This version of Der Golem

The film was the major success of the 1920-21 season in Germany. Furthermore, it was distributed internationally. Nevertheless, only a few of the several prints distributed survived. There are 20 prints of the film in different film archives. As a matter of fact, all of them were originated by three different incomplete matrices.

The recent discovery of the colour version (5 tintings) in the Cineteca Italiana di Milano has permitted the renewal of the restoration project.

The version presented this evening is the first step of the restoration project undertaken by Cineteca Italiana, Cineteca del Comune di Bologna and Münchner Filmmuseum/Stadtmuseum, which will continue by comparing and collating all the existing materials of the film.

This first step was obviously the duplication of the Italian version, which deserves a particular attention; in facts, apart from having the original colourings, it is notable because of its photographic quality, which restores a new richness to the inventions of film’s decor, and to photography and lightings work, whose qualities were lost in the various duplicating stages of the other existing materials.

The film

The Golem legend was made in three film versions during the silent film period. Little remains of the first, Der Golem with Paul Wegener (1914) written and directed by Henrik Galeen.

When Siegfried Kracauer and Carl Vincent questioned Galeen and Wegener, they both thoroughly denied having ever made the film, in which Wegener had participated as script-writer. In 1917 Wegener approached this theme again in his scenario and interpretation in a new film called Der Golem und die Tanzeren – this film is also lost. The part of the colossal who is woken by the rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezahel in order to save the Hebrew race, is played by Rochus Gliese, the costume-designer of the film. Rochus Gliese also played in the previous version and also in the third version (1920), which is the one being presented today in the restored edition (and in which Henrik Galeen, contrary to statements made by various historians, took no part in).

The film – “images in five parts inspired by the events in an old chronicle” as the intertitle states – is a kaleidoscope of lights and shadows, of light/dark and half tones, where the rabbi’s abode with its sometimes concave, sometimes convex walls, the strange winding staircase, the ghetto streets with the crooked houses, the asymmetrical windows, the lengthened roofs all seem to announce Nosferatu.

However, Der Golem und wie er in die Welt kam possesses a naive fascination which distinguishes it from other expressionist works and which gains it an international success all over the world In New York it was shown for ten months, but it only came out in 1925 in Italy (Golem – come venne al mondo)”. (Vittorio Martinelli)