The Student of Prague (1913)

Wonderfully offbeat film!

Wonderful character development!

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Those engaging the movie camera so early in the century must have figured out some of its potential very early on. This is a good story of a playboy type who needs money and inadvertently sells his soul to Satan for a lot of money. Unfortunately, the soul is his double and he must confront him frequently, tearing his life apart. There are some wonderful scenes with people fading out and, of course, the scenes when the two are on the stage at the same time. The middle part is a bit dull, but the Faustian story is always in the minds of the viewer. One thing I have to mention is the general unattractiveness of the people in the movie. Also, they pretty much shied away from much action which would have at least given some life to the thing. I first was made aware of this movie about 25 years ago and have finally been able to see it. I was not disappointed.

Student of Prague, The (1913) ** 1/2 (out of 4)A poor college student (Paul Wegener) falls in love with a rich woman so he makes a deal with a sorcerer. The sorcerer pays him 100,000 gold pieces for anything in the student's room. The sorcerer decides to steal the student's soul. This is a pretty good horror film that manages to have a few very creepy scenes including the first scene where the soul is taken. The rest of the film is pretty weak working itself up towards the very good ending. This is still a very important film for horror fans to seek out.You can check my review of the remake here as well.

I watched Alpha's DVD of this, which was only about forty-one minutes long. I don't know if it was missing scenes, or run at a faster speed, or what, to account for the difference from the running time IMDb has. As with Alpha's DVD of the remake, I didn't particularly care for the musical score they'd added. I think it's possible they also missed some of the intertitles; one of the other users mentions something Balduin says after his reflection is taken that wasn't in the copy I viewed.A renowned fencer asks a man named Scapinelli to procure him a winning lottery ticket, or a woman with a large dowry. The opening credits indicate Scapinelli is a sorcerer; he isn't used much in this film, and we don't know really anything about him when we first meet him, or what relationship Balduin has with him. In the remake, Balduin doesn't ask for those things, just wishes for a rich woman (not expecting the wish to come true), and Scapinelli promises to deliver.A rich woman who is riding horses with her fiancé (also her first cousin) falls off her horse into a body of water, and Balduin saves her. In the remake, it's clear that Scapinelli guides her horse to Balduin and then causes the horse to act wildly, until Balduin scoops her off it. Here, it's unclear that Scapinelli had anything to do with it.There are many scenes here that are reproduced in the sequel. Possibly even some of the same camera shots are copied.The ending is not as powerful as the ending of the sequel. Still, this was interesting to watch and at the price of Alpha's DVDs, a bargain. Perhaps a better edition will come out sometime in the future.

I bought this yesterday on DVD and watched it immediately upon getting home. I liked the concept of the picture, but I got lost a few times in between certain title cards. It's a movie that you would have to see more than once to understand because if you don't pay close attention to it throughout the whole picture, you'll be completely lost. This is true about many German expressionist films, and as primitive as this is in expressionist cinema, it counts. The print on the DVD from Alpha video a little dark, but decent. This is a 1913 motion picture we're talking' here! And a feature film at that. If you like an organ music setting for silent films, then you will be pleased with how this film was assembled for DVD. As far as the story goes, it's got an interesting concept; you have a normal guy at a prep school, some magician comes along and puts a spell on him, and then all of a sudden the guy's being chased by his own reflection! I don't know whether or not it was done with a split screen format or not because, again, this film was made in an age where very little is known about such early feature films. But it's only 41 minutes long, and if I can sit through it, anyone can.