Alraune
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Year: 1928 Production: Ama Film Director: Henrik Galeen Starring: Brigitte Helm, Paul Wegener, Ivan Petrovich Screenwriter: Henrik Galeen Based on Alraune (1911) by Hanns Heinz Ewers 125 minutes; B/W
A professor of genetics (Wegener) conducts a cold-blooded experiment into the Nature-versus-nurture controversy. Using the semen of a hanged man to fertilize a whore, he creates life - a girl baby called Alraune - by artificial insemination in the laboratory. After this scientificional beginning, Alraune becomes like Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley, a fantastic Gothic melodrama of retribution for a crime against Nature; nevertheless, in its distrust of the scientist, Alraune is wholly central to the development of sf. Alraune (Helm), who is named after and compared throughout wth the mythic mandrake root that grows where a hanged man's seed falls, appears to have no soul, and when, as a young woman, she learns of her dark origins, she revenges herself against her "father", the professor - although at the end there is hope she will be heartless no longer. Usually spoken of as a great classic of the German silent cinema, Alraune is actually more of an early exploitation movie, stylish but prurient, with more than a whiff of incest in the theme. Helm's eroticism, which we are to deplore, was in fact the reason for the film's commercial success. However, Galeen considerably softened the portrait of Alraune rendered in Ewer's sensationalist novel: whereas in the book she is a monster of depravity, causing illness and suicide wherever she goes, in the film she merely causes mayhem and a little pain. This is generally agreed to be the best of the five film versions of the 1911 book, the others being from 1918 (twice - Germany and Hungary - the latter being directed by Mihaly Kertesz, who became Michael Curtiz, the director of Casablanca [1942]), 1930 (Germany, again starring Helm) and 1952 (Germany, starring Hildegard Knef and Erich von Stroheim). |
| The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction |
Rudolf Arnheim, März 1928 ...über den Film
Hanns Heinz Ewers, Berlin 1911...aus dem Roman
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