Genuine: The Tragedy of a Vampire (1920)

The greatest movie ever made..!

One of my all time favorites.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

"Genuine" or, in the longer version, "Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire" is a German movie from 1920, so it soon has its 100th anniversary. It is still silent and, even more obvious, in black-and-white. Director Robert Wiene and writer Carl Mayer have worked (together) on a couple more fairly famous silent film classic, especially "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari", which also came out in 1920. Their effort with "Genuine", however, seems quite forgettable to me. The vampire did look scary I must admit and we have to give them thumbs-up because this was actually done before Nosferatu, bit still the action, story and acting were just not too interesting. There are 2 versions out there, a long one that runs for almost 90 minutes and a 44-minute version, the one I watched. Actually, I only found the short version. But I am perfectly fine with it as, like I wrote before, this was a mediocre film at best and **/***** is almost still a generous rating. No need to watch another 45 minutes of it. I do not recommend "Genuine", a genuinely uninteresting film,

Regardless of this silent-era picture now being almost 100 years old, it's still not worth more than a 2-star rating, in my books.Believe me, this German export was pretty bloody awful (even when I took into account it being a product of cinema's by-gone days).For one thing - Had the leading actress, Fern Andra (who played the title character, Genuine) been even marginally attractive, then, yes, that would've certainly helped this nonsensical film at least rise above its sub-par mediocrity.But this actress (with her frizzy hair and bug eyes) had to be one of the absolute, most dog-ugly dames imaginable, regardless of the era of fashion that she represented.It's especially when you take into consideration that the Genuine character was supposed to be an irresistible seductress (aka. vamp-ire), where all the men were literally falling head-over-heels in love with her (and actually quite willing to commit murder, if she so commanded) that her decidedly cheap and somewhat creepy looks rendered her (along with the rest of the movie) as being repulsive rather than attractive.Besides not being even slightly entertaining (even from a nostalgic point of view), I found this moldie-oldie, with its ridiculously exaggerated acting, to be nothing but a stale, old joke told in very bad taste.Thank goodness this film only had a running time of just 43 minutes.

I caught this years back at the Paris Cinematheque hoping to find something of interest from the director of Caligari. It was a disappointment in just about every way for me. First, the film at its original length seemed to go on forever. The elements were there, granted, but they didn't combine as they did in the previous film. I had the feeling of watching a film that was going through all the necessary steps but missing all the points. It was more an exercise in style which blindly followed all the guidelines but missed going anywhere. On the other hand, and perhaps unfairly to subsequent films, "Caligari" was a one-of-a-kinder that left no space for a sequel. Period.Curtis Stotlar

The same director, cinematographer and writer of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" made this subsequent picture, "Genuine". Likewise, it is also an Expressionist film (one of the few made during Weimar Germany, contrary to what Lotte Eisner and the use by some of "expressionism" as an umbrella term for almost all German cinema of the period might suggest). Additionally, similar to "Caligari", the main body of "Genuine" is framed as a dream. Yet, I wasn't engulfed into the universe of "Genuine", as I was with "Caligari".The story, although just as peculiar, isn't as involving, which is unfortunately probably, in part, because the Kino release is only a condensed version. The framing of scenes is just as prosaic and theatrical as that in "Caligari"--if not more so. As well, the stylized acting seems more overdone and obtrusive this time. But, more importantly, the problem is the sets, which I can't see the entire version improving much upon. The Expressionist set designs are equally strange, with odd angels and geometric shapes. The production, however, leaves too much space open and unfilled, which is the largest reason that "Genuine" isn't as involving, or captivating, as "Caligari".