Truly the weirdest of the weird.
“So if The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari took German Expressionism and ran with it, From Morn To Midnight took it, ran with it, jumped on a motorcycle and rode it screaming straight through a brick wall.” – Lea Stans, Silentology
This is an extreme oddball of a film, so odd that it was never even released in Germany, though it may have been shown there privately. It was, however, released in Japan in 1922, for some reason. For decades after it was thought to be a lost film, until a print was discovered in Tokyo in 1959 and restored.
From Morn to Midnight was adapted from an avant-garde play by Georg Kaiser, and is ostensibly about the evils of capitalist society, played out in the temptation and downfall of a simple bank teller. An encounter with a glamorous Italian lady inspires him to steal a large sum of cash from the bank. He takes the money to her, apparently intending to declare his love, but he rejects her when he finds out she has a son. He’s still got all that cash though, so he abandons his family and heads for the big city, intending to buy himself some happiness. Need I say it does not go well?
Apparently the original stage play had less wacky design and more words. Kaiser was known for heavy-handed political messages delivered in lengthy monologues. Making a silent film obviously required a different approach, and since audiences were abuzz about Caligari, someone had the brilliant idea to out-Caligari Caligari. An eager first-time film director, Karlheinz Martin, teamed up with the designer Robert Neppach, and they proceeded to put the pedal to the metal.
The result is a visual riot lacking both logic and believable characters, though to be fair realism was never the goal. The aim of the playwright and filmmakers was apparently to present a novel and meaningful statement about capitalism and the pursuit of happiness.
Novel? Check. Meaningful? Not so much.
Unfortunately when you unmoor yourself from reality so completely, you also unmoor the audience from anything or anyone they might care about. FMTM simply feels too whimsical and willfully eccentric to carry a serious message. Which would be all right if it was at least funny, which it isn’t.
(Politically revolutionary cinema had to wait another four years for Sergei Eisenstein to jump into the fray and change everything. At least he knew enough to give viewers realistic proletarian heroes they could recognize and root for.)
If chaotic set design made Genuine confusing, the manic set design of FMTM is so overwhelming that the viewer simply gives up trying to make sense of it.
As much of a mess as it is, I admire FMTM more than I do Genuine. Its reach exceeded its grasp, for sure. And the sheer bravado! Phew!
For a more detailed look at From Morn to Midnight and its theatrical origin, you might want to check out Lea Stans’ excellent review here, on Silentology.
A bit more about some of the players:
Ernst Deutsch (Bank Teller) was a reknowned Austrian-Jewish stage actor who made his name in Expressionist plays before leaving Germany in the 1930s. During the war he played Nazi soldiers in several Hollywood films, and later had an important role in Carol Reed’s The Third Man. He returned first to Vienna and then Berlin after the war and continued his stage career, including a highly acclaimed run as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
Erna Morena (the Italian lady) was a very popular German actress from this period, specializing in (from what I’ve seen) dreamy, slightly flakey, teetering-on-the-brink of insanity roles. She also wrote and produced films, starting up her own (short-lived) production company in 1918. She remained in Germany throughout the war, appearing in the notorious Nazi racist propaganda film Jud Süss.
And here, again! Hans Heinrich von Twardowski (the son)! He’s been in every film I’ve written about so far! (more about him here)
Coming up… I think I’ll dip into some American films next…
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