| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Robert Wiene |
| Starring | Fern Andra, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Ernst Gronau |
| Country | Germany |
| Genre | Horror / German Expressionism |
| Runtime | Approx. 45 minutes (surviving version) |
| Language | Silent with intertitles |
| Status | Public Domain |
🎨 Overview
Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire is a uncommon and surreal German Expressionist silent movie directed by Robert Wiene, published in 1920, the identical year as his most famed masterpiece, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Genuine was originally more than an hour in length, but only a 45-minute version survives today, yet it is a very interesting and visually rich film in the history of horror cinema. The movie is a hypnotic experience of madness, seduction, and symbolism, very much embedded in the Expressionist school, with its dreamlike distorted sets being designed by painter César Klein.
🕯️ Plot Summary
The young artist, Percy, is obsessed after he paints the portrait of Genuine, an exotic high priestess. He separates himself with the society, there is no way he can rip himself off the image.
Genuine comes out of the painting in a dreamlike turn in which he becomes flesh and blood. She is promptly sold in a slave market by a rich eccentric Lord Melo who confines her in a lavish room underneath his house.
Arriving in the place of Melo, the nephew of a barber of the town to get his hair shaved daily, Florian is literally enchanted by Genuine. She forces him to kill Melo when he is asleep. However, when she asks Florian to commit suicide as a way of certifying his love, he hesitates and runs away in panic.
Then, Percy, the grandson of Melo, comes to the house falling into the spell of Genuine. Their love business is doomed: Florian comes back and needs to take Genuine to himself, whereas a riot mob, agitated by the news about the witchcraft and carnival murders, rushes into the house.
🎭 Themes & Expressionist Style
Gothic eroticism
Hypnotic obsession, dream logic.
Mental terrors and distorted reality.
The inner turmoil is reflected in stylized, distorted sets (designed by Expressionist artist César Klein).
Hysteria and mob violence.
Similar to Caligari, Genuine employs the surreal and jagged sets and exaggerated acting to express the psychological downwards spiral of the characters. But it was more sensual, occult in theme, and its plotting was more complicated, inaccessible to contemporary audiences.
📉 Reception & Legacy
When it finally came out, Genuine was regarded as a failure. Criticisms such as Siegfried Kracauer and Lotte Eisner called it incoherent and melodramatic. Compared to the praise of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the sequel of Wiene went unnoticed and it was largely forgotten.
However, nowadays, Genuine is considered a significant early horror movie, and a unique specimen of German silent Expressionism. That lost cut provides us with an insight into the darker and more sensual artistic experimentations of Wiene, and the impact of visual art on film.
🕰️ Film Preservation Note
Unfortunately, the film is nowadays available only in a shortened 45 minutes version. It is thought that the original full length version has been lost. The film is sometimes featured as an additional on the DVDs of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and is in the public domain.
▶️ Watch or Download Genuine (1920)
💾 Download – Public Domain Classic
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🔖 Tags
robert wiene, genuine, german expressionism, silent horror, 1920 film, weimar cinema, vampire movies, surreal film, public domain, silent era, expressionist horror
