The Hands of Orlac

(Orlacs Hände)

Dir. Robert Wiene; script Louis Nerz, based on Maurice Renard’s novel The Hands of Orlac; cinemat. Hans Androschin, Günter Krampf

Prod. Pan-Film, Austria, Germany, 1924

Cast: Conrad Veidt (Paul Orlac), Alexandra Sorina (Yvonne), Hans Homma (Dr. Serral), Carmen Cartellieri (Regine)

  DCP, 98’, bw, intertitles/subtitles: DE/PL, EN, source: Filmarchiv Austria

Acclaimed pianist Paul Orlac is returning home to his beloved wife Yvonne following a successful concert tour when his train derails in a tragic accident. Seriously injured, he ends up in the clinic of Dr Serral, who performs a groundbreaking hand transplant operation on him. Paul immediately senses a disturbing strangeness about his new hands, however, and when he learns that they originally belonged to a convicted murderer named Vasseur, his life spirals into a nightmare...

One of the earliest horror films, and a forerunner of the 'body horror' subgenre in which the body becomes an alien and threatening presence for the protagonist, this dark and erotically ambiguous story is adapted from a 1920 novel by Maurice Renard, a writer specialising in science fiction, and can be treated as a precursor of the medical thriller (with its first portrayal on the big screen of a transplant operation).

The film remained underappreciated for a long time. Made four years after the more famous The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 1920), it remained in the shadow of that masterpiece of expressionism, just like all the other works of the director Robert Wiene. Here, Wiene again draws on the techniques of German Expressionism through the dramatic use of light and shadow, the set design and, above all, the mime-like physicality of Conrad Veidt. An icon of expressionist cinema and Wiene's favourite actor, Veidt – so memorable as Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – thrived in horror films (even appearing in that same year as Ivan the Terrible in Paul Leni's Waxworks/Das Wachsfigurenkabinett). Renard's novel itself would later inspire further adaptations, including Mad Love (1935) by Karl Freund and The Hands of Orlac (1960) by Edmond T. Gréville.

 muzyka: YANA

  SATURDAY | NOVEMBER 30 | 18:30 

introduction to the movie: Tomasz Kolankiewicz