Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination (1923) Online

This had been something of a holy grail for me: while there's very little that's actually written about it (even following this DVD release from Kino - I came across only 1 online review!), its reputation as a highpoint of the German Expressionist movement had always preceded it and I had personally been intrigued for years by a single still from the film in the British periodical from the early 80s, "The Movie".

Well, having at long last watched the film (thanks, Kino, also the 'rescuers' of another rare Silent classic - Paul Leni's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS [1928]), I can say that it's a genuine masterwork which well and truly belongs with the other classics of the early German cinema (particularly the Expressionist horror films, even if WARNING SHADOWS is not a genre effort per se). Still, there are undeniable macabre overtones in the story about a dinner party comprising a jealous man, his flirtatious wife and her four suitors that's 'invaded' by the owner of a traveling puppet-show who may or may not be a magician as well.

Actually, the film looks forward to several others in its theme and approach: first of all, its complete lack of intertitles (this is a purely visual film) precedes F.W. Murnau's more celebrated THE LAST LAUGH (1924), the silhouetted puppet show anticipates Lotte Reiniger's THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926; the first 'animated' film) and the 'film-within-a-film' scenario (where we have the magician 'borrowing' the shadows of the guests in order to allow them to see for themselves what is to be the tragic outcome of the night) also looks forward to a similar 'morality play' performance at the centre of another Murnau film, TARTUFFE (1925)!

As I said, the film's look - sets by Albin Grau and camera-work by Fritz Arno Wagner (both of whom had worked on Murnau's NOSFERATU [1922]) - and the techniques deployed - particular attention is given to the lighting scheme as, in the absence of dialogue, this functions as much as an illumination of the various characters and what they may be thinking as the actors interpreting them! - are incredible (even after all these years): the plot itself is very simple and, in fact, if the film has a fault it's that it takes this a bit too slowly; all the various characters are introduced at the very start in a prologue which occupies the first five minutes of the picture! Then again, by the time the magician's terrifying and murderous visions had reached their crescendo (this here is, by far, the best section of the film), I had become so completely absorbed that I was actually surprised when the picture shifted back to the main narrative, indicating that it was nearing conclusion!

As befits an Expressionist film, the acting style (but also the make-up) is slightly exaggerated with the result that some of it may seem awkward today (the leading lady and the three elderly suitors, for instance). Much better are the three more notable names in the cast - Fritz Kortner as the husband, Gustav von Wangeheim (who had been Jonathan Harker in NOSFERATU) as the infatuated youth and especially Alexander Granach (yet another NOSFERATU alumnus, where he had made a creepy Renfield) as the scruffy-looking and somewhat unhinged magician; indeed, the latter makes for a truly memorable character - and I could just imagine him going to the next house or the next village after the end of our story to provide some more of his specialized 'entertainment'!

The figure of director Arthur Robison, then, is something of an enigma: he was an American who ended up working in Germany; I haven't seen any of his other work and doubt how much of it actually survives at this juncture - but he did contrive to make the original version of THE INFORMER (featuring, apart from a very young Ray Milland, German actors Lars Hanson and Lya De Putti!) in Britain in 1929, while in 1935 came his remake of the oft-filmed German folktale THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE, starring the great Anton Walbrook in the famous dual role...

This is an unusual, very different sort of film, completely visual as it has no intertitles, in keeping with the original German version. About a man who is full of anxiety (his eyes continually popping out in jealous rages) over the attentions his woman has been paying to a handsome youth and several other male admirers (meanwhile, though she likes to flirt, she actually seems more interested in gazing at herself and posing in front of mirrors). The action all takes place at a house dinner party one evening, where our beautiful and alluring peacock lady is busy enticing the man, the youth, and three gentlemen, then all are "entertained" by a strange traveling entertainer and his shadow puppet play, who causes all to hallucinate a vision of "things to come".

This film is very interestingly photographed, full of sharp shadows against brightly lit walls that set some of the action, plus lavish period costuming and well-draped sets that look like they belong on a stage. The action is mostly slow and dreamlike, a bit too slow at times as this drags just a little through parts. Still, very interesting to see. The print on the DVD, tinted in sepia/yellow, pink, and bright lavender tones, looks quite nice. The music score is excellent and suits this very odd silent film quite well.

To enjoy this film -- and you can -- accept the fact that the characters take their time in expressing themselves in mostly slow, but sometimes abrupt motions. Give up the idea of "Get on with it!" and accept the slow pace. It's worth it; just let yourself be drawn into a world of shadows, dreams and mesmerism.

At a dinner party, a shadow player entertains a count, his flirtatious wife, and four of her admirers. He appears to entrance them into a weird dream in which the suddenly cuckolded husband has the three suitors kill his wife. This is enough of a spoiler, since you could probably guess watching it that something was going to happen to her because of her outlandish flirtations with those fawning over her (or perhaps, as another noted above, she was more in love with herself than with others). Finally, the party goers watch the ending of their dream on a screen in front of them, the curtains close over it, and they wake up. The husband and wife reunite, now deeply in love, seeing the folly of their past ways.

What makes the film stand out are (surprise!) the extensive and creative use of shadows, the slightly bizarre story, which definitely cries out for a remake, and some outstanding camera work, even if this is the kind of German Expressionism Mike 'Deiter' Myers used to satirize on the 'Sprockets' segment on 'Saturday Night Live' in the 1990s.

We don't get the herky-jerky motions so common in comedies of the teen years, or as seen in the great 'Intolerance' (1916), or the amazing 'Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' (1920), but we see more naturalistic (24 frames?) movement, even if it's all too stagy. It has a good, well fitting score. If you want good, fluid movements, with an interesting story and not very stagy acting, check out 'The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' (1921) or any of so many other great films of the twenties.

This one is innovative, ground breaking, enjoyable film making. I give it a 7.

For further reading I recommend an excellent article on the film in the film magazine 'Traffic' (nb. 33) by the German movie aficionado Enno Patalas. Patalas was also the driving force behind a complete restoration of the film at the Munich Filmmuseum - surprisingly there are some (hand- )colored sections in the original version. The shadow theater puppets shown in the movie were created by the German expressionist artist Ernst Moritz Engert, who was well connected to the early expressionist art- and literature-scene in Berlin and Munich. I adore the movie for exploring the deep aesthetic relations between the art of the shadow play and movie as an art itself - from my point of view the earliest and most reflected approach to provide a genuine philosophical statement on film.

"Warning Shadows" shouldn't work as well as it does. There are no titles, causing the plot to be confusing if not closely paid attention to; the Expressionistic elements are abundant but also strangely removed in style; the acting is often tongue-in-cheek, and the overall artiness is seemingly self-conscious. However, those same elements also contribute to this film's majesty and originality. There is simply no other film (that I'm aware of, anyway) that approaches the beauty and sheer erotic oddness of this obscure classic. I cannot adequately describe exactly what it is that makes "Warning Shadows" one of my all-time favorite motion pictures, so...just see it. It's available on DVD from our great friends at Kino.

German Expressionism was a style of filmmaking that seemed loaded with potential, especially after the early success of The Cabinet of Caligari. The idea of the movement was that the filmmakers would make the sets reflect the interior state of the characters, which is a neat way to get around the seeming perspective limitation of cinema when compared to literature. In practice, however, Caligari has remained pretty much the only famous film to do this successfully and consistently in spite of the utilization of this technique in very small measures in several films of the period, most famously in those of Murnau and Lang.

I was hoping that the relatively obscure Warning Shadows (aka Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination) might be another film that took full advantage of what I see as the great potential of this movement but I was somewhat disappointed to see that it uses it minimally. First of all, in spite of a couple of cues that suggest a good deal of the film isn't quite real or even that it's all the dream of a character, this idea is never fully developed so there really isn't a specific interior state to reflect. Even if you work with the assumption that the film doesn't represent any specific perspective but is meant to look like a dream, the set design is still lacking because it just seems like a staged mockup of a large manor house. In fact, for a film that foregoes dialogue and intertitles altogether, Warning Shadows is surprisingly stagy and the rooms seem artificial in a bad way, especially since it isn't common to see more than one wall at a time here.

The plot and its execution is solid but unremarkable. The film is about a very jealous man who has invited four amorous young men to have dinner with him and his coquettish wife. It's obvious where this is headed all along, although things are complicated by the presence of an entertainer who can do amazing things with shadow puppets. He uses these puppets to show what might happen if the young men don't cool their heels around the jealous husband. This is a simple plot that is still somewhat hard to follow because of the lack of dialogue and is further complicated by the languorous pace. On the bright side, the entertainer character seems to be a neat variation on the supernatural trickster archetype.

Anyway, the highlight here is still the visuals, especially the warning shadows themselves. There's something inherently creepy about shadows and especially a mysterious person who can manipulate them for reasons of his own and even though he ultimately turns out to be relatively benevolent the film still manages to pull of a few unsettling sequences. Further, there are a couple of scenes in which the characters' behavior is odd in a way that calls dreams to mind, so this isn't just your run of the mill tale of jealousy. I also have to give the film some credit for relying so much on visuals and the last scene is suitably bizarre. Overall, Warning Shadows is a worthwhile watch that doesn't quite live up some of its more famous predecessors.

One of the most influential of the German Expressionist films of the 1920's. The most radical aspect is the lighting, where the shadows are sometimes more important than the actors.

Also unusual is that there are no titles except at the start to introduce the characters, who are just types and do not have names, just descriptive titles (husband, wife, youth, servant, etc.).

The shadow puppet show is similar to what is seen more extensively in Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, Die (1925).

I'm a passionate advocate on behalf of German Expressionist films, especially from the silent era. I'm still bitter about an incident at the 1982 World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, when an audience full of idiots (jaded by high-tech S/FX movies) laughed at the cardboard sets in 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'. Those morons didn't care that the high degree of originality and imagination in 'Caligari' more than made up for its tiny production budget.

'Shadows', however, while firmly within the Expressionist genre, is too arty for its own good. While this film does have some merits, its flaws greatly outnumber and exceed its merits.

All the actors perform their roles with hand-to-brow histrionics of precisely the sort which have given silent-film acting a bad reputation. Several of the actors in this movie have given good performances elsewhere, so I assume that director Arthur Robison deserves the blame for their mannered theatrics here. During one scene, when a swain aims a punch at his rival, the actor cannot simply throw a punch: he must put his fist up against the other man's face, and then shove.

Alexander Granach, as a showman with a shadow box and shadow puppets, demonstrates some extremely deft hand shadows, apparently with no other props supplementing his hands. But, when the puppet-master isn't performing, Granach lurches across the screen like Igor the hunchback. Ruth Weyher is pretty and graceful but is given no opportunity to behave like a human being.

This silent film was originally released with no intertitles. Several other silent features also eschewed captions -- 'The Last Laugh', "The Old Swimmin' Hole", 'The Last Moment' -- but those films had linear plots which the audience could easily follow. The plot of 'Shadows' is deeply confusing, made even more confusing by the arty pretensions, and the story would have been far easier to follow with some captions. A curator at the Murnau Archiv has told me that 'Shadows' was given intertitles by several exhibitors when it was released outside Germany.

The plot -- such as it is -- vaguely reminded me of Renoir's 'Rules of the Game' and Bergman's 'Smiles of a Summer Night': in a swank country manor, some people with more money than sense amuse themselves at each other's expense. But here the cast members are introduced in arty tableaux that are more alienating than edifying. After the final tableau, we're treated to the odd spectacle of a single upraised finger casting a shadow on the screen. What does this mean, please? Later, in hindsight, we understand that this signifies the beginning of the drama's Chapter One. (I saw this film in London, where the audience burst out laughing at the start of Chapter Two, symbolised by a hand with TWO upraised fingers: in Britain, this two-fingered gesture has obscene connotations.) The finger device is confusing, and adds nothing to the story ... nor does the decision to divide the narrative into arbitrary chapters.

The production design is impressive: judging by the furniture and clothes, this story takes place somewhere in Europe (probably Germany) circa 1830: again, some titles would have helped. But Robison considerably weakens the effect of these wonderful costumes and sets by obscuring them with elaborate shadows, and by gimmicky effects such as raising and lowering a proscenium curtain in front of the actors. (As if we need to be reminded that this very artificial story is merely a story!)

Considerable talent, effort and expense were put into 'Shadows', to little effect. Rather a lot of today's movie-goers are sadly prejudiced against silent films, misperceiving them all to be crude and laughably overacted. Sadly, 'Shadows' is precisely the sort of movie which would convince such people that all the negative stereotypes about silent movies are true after all. My rating for this failure: 2 out of 10, mostly for the production design.

I caught this at the Cinematheque a couple of times in Paris. It is a film with no intertitles (except at the beginning for identifying the characters) and, like "The Last Laugh", depends on the camera and editing to tell the story. The action in both films, then, would have to be slow as not to confuse the viewer. This is the lesser of the two but the Murnau film has long been an established masterwork. Frankly I don't know much about Art(h)ur Robison. He was an American working on German-looking films in Germany during the Expressionist phase.

This film does indeed feature shadows and the lighting is necessarily bright. What I particularly enjoyed was being pulled into the action of the shadows along with the guests. In this respect the film was quite brilliant. The acting is really quite good and despite the slow speed of action, the film has barely dated at all.

Curtis Stotlar

I shudder to think what might have been of the German school if Caligari and Nosferatu had been among the lost films. There's just not a whole lot that has reached us from this movement, much less truly great works. Recently restored by the Murnau foundation, this is meant to be one of the most evocative ones, a great title we had been missing.

Most of it passes with little notice, a night of erotic angst, rivalry and a marriage falling apart with the lavish mansion of a baron as the stage of the theater. The prospective lovers feign and thrust, eventually really thrust; we get to see this in shadows. Shadows, a nocturnal hallucination as the title goes. It's the arrival of a shadow-player that is the most intriguing here. Oh, eventually his magick tricks were all serving a benign purpose, domestic bliss is salvaged from desire most foul, the soul restored into proper order.

The trick is that he gives the parties involved a vision of what might unfold, the dangers involved. His small audience wakes up from the cinematic illusion dazzled, baffled, rubbing their eyes with disbelief. And we pull further back in the final shot to see curtains falling on this level that we experienced as reality.

Is everything inside the nested story so artificial because it was the times still inflected by theater, or because the shadow play is inherently artificial? Is the shadow player the protagonist himself, made from his mirrored image, and so conjuring for himself a wish-fulfillment illusion where everything is made alright?

If you were looking to come to this for German expressionism, you might want to reconsider. There is a great shot of the illusionist pushing back, elongating the shadows of his players. But it's serving and is part of the great self-referential tradition of cinema, films about the illusion of watching films.

Ruth Weyher (the super-lovely wife), Fritz Kortner (the super-jealous husband), Fritz Rasp (the personal servant), Karl Platen (another servant), Lilli Herder (the maid), Alexander Granach (the strange illusionist), Eugen Rex (servant), Gustav von Wangenheim (the lover), Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Max Gulstorf, Ferdinand von Alten (older admirers).

Director: ARTHUR ROBISON. Screenplay: Arthur Robison, Albin Grau, Rudolf Schneider. Photography: Fritz Arno Wagner. Art direction and costume design: Albin Grau. Producers: Willy Seibold and Enrico Dieckmann. PAN Film. German release: 16 October 1923. New York opening at the 55th Street Cinema: 9 August 1927. 85 minutes. (DVD available from Kino. Quality rating: 9 out of ten).

COMMENT: A masterpiece of German expressionist cinema or a boring charade? Critics are not evenly divided. Most opt for the first scenario. Me? I stand in the middle.

"Warning Shadows" is the sort of film that seems better in one's memory of tinted shadowy highlights than in an actual viewing where larger-than-life acting (particularly the over-the-top, bulging-eyed Kortner) is much less acceptable.

This is "Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination" or "Warning Shadows" and this film takes a path that many silent films back then. Include an ounce of horror, mystery, maybe even fantasy and hope the audience will be scared. Well.. maybe back then they were, but today this film that runs for slightly under 85 minutes did almost nothing for me. The usual problem is present again: not enough subtitles. If we don't understand what is going on, we lose interest and don't care about the story or characters. I really wonder why so few directors included a sufficient amount of subtitles during the silent film era. I guess there is a reason why nobody knows Arthur Robison today anymore, the writer and director of this German movie here. Another problem is overacting. Especially, the male protagonist who is also in the last scene really needed a lesson in subtlety. So yeah, a weak film with regard to basically everything: story, acting and directing. I do not recommend this over 90-year-old film. Not dramatic, not entertaining and especially not scary. Thumbs down.

Confusing ,but a good piece of German silent expressionism of the Wiemar period.The plot is .I think is that a baron puts on a dinner party teasing four men ,as their guest,with his wife.Then starts to get jealous and ends up causing her to have a heart attack,but it ends up as a dream. Fritz Kortners plays the count.Ruth Weyher plays the countess,Frits Rasp plays a servant and has his hear combed the same way he would have it in the talking period, parted in the middle all the way down behind his head, with his side curled,how strange.Both Kortner and Rasp appeared in the 1931 German talking version of Brother Karamozov.The four guest,Rex Eugene,Max Gulstorf,Ferdinand Von Alten,Gutav Von Wangenheim.Alexander Granach plays the s shadow player. Ruth Weyher Teases the four guest.Granach puts on an early form of t.v.,shadow plays with stencil puppets.Gustav Flrits with her in her room,but she doesn't go all the way.Frtiz getting Jelouse has her tied down,on the dinner table,a form of bondage, and manipulates the guest to stab her to death,but only the stab at the shadow. They all end up kicking fritz out of the widow and he disappears.But it turns out to be a dream caused by the shadow master,Excellent silent 11/01/12

Have you ever gone to a country where you don't know the language and sat and listened to what was going on around you? If so, then you might have some idea what it's like watching "Warning Shadows". All sorts of things happen on the screen but the viewer is left wondering what this all means--and there is no explanation nor context nor any intertitle cards explaining anything. While I noticed a lot of people gave this one 9s and 10s, I just can't see it as the film seemed boring and incomprehensible.

Normally in a review I talk a bit about the plot, but in this one I have no idea WHAT is going on. There are a lot of men wearing early 19th century clothing and they all hang about a woman in a strange mansion. Periodically, they amuse themselves with shadow plays projected on sheets. What else is occurring? I dunno.

"Warning Shadows" has been described as an example of German Expressionism--the same odd sort of style typified in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". However, "The Cabinet" is a wonderful film and uses it's odd surreal look to the fullest. Here in "Warning Shadows" the sets just come off as simple or cheap. Additionally, I'd prefer to think of it as German OVER-expressionism because the acting is so overdone. Characters roll their eyes, stare and make a billion and one expressions using their eyes as well as wildly gesticulating to show emotions. Arty? I dunno--it just looks bad.

Aside from some nice costumes, I cannot find much of anything to admire about this film. While I have seen and reviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of silents and greatly appreciate them, this film seems like an artsy-fartsy mess--and a dull one to boot.

During a dinner, given by a wealthy baron and his wife, attended by four of her suitors in a 19th century German manor, a shadow-player rescues the marriage by giving all the guests a vision what might happen tonight if the baron stays jealous and the suitors do not reduce their advances towards his beautiful wife.

What strikes me about this film is just how German it is. I have no idea what was going on in Germany in the 1920s, but they had a definite vision on how to use shadows and light in their films. While this is not German expressionism, it is not so far removed that we cannot see the German aesthetic.

In some ways, we might be better comparing this to "Prince Achmed", a cartoon that relied on shadows rather than drawing. Again, a German film. I am surprised by how much a country's boundary could define their films. Today, I do not feel that a film made in any one country is so obviously differently from another...