"Genuine" or, in the longer version, "Genuine: A Tale of a Vampire" is a German movie from 1920, so it soon has its 100th anniversary. It is still silent and, even more obvious, in black-and-white. Director Robert Wiene and writer Carl Mayer have worked (together) on a couple more fairly famous silent film classic, especially "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari", which also came out in 1920. Their effort with "Genuine", however, seems quite forgettable to me. The vampire did look scary I must admit and we have to give them thumbs-up because this was actually done before Nosferatu, bit still the action, story and acting were just not too interesting. There are 2 versions out there, a long one that runs for almost 90 minutes and a 44-minute version, the one I watched. Actually, I only found the short version. But I am perfectly fine with it as, like I wrote before, this was a mediocre film at best and **/***** is almost still a generous rating. No need to watch another 45 minutes of it. I do not recommend "Genuine", a genuinely uninteresting film,

Regardless of this silent-era picture now being almost 100 years old, it's still not worth more than a 2-star rating, in my books.Believe me, this German export was pretty bloody awful (even when I took into account it being a product of cinema's by-gone days).For one thing - Had the leading actress, Fern Andra (who played the title character, Genuine) been even marginally attractive, then, yes, that would've certainly helped this nonsensical film at least rise above its sub-par mediocrity.But this actress (with her frizzy hair and bug eyes) had to be one of the absolute, most dog-ugly dames imaginable, regardless of the era of fashion that she represented.It's especially when you take into consideration that the Genuine character was supposed to be an irresistible seductress (aka. vamp-ire), where all the men were literally falling head-over-heels in love with her (and actually quite willing to commit murder, if she so commanded) that her decidedly cheap and somewhat creepy looks rendered her (along with the rest of the movie) as being repulsive rather than attractive.Besides not being even slightly entertaining (even from a nostalgic point of view), I found this moldie-oldie, with its ridiculously exaggerated acting, to be nothing but a stale, old joke told in very bad taste.Thank goodness this film only had a running time of just 43 minutes.

...yes, it's from the same director, Robert Wiene, whose landmark THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI was released earlier the very same year, 1920; and, yes, much of the same cinematic technique created for CALIGARI was used here as well. The main differences between the two utterly defeat any chance that GENUINE, at least in the 43-minute "condensation" that appears on the 2002 Kino DVD release, would ever be a tenth as watchable as CALIGARI (or, for that matter, THE HEARTS OF AGE, Orson Welles' self-described "amusement" that spoofed all the surrealist silent European cinema concocted by Wiene, F.W. Murnau, Salvador Dali and the like). First, the sets and makeup of the players are not as flamboyantly odd this time around. Second, the pacing is far too slow for the story. Third, the story is itself far too bizarre and convoluted for a casual viewer to find any interest in; CALIGARI's is relatively straightforward in comparison. If you want a pre-NOSFERATU take on vampires, track down the DVD of LES VAMPIRES instead...

I've just viewed the Image DVD of CALIGARI, with commentary by Mike Budd. This DVD also includes excerpts from GENUINE. While the snippets included are pretty strange and disconnected, they show a major similarity between the two films -- that is, the "frame" structure of the story. CALIGARI's frame is that it is a story told by a madman. In GENUINE, it appears that the story is a "dream" experienced by a young man who has fallen asleep reading his favorite novel. What I saw of GENUINE makes it seem the young man's favorite author was Sacher-Masoch. See also how Genuine messes up the young man's hair in a rush of passion -- shades of John Barrymore's transition scenes from DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE?