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German ExpressionismFilm 2 of 19
The Golem: How He Came Into the World
Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam
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Paul Wegener had already played the clay servant twice. In 1920, with Carl Boese, he went back to Rabbi Loew's Prague and made the version that survives. Hans Poelzig built the ghetto as a set of leaning houses that look inhabited from the inside. The rabbi shapes a protector for a community under an emperor's decree. Once the word is in its mouth, the creature does not stay a tool. Wegener, huge and almost still, is the Golem. Watch the gate, not the magic.
In two programmes
Poelzig's ghetto is the counter-proposal to Caligari: not painted angles but walls that bulge and lean as if they breathe. The ending is a child, an apple, and a word pulled out of a chest at the gate.
The Supernatural and the Occult
A creature made of clay and a ghetto built to look grown. Poelzig's walls lean and bulge; Wegener stands very still. The word goes in the chest and the tool stops being one. Watch the gate at the end: a child, an apple, and the horror simply set down.
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