F.W. Murnau’s eighth film (the first six are lost), an Expressionist Murder Mystery solved during a Dark & Stormy Weekend, is undoubtably less interesting for its own sake than as stylistic precursor to next year’s NOSFERATU/’22 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/12/nosferatu-1922.html), if not without a certain crackpot appeal. Adapted from what must have been a particularly wheezy play, we’re trapped in a different sort of castle (a nice one) along with an upper-crust hunting party over a rain-soaked weekend washout. The storm also blowing in notorious Graf Johann Oetsch, acquitted of fratricide but guilty in the heart of his newly remarried sister-in-law. She’d have left the estate already if not for the possibility of purging her soul by talking to comforting Father Faramund; and he’s due to arrive any minute! But when the good Father mysteriously disappears, well, as Lady Bracknell put it, ‘To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.’ And this guy’s only a Father in the religious sense . . . if he is Father Faramund. The acting is tamer than it would soon become, but still in Expressionist mode, while intimations of NOSFERATU stylings in design, use of miniatures, horse-drawn carriages, staging/camera & atmosphere are ubiquitous.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The lady of the estate and our remarried widow are all over each other every time they get together. How would this have been read in 1921? How should it be read today?
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