24 | Sight&Sound | May 2020
WIDE ANGLEintegrated decorative titles, while Germaine
Dulac explored the damaged soul of an
abused woman in La Belle Dame sans merci.
Another great female filmmaker, Frances
Marion, was employing her scripting talents
on a social comedy, The Flapper, about the
thoroughly modern type of girl that made the 20s
roar. Comedy was a fine tool for mocking both
outdated social attitudes and the over-optimistic
trappings of modernity, and 1920 saw some
fabulous examples, including Mauritz Stiller’s
sophisticated, subversive Erotikon and a brilliant
trio of films by Ernst Lubitsch: Anna Boleyn, with
Henny Porten in the title role and Emil Jannings asa rambunctious Henry VIII; Kohlhiesel’s Daughters,
a Taming of the Shrew story starring the same pair;
and my favourite, Romeo and Juliet in the Snow
in which the star-crossed lovers are reduced to
sulky rural teenagers. This was the first year since
1914 that the most famous silent comedian of all,
Charlie Chaplin, didn’t make a film, but Roscoe‘Fatty’ Arbuckle and Buster Keaton began making
solo comedies after years as a duo. Arbuckle’s
The Life of the Party has him as a candidate for
political office caught in a compromising
situaton; Keaton’s The Scarecrow and One Week
showcased his exquisite timing and took the
inventiveness of the physical gags to new heights.
The year 1920 was not just a great one for film
but surprisingly progressive. Among the dozen
highlights listed below, we have films directed
by a woman (Germaine Dulac) and an African-
American man (Oscar Micheaux), and Hamlet
played by a girl – a roster of achievements we’d
be proud to see today. Not bad for 100 years ago.Comedy was a fine tool for
mocking outdated attitudes and
the trappings of modernity and
1920 saw some fabulous examples
- The Golem
(Pictured on previous page) Paul Wegener, Germany
In the year of Caligari, the other great horror film
was Wegener’s The Golem, which established
many tropes of the monster film – the stifflegged
walk and the childlike, unformed creature, things
that in the 1930s became associated with the
Frankenstein films. Wegener co-wrote, directed
and starred as the Golem, a clay giant brought to
life to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution. - Januskopf
F.W. Murnau, Germany
An expressionist version of Jekyll and Hyde, made
by the director of Nosferatu (1922) in the same
year that Wiene made The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
and with that film’s star, Conrad Veidt, alongside
Bela Lugosi? Yes please. If only it survived! - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
John S. Robertson, US
This is Hollywood’s take on the same story
as Januskopf; and this one does survive. The
great John Barrymore stars in the double
role of the saintly Jekyll and the truly
ghastly Hyde. The film was intended to
shock and it did, dividing audiences into
those who liked or didn’t like horror. - Algol
Hans Werckmeister, Germany
Recently rediscovered, Algol – Tragödie der
Macht (‘Algol or The Tragedy of Power’) is
an astonishing science-fiction film directed
by Hans Werckmeister, about a man offered
unlimited power by a being from another
planet. Its futuristic look was designed
by Walter Reimann who had also created
the set for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
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