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Invited over to UFA, Carl Theodor Dreyer inverts the Murnau pattern: Nosferatu here is the young woman romantically intruding upon the queer couple. Milton's "thankless muse" is the basis, set in the milieu of the artiste (a marble head with staring eyes but no nose anchors the atelier) and illuminated by extraordinary reserves of feeling. The aspiring painter (Walter Slezak) brings his sketches to the old maestro (Benjamin Christensen), who disdains his work but is inspired by his youthful modeling. At dinner an engraving of a skull is passed from guest to guest and with the subject of death comes a diversity of responses—accepting, fearful, sentimental, oracular. (To the host, as well as to the filmmaker, death is the draining of creativity triggered by the loss of passion.) The portrait of the wandering noblewoman (Nora Gregor), the passing of the paintbrush, "it's all in the eyes." Tchaikovsky at the opera house, though the tragic swan turns out to be the socialite (Grete Mosheim) in a parallel triangle, which ends with pistols at dawn for suitor (Didier Aslan) and husband (Alexander Murski). "I long to believe there is something like an eternity..." A transposition of The Parson's Widow into a studio full of crucifixes and puppets for the benefit of Mamoulian (Song of Songs), creation and desire as fickle markets. The caressing of a pair of gloves, the kissing of a bare shoulder, the snapping of a smoking pipe, gestures as telling as any in silent cinema. Karl Freund himself is the ebullient exhibitor who showcases the epitaph-canvas, "here is a man who's lost everything." Gertrud is foreseen in the deathbed smile, the Gothic visage of the Häxan auteur turned ethereal by "true love," known and felt. With Robert Garrison, Max Auzinger, and Wilhelmine Sandrock. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |