NOSFERATU - A SYMPHONY OF HORROR

Germany 1921
Premiere: 04.03.1922
Length: 96min
Director: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Screenplay: Henrik (Heinrich) Galeen
Photographer: Fritz Arno Wagner
Constructions: Albin Grau

Actors:
Gustav Botz as Dr. Sievers, doctor
John Gottowt as Bulwer, a paracelsian
Alexander Granach als Knock, estate agent
Wolfgang Heinz as mate
Guido Herzfeld as proprietor
Ruth Landshoff as Lucy Westrenka
Max Nemetz as captain
G.H. (Georg Heinrich) Schnell as Westrenka
Max Schreck as Count Orlok/Nosferatu
Greta Schroeder as Ellen Hutter
Albert Venohr as sailor
Gustav von Wangenheim as Hutter
Karl Ettlinger, Hardy von Francois, Heinrich Witte


A young couple lives happily in a small town. One day they encounter the inconceivable in the form of a strange person who wants to send Hutter to a remote land and its unknown count, who wishes to buy a house in the town. Ellen, Hutter's beloved, senses the danger but cannot hold him back. He departs and fearlessly enters the castle of Count Orlok, who only appears before him in the night. Hutter signs a contract, but when he awakes the next morning, he finds red marks on his neck. Hutter flees when he realizes that this specter is on the way to his Ellen.

Then a dark vessel appears on the sea and, at every harbor where it calls, the people die. Small red marks are found on their necks, but nobody can find the cause of the mysterious illness. Death makes its appearance in the small town too. Ellen determines to banish the horror. She knows that if she can distract the terrible figure from noticing the first crow of the cock, his power will be broken.

Nosferatu - one of the great classics of the silent film.

BERLIN - A CITY SYMPHONY

Germany 1927
Length: 50 min
Premiere: 23.9.1927
Production: Karl Freund
Director & Editing: Walther Ruttmann
Screenplay: Walther Ruttmann, Karl Freund, after an idea of Carl Mayer
Photographer: Reimar Kuntze, Robert Baberske, Lászlo Schäffer


Moved water changes in abstract wavelines. They overlap so that they turn into straight lines, symbolising a railroad.
A fast train rolls through a landscape early in the morning. A sign "Berlin 15 km" shows where the train is heading to. Blocks of flats and factories are passing by. Towers of houses, signals. The train reaches the station "Anhalter Bahnhof".

From now on the film shows what happens between 5 o´clock in the morning to late at night in Berlin 1927.
A film without the need of actors: people on their way to work, in leisure time, streetlife, machines...- showing a knew kind of style in mounting and documentary filming.

More precisely in commentated documentary filming. Because Ruttmann is using very drastic cuts to stress his message. Also he is very critical in selecting various scenes. But in the long run Berlin is the main actor, the giant, the "Moloch". A symphony of a million raising faces, composed in matching pictures what normally only lives, rattles and races next to each other...! Work! Glamour! Poverty! Light! Live! Death!

Berlin. A City Symphony. The masterpiece of Walter Ruttmann.

You can buy the score of this film-classical. Please click here to order.

This recording was made live on an 8-track recorder and was reworked later in a studio. It offers the rough charm of a live concert.

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THE BLOOD OF A POET
Watch the score

Originaltitel: Sang d'un poète, Le. Frankreich, 1930.
Director, Screenplay, Editor: Jean Cocteau.
Production: Le Vicomte de Noailles.
Photographer: Georges Périnal.
Actors: Enrique Rivero (Poet), Elizabeth Lee Miller (Statue), Pauline Carton, Odette Talazac, Jean Desbordes, Ferdinand Dichamps, Lucien Jager, Féral Benga, Barbette, Jean Cocteau. Monochrome.
Length 55 Min.

There has never been a film like Le Sang d'un Poete (Blood of a Poet). It was not only the first film made by Cocteau, one that ignited another satisfying scandal, but it brought all his diverse talents into focus in a medium that was new to him. The work represents an aesthetic milestone in Cocteau's career.

The idea of a film had its germination during a house party given by Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles at Hyeres in 1929. Georges Auric, Cocteau's lifelong musical collaborator, surprised his hosts by announcing that he wanted to compose the score for an animated cartoon. Cocteau was asked on the spot to provide a scenario. After some discussion, the Noailles agreed to give Cocteau a million francs to make a real film with a score by Auric. This became The Blood of a Poet, still one of the most widely viewed of all Cocteau's screenworks. Cocteau described its disturbing series of voyeuristic tableaux as "a descent into oneself, a way of using the mechanism of the dream without sleeping, a crooked candle, often mysteriously blown out, carried about in the night of the human body."

Technically, The Blood of a Poet reflects Cocteau's trials and errors as a novice filmmaker who had to turn irreversible mistakes to his advantage and improvise every celluloid foot of the way. During shooting, he used the dust raised by studio cleaning men to enhance the mysterious atmosphere of the final scenes. Special weightless effects were obtained by camera trickery to show the little girl flying up to the ceiling and the poet moving painfully along the corridor wall. Once Cocteau discovered that he could turn shooting disasters into happy accidents, he was off on a career of making films that carried his cachet of surprises: the miraculous mirror and mercury scene in Orphee, he live arms holding candlebra from he walls of La Belle et la Bete, and the accelerated time sequences of flowers opening in Le Testament d'Orphee are only a few of his trucs.

The Blood of a Poet like so much of what Cocteau created, abounds in autobiographical motifs: the macho Dargelos and the snowball fight, the opium smoker, the poet with his sexual stigmata, and the gunshots that, intentionally or nt, echoed his father's suicide long before. Cocteau himself always denied the presence of hidden symbolism in the film, but word got about that it had anti-Christian undercurrents. This greatly distressed the Noailles. After the scandal caused the Viscount to be expelled from the elegant Jockey Club, and even brought threats of excommunication from the Church, they forbade Cocteau to allow public release of The Blood of a Poet for over a year.

Lee Miller - star of the film Blood of a Poet Luis Bunuel's film, L'Age d'Or, similarly financed by the Noailles at the same time, had indeed violently attacked the Church and the military. Its premiere at Studio 28 in November 1930 set off riots by ultraconservatives, who threw stink bombs, shouted protests, and spattered ink in the time honoured manner of Parisian demonstrators ever since Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830. The Surrealists, including Breton, Dali, and Tzara, noisily defended Bunuel's film and derided Cocteau's. It was no doubt this brawling furore that made the Noailles suppress Cocteau's film and leave Paris until the storm blew over. The commotion over The Blood of a Poet further upset Jean Cocteau because Valentine Hugo, his old friend from Le Pirquey days, had now become the mistress of Andre Breton, Cocteau's unrelenting Surrealist foe. This alliance kept Valentine and Jean apart for the rest of their lives.

Actually this is not a silent movie. There are less cryptical dialogues satisfying the law of dreams. The 5 minute heroes are transforming this layer in music. Partially the movements of the lips start the musical theme. So this classic film gets a new and contemporary interpretation, without original soundtrack but with all respect.