Whenever the Berlinale shows a silent film, they will have Stephen Horne accompany it with live music and therefore I will try to attend to screening no matter what the film is about. (In this case, though, the appearance of Emil Jannings as main character is another compelling reason to see the film.) If a film is boring or crappy I will just watch Horne play, though “Algol” was actually gripping enough such that I rarely paid attention to how Horne was doing the accompaniment, though I wish I did.
Being the second day of the Berlinale, the cinema was packed but as a single person it’s almost always possible to get a decent seat anyways, because people never completely fill them up, at least not at the CinemaxX 8. This is different at the Zoo Palast; for some reason the middle rows are always completely packed even when you get there reasonably early, and people have a tendency to reserve seats for 2-3 others, which they barely do at any of the other venues. Perhaps it’s because the Zoo Palast is a large and bright cinema? Who knows.
One thing I noticed pretty strongly at this year’s Berlinale Retrospektive was that almost every film was preceded by an introduction in which somebody will reference Trump, and how “Future Imperfect”, the topic of this year’s Retrospektive, was relevant to the political developments in the world. With “Algol”, the restaurateur mentioned how all of a sudden everybody wants to screen the film because its main character was so Trump-like. I thought that was amusing yet a bit silly. Is an old film really only interesting when it is somehow comparable to today’s situation?
Algol. Tragödie der Macht (Algol. Tragedy of Power)
Germany 1920, Hans Werckmeister, 104′
Algol, an alien from the planet Algol, disguises himself as coal miner and gives his fellow comrade Robert Herne a perpetuum mobile with which he takes over the entire world. He makes his own country incredibly rich by selling energy from his machine to other countries who in turn must work like crazy to be able to afford it. Only his former girlfriend and a handful of others are able to resist his take-over.
Much like “Metropolis”, I remember that I thought “Algol” was very stylish yet a bit naive. But then I saw “Himmelskibet” and realized that there are many levels of naivety when it comes to the story of a science-fiction film. Of course all of these films come from a different time when the typical science-fiction topics have just barely been explored. As a result, “Algol” has pretty cookie-cutter characters: The main character who goes from hard-working factory worker to evil dictator, the useless son who just wants power, the kind-hearted women (former girlfriend, wife, daughter) trying to stop him and finally Algol, the evil alien who always walks with a hunched back and hunches similarly over his books. (Oh yeah, the film really loves workers and seems to hate intellectuals, which makes “Algol” one of the less likable Retrospektive films in terms of its message.)
What attracted me towards the film was definitely its style and partially also its execution. I thought it was pretty well-made for a film from 1920, and the expressionist style interior spaces are downright amazing looking. Even though there were components of the story I was not into and from today’s perspective the story itself is predictable and straight-forward, the story-telling itself was actually quite compelling. I enjoyed Herne’s development from mere worker to world dictator, probably thanks to Janning’s apt portrayal of this character. With that in mind, I am certainly glad that the film has been restored, though sometimes I wonder what other gems there are in this world that are lying around, possibly lost forever.