The German impressionistic film festival called From Metropolis to Nosferatu held at the House of Cinematographers in Kyiv caused quite a sensation among the local moviegoers. All the most horrible things in man’s life, everything most funny and humane can, and do appear, be expressed if not with a single word, then with a single style in the performing arts. “It is human, too human,” the great and mad German Nietzsche said, an idea that seemed to have been very convincingly expressed by Germans in the early twentieth century, except that they preferred film to philosophy. It was an ideal means at the time. Either by the inscrutable law of nature or by will of Providence, this art gathered extremely talented people in Germany in the 1920s. Indeed, the titles speak for themselves: Metropolis, Nosferatu, Golem. After watching them one feels like having watched a good half of all future productions, including modern American and European motion pictures (American even more). Every film in the retrospective is packed with ideas in terms of expression, portrayal, plot, and composition. Yet these films are interesting not only as certain artifacts or mythological pictures making one marvel in a museum display. They are obviously very good movies that are as interesting to watch now as they were seventy years ago with gripping plots and captivating characters. The first in line was Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. A two-hour silent movie, it kept the audience in suspense from start to finish. It can be described as one of the earliest science fiction productions (Luc Besson’s Fifth Element was obviously borrowed from Metropolis, scene for scene, although the original film was not intended as anything more than entertainment). Paul Wegener’s Golem and Friedrich Murnau’s Nosferatu-Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu the Vampire, 1922) are actually the first horror films, albeit wise and philosophically penetrating parables about man and the things created by his genius, about a tragicomic gap between illusion and reality. Yes, tragicomic, contrary to the widespread allegation that expressionism is a morbid creative hallucination verging on the pathological, haunting the actors as much as the audiences. The films shown during the festival were additional graphic evidence that expressionism, among other things, is a brilliant combination of the dramatic and a keen sense of humor. The seductively winking machine in Metropolis, Wegener’s sardonically smiling Golem, clumsy yet frightening Nosferatu, the brilliant clownish Satan in Faust, and a host of other examples could be cited. The fears attributed to expressionism became its glory, but the laughter injected into these old stories is still infectious. Naturally, the list is topped by the classic Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, an unmatched expert on building mutually exclusive sentiments. The retrospective boasted his Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924), Nosferatu-Eine Symphonie des Grauens (1921-22), and Faust, one of the earliest screen versions of the legend.
Not surprisingly, the films were shown to packed houses all three days of the festival. In fact, the event caused a sensation, due not only to the quality and legendary titles of the films. The From Metropolis to Nosferatu film retrospective was organized as a feast of movies and music, as each film was played to a live music accompaniment. Here the greatest success was scored by Prof. Aljoscha Zimmerman, a pianist from Munich who captured every emotional nuance in Metropolis and Golem literally with his fingertips flying over the keyboard. Nosferatu was accompanied by Oleksandr Kokhanovsky’s Ars Nova group presenting a rather interesting composition. Oleksandr Nesterov’s was an avant-garde meditative rendition for Faust. In contrast, DJs Sokolov’s and Derblaster’s soundtrack for Der Letzte Mann could hardly be described as a success, but the very presence on stage of the certainly talented duet attracted many young people, many unlikely to have ever heard about expressionism. Yet this cinematic trend proves an inexhaustible topic. All fortunate enough to attend the weekend expressionist revival left with their own impressions. The fact remains that almost no one left while the movies were on screen. Expressionist nightmares, long since part of history, were relived in a totally different epoch and environment. The broken Metropolis with its chimerical gardens, monstrous machines, cardboard skyscrapers, and angry crowds has lived on the silver screen for three quarters of a century. Yet the screen, the audience, the movie theater — are they not part of the metropolis?






