The Hands of Orlac

A concert pianist loses his hands in a train wreck and wakes with a murderer's sewn on in their place. Conrad Veidt plays the rest of the film from the wrists down: he holds the new hands out ahead of him like something he has been asked to carry, and when he finally sits at the piano he cannot make himself touch the keys. Robert Wiene, four years after Caligari, keeps the rooms plain and lets the horror live in one actor's fingers. Watch the wreck at night, lanterns moving through the wreckage, and then watch Veidt's face when the bandages come off. Vienna, 1924, from Maurice Renard's novel.