Supernatural and the Occult
Three wax figures, three registers, and the Ripper episode is the one that matters here: a few minutes of double exposures, a fairground that tilts, a chase with no floor. Leni packed the method and took it to Universal. The next two films are what he did with it.
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