‘How can one long for death when one is young and beautiful?’
A highly successful young stage actress lives life to the full, boasting that she wants to live forever. Almost at once, she sees a vision of Death, who promises that one day she will call to him…
Fatalistic German drama directed by Joe May from a script by Fritz Lang. The director’s wife, Mia May, takes the lead role of the doomed Hilde Warren, with Georg John as the film’s other title character.
Life couldn’t be better for the vivacious Hilde Warren (May). Flying high on a series of stage triumphs, the world seems to be her oyster. Backstage at rehearsal one day, she boasts to the play’s lovestruck director, Hans von Wengraf (Hans Mierendorff), that she will defy Death and live forever. Wandering out on the empty stage a little later, she sees a vision of Death (John), who promises that one day she will embrace him eagerly.
Meanwhile, a notorious criminal known as ‘The Black Count’ has arranged a bank robbery in town. During the heist, May meets the handsome Hector Roger (Bruno Kastner), and the two quickly marry and go on a honeymoon in the United States. However, Kastner is really ‘The Black Count’ and is gunned down and killed by the police. Travelling back home after being exonerated from any involvement in Kastner’s crimes, she discovers that she is carrying Kastner’s child.
A meditation on the sin of pride and its tragic consequences, this silent German drama comes with a hopelessly contrived story that serves little purpose other than to reflect antiquated social attitudes. So, in less skilful hands, this could be a dreadfully heavy-handed experience, but, fortunately, director May delivers a somewhat entertaining film, even if the undercurrent of misogyny is never completely eclipsed. Of course, societal attitudes have changed beyond recognition in the century since the film’s production. However, it may still be a problematic watch for some modern audience members.
On the main, the story unfolds episodically, dropping in every few years on the main character’s life after the initial scenes that depict her stage career and marriage to Kastner. As the story begins, she is bright and happy, a little flighty perhaps, but taking on the world on her terms and making a success of it. Today, this would be rightly presented as an admirable achievement, but the film shows her instead as vain and a little thoughtless. She off-handedly turns down a proposal from the steady, loyal Mierendorff with the excuse that she is already ‘married to the stage’. Of course, she falls for bad boy Kastner almost immediately and marries him instead, seeing in motion the events that eventually lead to tragedy for everyone involved, especially herself.
Unfortunately, there’s a strong implication here that everything is her fault, even though the only ‘sin’ she commits is trying to live her own life and marry the man that she loves (even though he’s a spectacularly poor choice). The level of punishment she receives for these choices is so wildly disproportionate as to be almost laughable. Every bad outcome inflicted on every character can be traced back to her. Kastner would have been fine if he hadn’t met her and turned his back on his life of crime, Mierendorff wouldn’t have committed suicide if she hadn’t put her child above their impending marriage, and the climactic tragedy would never have occurred if she hadn’t indulged the child so much when he was growing up, etc. etc. What a horrible woman. If only she’d married Mierendorff when he’d asked her in the first place and retired to the kitchen to wash his socks and change nappies for their 2.4 children, eh? Death’s far too good for her.
Putting aside these thorny issues (if you can!), the level of filmmaking talent involved in the production does result in a watchable, and even enjoyable, film. Quite rightly, commentators are likely to focus on the regular materialisations of Death throughout the narrative as the most remarkable and memorable feature. These are realised through superimposition effects, which are very good for their time. There’s also John’s striking physical appearance: tall, gaunt, dressed in black, stringy hair framing a chalk-white face with a high forehead. This physical personification of Death most famously appeared on the big screen in Ingmar Bergman’s ‘The Seventh Seal’ (1957) and is as familiar now as the ‘living’ skeletons and skull representations favoured by ancient religions and popular in the wake of the Black Death in Europe. Was May’s film the first to give Death a somewhat ‘human’ face? It’s an arguable point, with many devils, demons and assorted denizens of the underworld already familiar in films from the very birth of cinema. Even if May got there first, it’s fair to say his realisation was likely heavily inspired by classical paintings such as Gustave Dore’s ‘Death on a Pale Horse’ (1865) and Marianne Stokes’ ‘Death and the Maiden’ (1908).
The film also demonstrates some very solid filmmaking technique. Scenes are generally staged with one camera setup, but May knows enough to vary their delivery with a smattering of tighter shots and edits that inject a sense of pace and motion. It could be more fluid, of course, but it does demonstrate a basic understanding of the relationships between narrative, image and storytelling that would raise German cinema to the heights in the following decade. Performances are also relatively restrained for the era, with Mia May receiving rave notices at the time, although there are a couple of occasions when she might seem a little too much for a modern audience.
For many cineastes, the primary reason to seek out the film will be the writing credit for legendary director Fritz Lang. Some sources quote it as his first professional film credit of any sort, although it’s hard to be certain as several of his scripts were produced at this time. Of course, he was to return to the twin themes of fate and death in his classic ‘Destiny/Der müde Tod’ (1921), released just four years later. On more than one occasion, Lang claimed to have acted in ‘Hilde Warren und der Tod’ (1917), resulting in his appearance in cast lists over the years as an ‘old priest’. However, this seems unlikely as May shot his film in Berlin at a time when Lang was in Vienna, recuperating from a battlefield injury and waiting to re-enter combat in the First World War. It is not possible to identify him in the film either. However, it has to be acknowledged that there is a disparity of around 20 minutes between the print currently available and the running time quoted by some sources.
Although largely forgotten today, May was one of the most distinguished European directors of his day. Born as Joseph Otto Mandl in Vienna in 1880, he began his career in the entertainment industry as a stage director in Hamburg. In 1902, he married the pregnant 18-year-old singer and actress Mia May, taking her name for the rest of his professional career. He entered the fledging German film industry around 1912 and was already a writer, producer and director. Widespread success followed two years later with a series of films about Stuart Webbs, a detective based on Sherlock Holmes. He formed his own company in 1915 and went from strength to strength, starring his wife in the epic 8-film episodic feature ‘The Mistress of the World/Die Herrin der Welt’ (1919). Two-part adventure ‘The Indian Tomb/Das indische Grabmal’ (1921), and he also delivered the prototype film noir ‘Asphalt’ (1929). The rise of the Nazis prompted emigration to Hollywood in the 1930s but robbed of creative autonomy, his career fizzled, his most notable work being the revenge drama ‘Confession’ (1937) starring Basil Rathbone and Kay Francis. Mostly, he worked on ‘B’ pictures, including ‘The Invisible Man Returns’ (1940) with Vincent Price and ‘The Invisible Woman’ (1941). However, he did receive an original story credit for the unusual Errol Flynn drama ‘Uncertain Glory’ (1944), one of only a handful of ‘flag-waving’ films produced during World War Two that have successfully stood the test of time.
It is not a classic of silent horror cinema by any means, but it is of significant historical interest.