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Rating: 7.5 stars

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eureka german german expressionism amusement park writer wax figure stories black and white color tinted masters of cinema restoration silent film

All movies seen on 05/09/2024

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Waxworks (1924)

Directed by Paul Leni, Leo Birinsky

Fantasy | Horror | Drama

Most recently watched by sleestakk

Overview

A poet is hired by the owner of a wax museum in a circus to write tales about Harun al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper. While writing, the poet and the daughter of the owner, Eva, fantasize the fantastic stories and fall in love for each other.

Rated NR | Length 83 minutes

Actors

Emil Jannings | Conrad Veidt | William Dieterle | Werner Krauss | Olga Belajeff | John Gottowt | Georg John | Ernst Legal | Paul Biensfeldt

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Viewing Notes

Even though there are portions missing (the original German negative burned up in a fire only a year after the film was released), the restoration looks amazing, especially given some of the original source material. I wish Eureka would do a release of the Italian silent epic CABIRIA. I think Kino owns the U.S. rights to it as they’ve released it on DVD in the past.

The sets are fantastic and the color tinting and sepia look great. Unless someone manages to locate the missing footage (doubtful after the extensive search they did for this restoration) this is going to be the definitive release of the film.

I chose the instrumental score in Dolby 5.1 which was excellent. There’s also a piano score in 5.1 as well. Both are also available in 2.0 too. I think the score really helped make the film more enjoyable.

There were originally supposed to be four stories, probably more or less equal in length, but Germany was going through a period of inflation and so currency was getting devalued, making it more difficult to find financing for the rest of the film. I think that’s why the final story about Jack the Ripper is horribly short. There are also intertitles missing that they have written descriptions of from a Swedish archive, but no extant titles on film to cut back into the film. The restorationists determined there’s about 50 minutes of the film missing from what was submitted to German censors after the film was completed.

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