I didn’t know about Underworld before and it took me a few minutes to get acclimated, but I soon got drawn into the course of the story and realized how significant this film really is for the genre of gangster movies. I couldn’t agree more with the festival guide summary quoted above.

Underworld was the precursor for movies like Scarface: it was shot from the gangster’s point of view and included many of the concepts used so often in the history of the genre: the lawyer closely collaborating with the gangster, the romantic triangle between the gangster, his girl and the lawyer, loyalty, jealousy, rivalry with other groups of gangsters, the gangster ball and its code, the overall helplessness of the police and their inability to get to him until much later during the climax of the story.

The first gangster movie was really well done, I enjoyed it very much. [imdb]

Josef von Sternberg is one of the seminal figures in American moviemaking. His casting of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel elevated her to international superstardom, and the two maintained a close collaboration for several classic films thereafter. Before any of this, however, von Sternberg established himself as a force to be reckoned with which such silent classics as 1927′s Underworld.

Built on a script from legendary screenwriter Ben Hecht (he also wrote The Front Page and Scarface, and won the first Academy Award for “Best Writing” for his work here) Underworld crowned von Sternberg as the first king of the gangster film. Shot by legendary cinematographer Bill Glennon, who went on to make numerous films with John Ford and was a master of film noir, Underworld tells the story of a gangster, “Bull” Weed (George Bancroft), his lawyer, “Rolls Royce” (Clive Brook), and “Feathers,” the kingpin’s mistress (Evelyn Brent). It’s a love triangle, but when “Bull” shoots a man and is sentenced to die, he depends on his two friends to get him out.

Mildly regarded at the time it opened in 1927 (it “contains a good deal of sound drama,” wrote New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall), it gradually grew to be one of the biggest box office hits of the year, and inspired a slew of imitators. Indeed, a whole genre of moviemaking has been built on the artistic shoulders of Underworld. (Jed Dietz) (from the filmfest-guide)

With Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach

Born in Germany in 1889, Friederich Wilhelm Murnau studied art history at the Universities of Berlin and Heidelberg, joined the great Max Reinhardt’s theater school, and learned film by making propaganda films for Germany in WW I. His first great work was Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which he made in 1922. Shortly after, the young film industry in California hired him, first at Fox and then at Paramount, where he won great acclaim (his Sunrise was nominated for several Academy Awards) before he was killed in a car accident in 1931. He stands alongside D. W. Griffith as one of the giants of the silent era. Banned in Sweden until 1972, Nosferatu tells a classic vampire tale. A young real estate agent, Hetter, is sent by his strange boss, Knock, to the Land of the Phantoms to close a deal with the mysterious Count Orlok. Along the way, Hetter is warned about the Count — normal drivers won’t even take him all the way to the castle — but he continues undeterred. Through breathtakingly bold cinematic techniques and a legendary performance by Max Schreck as Count Orlok, F. W. Murnau delivers a seminal piece of filmmaking. (from the filmfest-guide)

Another annual festival tradition is the screening of a silent movie accompanied with live music performed by the Alloy Orchestra. This year we got to see a very special jewel with 1922’s Nosferatu. Everybody is familiar with the famous Dracula story Bram Stoker published in 1897, but not many might be familiar with the story behind Nosferatu, which is as fascinating as the film itself.

When Murnau’s studio was unable to obtain the rights to the story he decided to still create the film he envisioned, but make slight changes to the story, names and titles. So, for example Count Dracula became Count Orlok, and the title Dracula became Nosferatu. Bram Stoker’s wife who was still alive sued Nosferatu’s film company and won. Nosferatu became the first and only film of the Prana-Film company which had to declare bankruptcy and was ordered to destroy all existing prints of Nosferatu. Luckily, a few copies had already been distributed, so it managed to survive throughout the decades. It is said that today the only complete, original copy is owned by a Max Schreck collector named Jens Geutebrück in Germany.

Nosferatu was indeed banned in Sweden until 1972 due to excessive horror, and it is still banned in Finland today. As another interesting bit of trivia: After 85 years, all of the exteriors are still intact in the German cities Wismar and Lübeck. I might have to go and visit one day.

Nosferatu is without doubt one of the greatest and most important movies of the silent era and I’m very glad and lucky I have seen it on the big screen with the wonderful live score performed by the Alloy Orchestra. It’s my favorite of all the festival’s silent films of the past few years. Next I would love to see Metropolis or Man with a Movie Camera with live music — maybe during next year’s festival?