Paul Wegener

(On Cable TV, May 2019) I don’t get much conventional enjoyment out of early 1920s movies—I see them for historical purposes, but I have a hard time with anything that’s not Keaton, Lloyd, or Chaplin (and Chaplin is often pushing it). I had an even more difficult time with The Golem considering that the version I saw was a terrible unrestored public-domain transfer, marred by flickering, scratches and unsightly marks on the negative that added to the film’s very shaky early-cinema production values. Still, there was something compelling in the result. A transposition of the classic Jewish tale about a Golem being created to protect Jews from peril, writer-director Paul Wegener’s film still works relatively well, offering further proof that while straight drama depends on its time, genre fiction thrives on decades later. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been a Hollywood big-budget film taking on the Golem as subject matter… But maybe I’ve missed something.