Der Student von Prag (1913)
Directed by Stellan Rye, Hanns Heinz Ewers

Film Review

The comparative obscurity of The Student of Prague (a.k.a. Der Student von Prag) totally belies the fact that it is one of the most important films to have been made in the silent era.  Released in 1913, it challenges the commonly held view that German expressionism was a product of the First World War, but more importantly, it laid the foundation for the entire horror movie genre, with many of the familiar icons and themes of film horror readily traceable back to this incredibly influential work.  The Student of Prague is also noteworthy in that it was the first independently produced film to have a significant impact.  In any chronological listing of the world's most important horror films, this should appear right at the top of the list, made more than half a decade before the film that is often credited as the first true horror film (and the one that it directly inspired): Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari (1920).

The Student of Prague was the result of an improbable collaboration between three very colourful characters - one of Germany's most prolific writers of the time, a German stage actor of considerable repute and a Danish playwright whose burgeoning career would be tragically curtailed by WWI.  Paul Wegener was the project's instigator, a leading actor with Max Reinhardt's theatre company who had become excited by the possibilities of the new medium of cinema.  For his big screen debut, Wegener enlisted the services of Hanns Heinz Ewers, a prolific writer, poet and philosopher renowned for his interest in the supernatural.

The starting point was a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann entitled Das verlorene Spiegelbild (The Lost Reflection) contained in the anthology Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht (The Adventures of New Year's Eve), published in 1814.  In developing the scenario for what was to become The Student of Prague, Ewers drew on other sources, including the famous Faust legend, the Edgar Allan Poe story William Wilson and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.  The bleak and sadistic character of Ewers' writing would be strongly reflected in the final film, which was unusually pessimistic for its time, with evil for once triumphing over good.  You would never see anything like this in an American or British film, but then the situation in Germany in the dying days of its empire was uniquely grim, and would get a lot grimmer as the decade progressed.

Although Wegener and Ewers undoubtedly had considerable artistic input into the film, Stellan Rye was its principal director - the first of 16 films he made in a short but impressive career.  At the outbreak of WWI, Rye was conscripted into the German army and served with distinction on the Western Front, before sustaining a fatal injury.  He died in a French hospital in November 1914, a prisoner-of-war.  Already known for his work as a playwright and screenwriter, Rye had a keen visual sense which reveals itself in some of The Student of Prague's more memorable passages.  The graveyard sequence is particularly creepy, with a spinechilling Gothic feel that has echoes of so many later horror films. 

Another key contributor to the film was Guido Seeber, an important pioneer of early German cinema who originated and perfected some of the special effects that would become widely used for decades afterwards.  The shots in which the main protagonist (Wegener, barely convincing as a student) and his Doppelgänger appear together showcase some of Seeber's most impressive work and were a major cinematic innovation.  This was the first time a character and his double appeared on screen together, played by the same actor, through the miracle of split-screen photography.  Seeber's deft handiwork comes into its own for the scene in which the student fails to cast a reflection in a mirror - how many vampire films used the same effect subsequently?

The Student of Prague's most significant impact over the decade following its release was on the emerging horror genre.  It was whilst working on this film that Wegener conceived his next film, Der Golem (1915), another important piece in the development of the expressionistic style in German cinema.  Der Golem sadly no longer exists, but Wegener later remade it as Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920), the film with which he is now most readily associated.

The fact that every complete print of The Student of Prague and Der Golem had been lost by the mid-1920s led film historians to attach more importance to Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari than it perhaps deserves.  Wiene's boldly expressionistic film is often cited as the first horror film, the first monster movie, indeed the first example of German expressionism in cinema, but it is in fact none of these things.  It owes so much to The Student of Prague that it comes close to being a blatant rip-off, and it is indeed a curious thing that the two lead actors of Caligari - Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt - would be rematched in the 1926 remake of this film, directed by Henrik Galeen.

The most flagrant point of connection of The Student of Prague and Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari is the presence of an identical Satanic fiend in the guise of a dapper old professor.  In the former film, John Gottowt's Scapinelli fulfils the role of Mephistopheles in the Faust story, and he is reincarnated almost identically by Werner Krauss as Dr Caligari in Wiene's later film.  The costume is exactly the same - top hat, frock coat, cravat, spectacles - and both characters carry the same sense of gleeful malevolence.  Not only that, but as the mechanically moving Doppelgänger, Paul Wegener resembles the sleepwalking fiend Cesare in Wiene's film.  Throughout Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari, there are scenes that (for want of a better word) mirror those in The Student of Prague, and whilst the stories may differ somewhat, there is an uncanny similarity between the two films.

The Student of Prague's influence can be clearly seen in other German expressionistic films, notably F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), where the indelible image of the vampire stalking the streets of Wisborg evokes the sequence in the earlier film in which the unfortunate Balduin is relentlessly pursued by his menacing alter ego.  Would Wiene's film be held in quite such high esteem if Stellan Rye and his debut film had not fallen into obscurity by the mid-1920s?  It was not until the late 1980s that an attempt was made to resurrect Rye's 'lost' film.  Now digitally re-mastered and almost completely restored (only a few minutes are still missing from its original 85 minute runtime), The Student of Prague has finally awoken like a thing from the tomb, returned to reclaim its status as cinema's first important horror movie.  This is where all our celluloid nightmares begin...

Film Synopsis

Prague, 1820.  Balduin enjoys the reputation of the wildest student and best swordsman in the city but his poverty makes him a miserable soul.  Whilst his friends are happy carousing in a beer garden, he entertains the company of an old man named Scapinelli, who believes he has the solution to his problems.  That same day, Balduin comes to the rescue of the Countess Margit whilst she is out riding with her fiancé, Baron Waldis-Schwarzenberg.  The student at once realises he has found the woman of his dreams, but how can he dare to hope that she will love him in return?  As promised, Scapinelli comes up with the answer.  Visiting Balduin in his bare lodgings that evening, the old man offers him 100,000 gold coins in return for just one item in the room.  The student readily agrees to the contract and, to his surprise, Scapinelli removes his reflection from a mirror before departing with it.  Balduin wastes no time using his newfound wealth to work his way into Margit's milieu and it is not long before he is on intimate terms with her.  The student does not know that he has another admirer.  For some time, the penniless street dancer Lydushka has been pursuing him and, on discovering he loves another woman, she jealously betrays him to Margit's fiancé.  Outraged, the baron challenges the student to a duel, but, at the insistence of Margit's father, Balduin resolves to spare his rival's life.  Alas, Balduin arrives at the scene of the duel too late - his reflection has already slain the baron!  The poor student's nightmare is far from over...