Featuring:

Monday, October 27
Faust
Directed by F.W. Murnau (1926)
Featuring Ian Fraser on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ

Murnau’s take on Germany’s national legend elegantly simplifies its telling as a battle between shadow and light (also the basic elements of film). Mephistopheles (Emil Jannings) bets an Archangel (Werner Fuetterer) that he can corrupt a righteous man. When the devil approaches a disillusioned elder, Faust (Gosta Ekman), the alchemist is desperate to save his village from the plague. Thanks to Mephisto, Faust does. As a reward, Mephisto returns Faust to his virile youth. The alchemist fails to recognize this as a bait-and-switch, and becomes incrementally corrupted.  Can his soul be saved?

Tuesday, October 28
The Phantom Carriage
Directed by Victor Sjostrom (1922)
106 minutes
Featuring Don Kinnier on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ

Sjostrom, who both directed and stars in the ghostly adaptation of the Swedish folk tale by Selma Lagerlof (the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature) is an alcoholic who dies at midnight on New Years Eve. According to the legend, that means that in the new year, his retribution is to serve as the doomed coachman who rounds up the dead, a task that gives him ample time for reflection and, perhaps, atonement. The film employing flashbacks within flashbacks and sophisticated double-exposures for its special effects inspired Ingmar Bergman, who paid tribute to it in The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

Wednesday, October 29
Nosferatu
Directed by F.W. Murnau (1922)
95 minutes
Featuring Peter Richard Conte on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ

Most of the filmmakers involved in this unauthorized version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula were World War I veterans, including producer and art director Albin Grau, who observed that the war was “unleashed...like a cosmic vampire to drink the blood of millions and millions of men.” But viewers might recognize other metaphors in the film, one of the first vampire movies. Stoker’s original story suggested that vampirism is communicable, like syphilis and tuberculosis. Frightening as these diseases is Max Shreck as Count Orlok, the bloodsucker whose sharp fangs, menacing talons and creepy rodent gait make him akin to a Swiss Army Knife of horror. He can attack, dismember, or devour with various parts of his grotesque form.

Thursday, October 30
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Directed by Robert Wiene (1920)
77 minutes
Featuring Peter Richard Conte on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ

The title character (Werner Krauss) is a hypnotist, his sidekick, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a sleepwalker. Their appearance at a rural carnival coincides with a string of murders. Considered the evil grandpa of horror movies, Caligari was conceived as an artistic response to the horrors of World War I. Inspired by German Expressionism, Wiene and his collaborators set the characters in a fearful mindscape where everything natural is threatening, everything man-made is unstable, and looming shadows suggest hostile forces. Like many silent horror films, the movie’s visuals were an influence on film noir.

Friday, October 31
Häxan
Directed by Benjamin Christensen (1922)
105 minutes
Featuring Don Kinnier on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ

Pronounce it “Hex-on,” this Swedish-Danish co-production that announced itself as a history of witchcraft, implying that many strange acts of medieval sorceresses were comparable to what Freud might have diagnosed as female hysteria. Christensen cast himself as Satan in this hybrid documentary/occult fantasy that the show-business journalVariety declared “unfit for public exhibition” -- while also lauding its innovative cameraworkand special effects.  Imagine walking into a large-scale Hieronymous Bosch painting, both grotesque and fantastic, that boasted hand-tinted sequences and sympathy for the devil.