Waxworks (1924)

Director: Paul Leni

Screenplay: Henrik Galeen

Cast: Emil Jannings as Harun al-Rashid, Conrad Veidt as Ivan the Terrible, Werner Krauss as Spring-Heeled Jack, William Dieterle as The Poet / Assad the Baker / The Boyar, John Gottowt as the waxworks proprietor, Olga Belajeff as Eva / Maimune / the Boyar's bride

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Truthfully, Waxworks for most of its length is not really horror for most of its length, but is important to the canon of German Expressionist cinema. It is still a fascinating piece, an anthology story set up with moments that are purely macabre, set up around the figures of Harun al-Rashid, Ivan the Terrible and the fictional figure of Spring-Heeled Jack all co-existing as waxwork figures in an exhibition at a German carnival. The owner of the exhibit hires a man (William Dieterle) to write their exhibits' stories, building this anthology whilst falling for Eva (Olga Belajeff), the woman who works there. Its director, Paul Leni, would move to the US to make Hollywood films in the last stage of his career, tragically passing away before his time at forty four. He is also very important, alongside the figures who worked with him on and off the screen, for films which find themselves placed into the history of early horror cinema even if not their primary genre as with Waxworks.  Probably the most famous for its cultural influence is The Man Who Laughs (1928), a film which is not horror in genre, but fit into its iconography for the titular figure's iconic appearance, a known inspiration for the Batman villain The Joker.

Waxworks feels like a flex in terms of bringing together figures from the world of German cinema at its time, playing off to later horror anthologies for bringing in big names in their own stories as Harun al-Rashid is played by Emil Jannings, and the future Man Who Laughs, Conrad Veidt, playing Ivan the Terrible. Spring-Heeled Jack, played by Werner Krauss, is more an additional epilogue whilst the other two stories take up most of the film's length. This presents the issue now with Waxworks, as that means Jannings' story takes up a large part of the feature, and means you have to accept a film from a hundred years ago where German actors are playing Middle Eastern figures in brown face against an ancient Persian reality. Of an alternative reality to the actual Bagdad this is set in Harun al-Rashid, as played by Jannings as a cartoonish oaf, is a caliph eyeing the wife of a baker, learning of her when about to have the husband executed for ruining his chess games with the smoke from his work. Barring some actors playing servants, the cast is white actors, something we have to accept from an ancient film from a century ago, alongside the whole issue that some may not know that Harun al-Rashid is quite an important historical figure in terms of the Arabic world, making Jannings' take on him as a buffoonish womaniser, whilst from a great actor, not flattering at all.

It does not come off as racist in terms of mistral acting, to deliberately caricature these figures as harmful archetypes, but a now naive part of the past where the likes of the German film industry of that time, let alone Hollywood, dreamt of stories in these places considered exotic and sincerely wanted to tell the stories, but were at the time they cast actors in these roles regardless of them being white actors being made up into other ethnicities. It is a practice that happened in a few industries - like my bafflement why Rock Hudson kept being cast as Native Americans in the likes of Winchester '73 (1950) in the fifties despite it being plainly obvious he stood out like a sore thumb.  There is the difficulty to watch films like this, even great films, without rolling our eyes , when we rightly found common sense and cast characters based on the actors being of the appropriate ethnicity. Even by the late fifties, you have Fritz Lang's last films including The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb (both 1959), fun films part of one single epic story, but bizarre nowadays as sincere Indian set adventure stories with white actors playing Indian characters on staged sets, when Jean Renoir from France, when making The River (1951), shot the film in India with Indian cast for Indian characters.

Sadly, even into the Millennium you can argue cinema was still doing this, but with Waxworks, it does need to be brought up because it is the first segment you have to watch, and some might be put off finish the rest of the work because of this aspect firmly showing it as an artefact. It is still fascinating, this artificially depicted haze of Bagdad architecture through the German Expressionism, but you could have easily dropped this into medieval Germany with a German lord for Emil Jennings to play, and no one a century later would have to bat an eye. Without the issue of crashing into the shores of reality, you still have a gleefully macabre farce in its centre which still works, as the baker is convinced by his wife to steal the caliph's magical wishing ring to prove his love for her, even if it means stealing a completely severed hand. Her character could be dismissed as another questionable stereotype, a two dimensional gold digger, if the story did not deliciously, for all its issues in setting choice, feel so modern still with its sick humoured farce ending. With a fake wax figure involved, there will be a way for man and wife to still stay together, but she and the caliph will be able to have the affair closer to his palace behind the baker's back as the newly appointed staff member. It is a final sick joke I have to admit won me over as being still impactful decades later.

Ivan the Terrible's story, even if not played by a Russian, gets away from these issues of casting for exotic locations to be a more twisted tale bordering into gothic psychodrama, near the horror genre, It is helped by the fact we have Conrad Veidt a Ivan, one of the best actors of that era of any country, whether as Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) to, having to flee Germany during the Nazi era, his Hollywood era playing the likes of evil Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). He immediately, even next to an acclaimed actor like Jannings, stands out, and in an era that can be dismissed for broad acting, gets over a bloody thirsty leader already bordering into insanity perfectly, one who even gets off, to be frank about it, about planning to have people murdered. When he believes his appointed poison maker is betraying him, the later realising his fate is doomed decides to set up a fatal hourglass to get his revenge on the leader. This was my personal favourite of the stories, a gristly tale appropriate for the horror genre even if not technically within it in terms of menace, as when not using an innocent older man as a stand in for an assassination attempt, he intends to steal the fiancée of another man as his own, who is in the midst of grieving for her father who was the stand-in. With Veidt playing the growing derangement, [Spoiler Warning] especially when the fatal hourglass does not poison him but leaves him going insane thinking he is by its sands [Spoilers End], it does feel like a great menacing piece.

In context, it also shows the incredibly production value and aura of German Expressionism. Their complete sense of artificially, turning snow bound Russia in the second story into a claustrophobic series of distorted rooms, is more and more magical as time passes as an aesthetic. Its Spring Heeled Jack ending, the name a reference to the English folklore figure whilst the character could be seen as closer to Jack the Ripper, is sadly short, with one wondering about how a take on either figure would look like in this era of cinema. It is still a good punch line of actual horror however, fully taking advantage of the aesthetics and techniques of silent cinema in general, with its leads now as themselves (rather than characters in each of the tales before) being terrified by this figure stalking them around the carnival, the sequence includes using such techniques as interposing actors so they look ghost-like. It adds a nice conclusion to Waxworks, not really a horror film altogether but with all these phantasmagorical moments which are eye-catching and memorable.