Warning Shadows

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.

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

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).

German expressionism is on display in this strange drama from director Arthur Robison. A rich aristocrat (Fritz Kortner) invites some other dilettantes over for an evening of entertainment. The aristocrat sees the silhouette of what appears to be his lascivious wife (Ruth Wyher) being sexually groped by the trio of guests. This understandably upsets the aristocrat, and things aren't helped by his mischievous butler (Fritz Rasp) who feeds into his paranoia. When the night's entertainment shows up, he's a Shadowplayer (Alexander Granach), meaning he uses shadows and shadow puppets to tell tales. His performance causes everyone present to consider their actions.

The highlights here are the numerous inventive ways shadows are used to tell the story, and Rasp as the evil butler. He's long been a favorite of mine among German character actors, and I loved seeing this early role for him. .