The framing device around which 'Waxworks' revolves unavoidably leads to a distracting unevenness of tone, the atmosphere fluctuating between light-hearted comedy and gruelling horror. Though it barely runs for five minutes, I found my heart genuinely thumping as Jack (Werner Krauss) stalked through the dream-like haze of Luna Park, as the young writer (William Dieterle) and his girl (Olga Belajeff) flee from his multiple eerie shadows, every step leading them ever-so-closer to the cold glint of his knife. One of the earliest portrayals of Ivan the Terrible, this segment no doubt influenced Sergei Eisenstein when he directed 'Ivan the Terrible: Part I and II (1944).' The final story, definitely the scariest of the three, concerns Jack the Ripper also referred to as the mythical Spring-Heeled Jack for some reason, perhaps due to a translation error. Veidt plays the cruel Grand Prince of Moscow with a wide-eyed craziness that calls to mind the intense acting style of fellow-German Klaus Kinski. This segment is followed by the story of Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt), who is driven to madness by the trickle of sand through an hour-glass, every falling grain bringing him closer to demise. When his intentions towards the beautiful Maimune (Olga Belajeff) are shown to be friendly rather than sexual, he becomes an affable and cartoonish oaf.
Emil Jannings plays the rotund Harun al Raschid, the fifth Abbasid Caliph, with a loathsome repugnance that gradually gives way to a certain likability.
Murnau, Fritz Lang and Paul Leni and Helmar Lerski's imaginatively-warped cinematography to highlight the fantasy in each story, even though there are very few elements that would ordinarily be considered fantastic. Though Frenchman Georges Méliès had first struck on this idea at the turn of the twentieth century, it was Robert Wiene's creative horror film that established German Expressionism as the defining artistic style of the 1920s, securing post-War Germany as cinema's most prominent innovator and paving the way for directors F.W. Caligari (1920).' It demonstrated to filmmakers and audiences that cinema is an inherently artificial medium, and so, rather than striving for realism, films should emphasise the fake and fantastic elements of their story. It's only when you begin to delve deeper into works of German Expressionism that you can appreciate how important and influential a film was 'The Cabinet of Dr. Overall, while not in the class of the finest silent horror classics, this works quite well as lighter entertainment. The biggest strength of "Waxworks" is its settings, which establish the right atmosphere and lend an aura of the bizarre that helps the stories to be more convincing. The last sequence, with Spring-Heeled Jack, comes the closest to producing real fear, and it's just unfortunate that it was not more fully developed. The Ivan the Terrible sequence features an interesting, if rather far-fetched, story and a pretty good performance by Conrad Veidt as Ivan. This story is the lightest of the three, yet it works well due to some creative touches.
It's hard not to associate Jannings with the serious characters he played in "The Blue Angel" and "The Last Laugh", yet here he quite successfully portrays the Caliph as something of a buffoon. It's rather interesting to see Emil Jannings as the Caliph in the first sequence. The three stories told about the "Waxworks" all have their own strengths.
Wedding designs by waxworks movie#
This interesting and generally creative silent horror movie is really not all that tense or suspenseful, but it has some interesting stories and characters, and the distinctive expressionistic settings add considerably to the atmosphere.
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