I have to say, from the film's opening I am confused on some of the details. If you took out that confusion factor, I'd give this a nine, because it is a deep haunting tale, almost a noir, except twenty years before noir's inception. What movies could we have had to look back on if F.W. Murnau had lived into the 1940's and experimented with noir as Fritz Lang did?
Lorenz Lubota (Alfred Abel) is a city clerk doing a boring menial job. He escapes by writing poetry. He has a younger brother who barely figures into the plot and goes to art school. He has a younger sister who is a party girl who dabbles in prostitution. His mother loves her children, but her bitterness is so deep it is almost contagious. She is bitter over her poverty (this can't do much for Lorenz' self esteem since he is the provider for the entire family) and bitter about her estranged sister's success as a pawnbroker with no mercy who has accumulated great wealth from her profession.
Lorenz is loved in secret by Marie, the daughter of the owner of the local bookstore. She thinks he is creative, deep, and a very honest man. Why is Lorenz so honest? Because he has never been tempted! Because at his first encounter with something really tempting his moral code collapses completely. His bout with fate begins when he is run down in the street by a team of horses pulling a carriage driven by the beautiful and wealthy Veronika Harlan. Lorenz is unharmed, but he returns to consciousness with Veronika holding his head in her hands, and he is instantly infatuated.
His lust is awakened by looking into the face of the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, and his pride is awakened when he is told by Marie's father that his poetry is genius according to a visiting publisher (the publisher turns out to be wrong). When Lorenz realizes he has no chance with the actual Veronika he settles for a look-alike gold digger that he meets in a tavern. The problem? He has no gold for her to dig since he has lost his job as city clerk due to his absences, presence in taverns, and hanging about the front entrance of the Harlan home. Apparently doing a low paying menial civil service job in 1922 Germany required the dullest of home lives.
Lorenz soon learns that his poetry is worthless, although this scene is missing from the movie. His solution? A stronger willed criminal minded fellow convinces Lorenz first to commit fraud to keep his gold digging girlfriend, and when Lorenz is found out, he is convinced by the very same fellow to commit robbery to cover up the original fraud. When the midnight robbery goes awry, he just lies down and covers his head to not see his more violent companion murdering the would-be robbery victim, who just happens to be his own aunt! He doesn't try to stop him at all.
Now here is where the film loses me. Lorenz has committed fraud, robbery, and been an accomplice to murder, but apparently spends only a short time in prison because he is still young looking when he gets out. That's a very short sentence! In the U.S. at the time he would have gotten a very short rope for the same crimes. Marie and her dad are waiting for him and drive him to a nice house in the country and tell him "This is your new home". Where did this home come from? If he had the kind of money to buy such a home why was his entire family living in a crowded run down apartment before he went to jail? Lorenz calls Marie his "beloved wife" at the beginning of the film - this entire story is told in flashback - so Marie, knowing that Lorenz is really a weak wimpy guy who is capable of giving in to the worst criminal impulses when influenced by a stronger personality, married him also knowing she wasn't his first OR second choice? What happens the next time he has a random encounter with a beautiful woman? Maybe they are both weak and wimpy and are thus made for each other, but that is not what the hopeful feeling with which this movie ends seems to imply.
Maybe the most puzzling and unexplained part of the movie is the very beginning. Before we even get to Lorenz writing down this story in a book and thus the flashback tale, there is an image first of an Albert Einstein look-alike walking in the country alone, then a Thomas Edison look-alike also walking in the country alone. No explanation. Then cut to Lorenz looking wistfully out his kitchen window. I don't know. Maybe Murnau was trying to say "geniuses often walk alone, but that doesn't mean that someone who walks alone (Lorenz) is necessarily a genius"??
I'll tell you one thing of which this film convinced me - Alfred Abel was a great actor. I was completely convinced he was a tower of jello in this film, and in 1927's Metropolis I was completely convinced he was cold deliberate industrialist capable of sentencing his right hand man to the closest thing there was to hell on earth. Catch this silent film if you can, even if you are not a big fan of the silents I think you'll find it fascinating.
Lorenz Lubota (Alfred Abel) is a city clerk doing a boring menial job. He escapes by writing poetry. He has a younger brother who barely figures into the plot and goes to art school. He has a younger sister who is a party girl who dabbles in prostitution. His mother loves her children, but her bitterness is so deep it is almost contagious. She is bitter over her poverty (this can't do much for Lorenz' self esteem since he is the provider for the entire family) and bitter about her estranged sister's success as a pawnbroker with no mercy who has accumulated great wealth from her profession.
Lorenz is loved in secret by Marie, the daughter of the owner of the local bookstore. She thinks he is creative, deep, and a very honest man. Why is Lorenz so honest? Because he has never been tempted! Because at his first encounter with something really tempting his moral code collapses completely. His bout with fate begins when he is run down in the street by a team of horses pulling a carriage driven by the beautiful and wealthy Veronika Harlan. Lorenz is unharmed, but he returns to consciousness with Veronika holding his head in her hands, and he is instantly infatuated.
His lust is awakened by looking into the face of the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, and his pride is awakened when he is told by Marie's father that his poetry is genius according to a visiting publisher (the publisher turns out to be wrong). When Lorenz realizes he has no chance with the actual Veronika he settles for a look-alike gold digger that he meets in a tavern. The problem? He has no gold for her to dig since he has lost his job as city clerk due to his absences, presence in taverns, and hanging about the front entrance of the Harlan home. Apparently doing a low paying menial civil service job in 1922 Germany required the dullest of home lives.
Lorenz soon learns that his poetry is worthless, although this scene is missing from the movie. His solution? A stronger willed criminal minded fellow convinces Lorenz first to commit fraud to keep his gold digging girlfriend, and when Lorenz is found out, he is convinced by the very same fellow to commit robbery to cover up the original fraud. When the midnight robbery goes awry, he just lies down and covers his head to not see his more violent companion murdering the would-be robbery victim, who just happens to be his own aunt! He doesn't try to stop him at all.
Now here is where the film loses me. Lorenz has committed fraud, robbery, and been an accomplice to murder, but apparently spends only a short time in prison because he is still young looking when he gets out. That's a very short sentence! In the U.S. at the time he would have gotten a very short rope for the same crimes. Marie and her dad are waiting for him and drive him to a nice house in the country and tell him "This is your new home". Where did this home come from? If he had the kind of money to buy such a home why was his entire family living in a crowded run down apartment before he went to jail? Lorenz calls Marie his "beloved wife" at the beginning of the film - this entire story is told in flashback - so Marie, knowing that Lorenz is really a weak wimpy guy who is capable of giving in to the worst criminal impulses when influenced by a stronger personality, married him also knowing she wasn't his first OR second choice? What happens the next time he has a random encounter with a beautiful woman? Maybe they are both weak and wimpy and are thus made for each other, but that is not what the hopeful feeling with which this movie ends seems to imply.
Maybe the most puzzling and unexplained part of the movie is the very beginning. Before we even get to Lorenz writing down this story in a book and thus the flashback tale, there is an image first of an Albert Einstein look-alike walking in the country alone, then a Thomas Edison look-alike also walking in the country alone. No explanation. Then cut to Lorenz looking wistfully out his kitchen window. I don't know. Maybe Murnau was trying to say "geniuses often walk alone, but that doesn't mean that someone who walks alone (Lorenz) is necessarily a genius"??
I'll tell you one thing of which this film convinced me - Alfred Abel was a great actor. I was completely convinced he was a tower of jello in this film, and in 1927's Metropolis I was completely convinced he was cold deliberate industrialist capable of sentencing his right hand man to the closest thing there was to hell on earth. Catch this silent film if you can, even if you are not a big fan of the silents I think you'll find it fascinating.