All it seeks to engender is an indescribable fluidity of light, moving shapes, shadows, lines and curves. My fairground is sketched in with an utter renunciation of detail. For my film Waxworks I have tried to create sets so stylized that they evince no idea of reality.
This is particularly necessary for films set wholly in a world of unreality. There has to be the possibility of bringing out an object’s essential attributes so as to give the image style and color… “If the designer merely imitated photography to construct sets, the film would remain faceless and impersonal. In 1924 he explained his approach to the German film magazine Kinematograph: Their interesting construction is largely due to director Paul Leni’s early struggles as an avant garde artist and as a working set designer. The sets of each tale are of course stylistic in the German Romantic sense, such as was seen in 1920’s The Golem: How He Came into the World. The framing story involves a wax exhibition at a fair that hires a young writer to create fantastic stories about their figures, which include Huran al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible, and Jack the Ripper. Written by Henrik Galeen, the structure clearly takes inspiration from 1919’s Eerie Tales, even having two of the actors playing multiple roles, and from Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921). The German film Waxworks (1924) is commonly classified as a fantasy-horror, though more accurately it is an anthology film with horror elements coming into play only in the latter half.
#Horror waxworks movie#
This review is part of the A Play of Light and Shadow: Horror in Silent Cinema Series Movie Review – Waxworks (1924)
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