The wax museum

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Movie
Original title The wax museum
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1924
length 83 minutes
Rod
Director Paul Leni
Leo Birinski (director)
script Henrik Galeen
production Alexander Kwartiroff
camera Helmar Lerski
occupation

Das Wachsfigurenkabinett is a German feature film by Paul Leni from 1924. The screenplay was written by the author of some of the most famous films in German Expressionism , Henrik Galeen (including Nosferatu and Der Golem, How He Came Into The World ).

action

The first shot of the film shows a young, nameless poet at a fair. He is on the way to a wax museum , whose figures he should think of interesting stories or incidents.

A showman, accompanied by his daughter, shows him the three most impressive exhibits of his exhibition: Hārūn ar-Raschīd , the Caliph of Baghdad , Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper . The showman's daughter, Eva, makes him look pretty from the first moment they meet.

The arm of the figure of the caliph has been broken off and the poet tries to imagine the event that could have led to the loss of the body part.

Harun al-Rashid

The young poet immediately found himself involved in his own story, as a pastry baker Assad he lived with his beautiful wife Maimune (he introduces himself to Eva as his wife in both episodes) right next to the walls of the palace of the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al -Rashid, whose obese appearance reminds one of the rulers of the Arabian Nights .

Thick smoke from the nearby Assad bakery covers the terrace of the palace at the moment when the caliph is about to lose a game of chess against his grand vizier . The caliph feels downright mocked about the smoke and demands the baker's head. But the Grand Vizier cannot resist the charming looks of Maimune and finally abandons his commissioned project. Maimune is visibly taken with the noble gallantry of the vizier, which the baker Assad does not hide. Instead of the baker's head, the Grand Vizier brings the Caliph tidings of the baker's wife's beauty. He decides to mingle with the people at night to follow the descriptions of his vizier.

Under cover of darkness, he visits the young couple's house and witnesses an argument between the jealous Assad and Maimune, who are dissatisfied with their neglected life in humility and poverty. Assad promises to rob Maimune of the caliph's wishing ring in order to be able to grant her all of her wishes and ultimately to prove his manhood to her.

While the caliph goes into the baker's house, Assad steals the wishing ring from the alleged caliph (it is a wax figure). Since he does not dare to pull it from his finger, he cuts off the right arm of the "sleeping man" with a sword. Since he is unable to leave the palace unnoticed, he has to flee from the palace before the bodyguard of the caliph.

The caliph - deeply impressed by Maimune's beauty - tries, however, to lure her with splendor and wealth. The returning Assad forcibly enters the locked house, while Maimune (obviously trying to find a suitable place for the obese caliph) is able to hide Harun al-Raschid in the oven in good time. The intruding bodyguard is about to arrest Assad when Maimune "awakens" the caliph with the wishing ring on the severed guard arm. She also wants Assad to be the caliph's court baker. He finally takes the two lovers under his protective cloak.

Ivan the Terrible

Ivan, Tsar of Russia , accompanied by his court astrologer, goes into the cellar vaults of the Kremlin to indulge himself in the torture chambers of the tortured prisoners. A special “toy” of the tsar, an hourglass, is given by the tsar's poisoner with the name of the person whose last hour approaches with each grain of sand. The astrologer advises the extremely suspicious Ivan to be careful, because his name could next be written on the hourglass, after all he lets his guards kill the poisoner. But he sensed his fate and was able to write the name of the tsar on the watch glass before his violent death.

The next day a nobleman comes to the tsar's court to accompany him to a boyar wedding . Ivan sees his chance to outsmart fate and suggests that the bride's father swap roles. Ivan now leads the sleigh and thus escapes an assassination attempt in which the companion disguised as a tsar falls victim. The tsar, who believes he is more powerful than death, calls on the dismayed wedding party to music and dance - regardless of the grief the daughter of the victim is feeling - and also has them kidnapped to the Kremlin, where they see the mistreatment of their bridegroom Iwans torture chambers.

But the astrologer gives the tsar to understand that he has been poisoned, because the hourglass was found in the poisoner's chamber, which he will keep turning until the end of his life in mental derangement in order to escape his supposedly predetermined fate.

Jack the Ripper

When the young poet has put the two episodes on paper, he is finally overcome by sleep and he is exposed to the most terrible excesses of his own creative imagination. The last character of the wax museum, Jack the Ripper, pursues the poet into his dreams, whose fearful closeness to reality (the cross-fading with the carousels of the fair and the dark backyards makes the narrowness and hopelessness of escape all the more evident) makes him believe Mass murderer being stabbed to death. But the deadly knife turns out to be his own pen and, waking up again, the relief is great that the oppressive nightmare cannot destroy the young love between him and the showman's daughter.

background

During the filming of The Wax Museum

The film structures characteristic of contemporary German Expressionist cinema come from Paul Leni and Fritz Maurischat . The artistically abstracting influence of the set structures of films like Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari , Genuine (both Robert Wiene ), Dr. Mabuse, who ran out of gambler ( Fritz Lang ) or Die Bergkatze ( Ernst Lubitsch ), continues in this work in a strikingly similar way. The production company was Neptun-Film AG (Berlin) on behalf of Universum-Film AG (UFA) . The premiere of the film took place on October 6, 1924 in Vienna , the German premiere on November 13, 1924 in Berlin .

Four episodes were originally planned for the film, but the necessary financial means were ultimately lacking for the fourth chapter on the robber captain "Rinaldo Rinaldini" (based on the novel of the same name by Christian August Vulpius from 1798). Despite the fact that the scene was deleted, the film features the robber figure with his black pointed hat in the row of wax figures.

literature

  • Fred Gehler The wax museum. In: Günther Dahlke, Günther Karl (Hrsg.): German feature films from the beginnings to 1933. A film guide. 2nd Edition. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1993, pp. 105 ff. ISBN 3-89487-009-5 .
  • Thomas Kramer: Lexikon des Deutschen Films , Stuttgart 1995, p. 336.
  • Jürgen Müller: Films of the 20s and the early cinema , Cologne 2007, pp. 162–167.
  • Dietrich Neumann: Filmarchitektur von Metropol1is to Blade Runner , Munich / New York 1996, pp. 84–87.
  • Helmut Weihsmann: Built Illusions - Architecture in Film , Vienna 1988, pp. 120–12 ?.

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