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Movies Forum Index » Movie Reviews Forum » Retrospective: THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924)...
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| Mark R. Leeper... |
 Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 6:15 pm |
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THE HANDS OF ORLAC (1924)
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: One of the nearly forgotten films of the
German (actually in this case Austrian)
Expressionist period is the Conrad Veidt version
of THE HANDS OF ORLAC. This is a seminal horror
melodrama about a pianist whose hands are destroyed
in a train crash and are replaced by hands taken
from an executed murderer. The hands come to have
a life of their own. This film was remade as the
until-recently also rare MAD LOVE with Colin Clive
as Orlac and with one of Peter Lorre's juiciest
roles. This original version runs a little slowly
by modern standards, but it has one of the great
performances by the under-appreciated Conrad Veidt.
Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
Some of the very best horror films of all time came from Germany
between World War I and World War II. The German Expressionist
movement gave us films like THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, NOSFERATU,
THE GOLEM, WAXWORKS, METROPOLIS, and M. The films of German
Expressionist movement are characterized by distorted atmospheric
scenery was used to reflect the twists in the minds of the
characters in the story. The style was applied to other social
dramas like the so-called "Street Films," but some of the great
classic horror films were the mainstay of the movement. The
influence of German Expressionism can be felt in the Universal
horror films of the 1930s, many of which were made by German
Expressionist filmmakers who fled the politics of Europe.
One of the classics of Expressionism that has not until recently
been available in a watchable form is THE HANDS OF ORLAC starring
Conrad Veidt. Most of us know Veidt mostly as playing villains,
especially Nazis like Major Strasser in CASABLANCA. Veidt was
actually a great horror actor. He was Germany's equivalent of Lon
Chaney, Sr. He was not Jewish, but his wife was, so they fled the
Nazis and came to the United States. But Veidt never had the
career in the United States that he deserved. One of his best
films after coming to the US was THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, in which his
face is carved into a permanent grin. He had to convey emotions
with his eyes, while the view of his whole face denied them. But
getting back to THE HANDS OF ORLAC, this one of his great horror
roles from his period of making films in Europe. This was the
first film to use the idea that body parts might take on a life of
their own, an idea used several times since. The film was remade
as MAD LOVE with Peter Lorre. The story was again remade in 1960
under the titles THE HANDS OR ORLAC and THE HANDS OF A STRANGLER.
But its influence can be felt in many films like THE BEAST WITH
FIVE FINGERS.
Veidt plays a concert pianist who is in a train collision. He
loses his hands, but while is unconscious a notorious murderer is
guillotined and Orlac's doctors transplant the hands from the
corpse onto Orlac's wrists. Orlac awakes with the hands of a
killer at the end of his arms. What is more, the hands seem to
have a life of their own. Orlac is fixated on these hands. The
Conrad Veidt version goes a little slowly as Orlac's obsession with
the hands consumes the man. There are long sequences of Veidt just
staring in horror at the hands on his wrist. The films picks up a
little as he becomes fascinated with a strange knife, supposedly
that of the killer who provided his hands. But the knife is now
the murder weapon in new crimes where the fingerprints left behind
are those of the guillotined killer. Veidt plays the role so that
the hands seem to be the biggest thing in the frame. They seem to
dominate his entire body and the hands distort the entire posture
of the body. The hands seem twisted almost to suggest tarantulas.
THE HANDS OF ORLAC was based on the book LES MAINS D'ORLAC by
Maurice Renard. Robert Wiene four years earlier directed THE
CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920), really the first film of the German
Expressionist Movement. That film was written Carl Mayer among
others and its star was Conrad Veidt. THE HANDS OF ORLAC reunites
the director, actor, and writer of that film.
The story is bizarre enough for modern audiences, but the pacing is
a little slow. While it is Expressionist, it uses very different
visual approaches than did THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. In the
earlier film much of the psychological distortion is in the
geometry of the sets. Doors were strange irregular geometric
figures. Buildings leaned. There were no right angles in any of
the sets. In THE HANDS OF ORLAC the buildings would fit into the
real world, but they are overpoweringly big at times. Orlac's
father lives in an imposing castle with high doorway arches.
Hospital scenes also seem to be in rooms of infinite dimension.
Much of the mood comes from atmospheric lighting.
The Criterion Collection contains an interesting account of how
there are two different negatives. One made for domestic release
and one for international. Some scenes were shot at the same time
of the same performance but at a slightly different angle because
the negatives came from two different cameras set side-by-side for
the filming; other times they used two different takes. In some
cases they were edited differently so some scenes are actually
quite different in the domestic and international versions. In any
case, this is one of the great pivotal films of early history of
the horror film and it has been too hard to find for too long. I
rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10, though comparing it to
modern horror films is very much an apples-to oranges sort of
comparison.
Film credits: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0015202/>
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper at (no spam) optonline.net
Copyright 2008 Mark R. Leeper |
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