Early German Film Mini-series – Wednesday nights on 29 September, and 6 & 13 October from 6 – 8 pm.
GER/WLCS 3066 Early German Film course opens door and cordially invites the public tothreescreenings of classics of the silent film era.
The screenings will take place in the Milham Room (Room 100) in the Harriet Irving Library Learning Commons.
Showtime is 6:00 PM. Admission is free.
September 29 The Doll (1919)
A charming romantic fantasy, produced in Berlin by Ernst Lubitsch, the director of such playful Hollywood sex comedies such as Trouble in Paradise and Design for Living. The Doll follows the misadventures of an effete young man who must get married in order to inherit a fortune. He opts to purchase a remarkably lifelike doll and marry it instead, not realizing that the doll is actually the puppet-maker’s flesh-and-blood daughter, in disguise.
October 6 Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922)
The earliest surviving screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, Nosferatu is a masterpiece of Expressionist artwork by director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Thomas Hutter is secretary to an estate agent in Wisborg, where he lives happily with his wife Ellen. One day his boss sends him to Transylvania on business, to negotiate with Baron Orlok about purchasing a house. When Hutter wakes the next morning, he discovers small red marks on his neck and guesses the horrors to come.
October 13 Metropolis (1927)
An urban dystopia, the myth of Fritz Lang’s silent film classic lies in its opulent, visionary staging and a long-enduring story as film material that became cinematic history. In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city’s mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences. Monumental in both scale of production and the themes it addresses, the film is widely regarded as the pinnacle of German Expressionist filmmaking from the 1920s.