A writer is hired to compose fantastical background stories for a trio of wax figures in a carnival in Luna Park, in another early anthology from the Weimar Republic.The first segment is the longest, weakest of the three. An odd mix of comedy, fantasy, and expressionism, it takes up the entire first half of the film. Its interesting visuals can only carry it so far. The set design looks good, but the costumes look silly and comical, and it goes on far too long.Its second segment, Ivan the Terrible, is an improvement, but the third segment, Jack the Ripper, is the most interesting, and make this worth watching. Grotesque, nightmarish visuals, and double exposures make this feel like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, its similar title, and carnival setting add to it.

A poet is hired by the owner of a wax museum in a circus to write tales about Harun al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper. While writing, the poet and the daughter of the owner, Eva, fantasize the fantastic stories and fall in love with each other.Director Paul Leni tells three stories, with the great German actors Emil Jannings ("Last Laugh"), Werner Krauss ("Cabinet of Dr. Caligari") and Conrad Veidt ("Caligari") playing their roles. With this cast and director, you should expect greatness. Personally, I did not find it as great as it could have been, but this may be because I was expecting a horror film and because the film's quality was not what it could be.Kino deserves a lot of credit for releasing this film, especially considering that they had to mix two different sources. The unfortunate part is how pixelated the film is. Even on a medium-sized TV, the squares are evident. Maybe this is unavoidable, but it does make the transfer look cheap. (To be fair, the version I saw in the theater looked no better.)I am tempted to complain about historical accuracy, but I will not. I hope people know that Ivan the Terrible did not get obsessed with an hour glass and that Jack the Ripper never killed men. But, heck, who knows? I will say this: if you watch the film in a theater (which is quite a treat), the only way to do this is with live organ accompaniment. Please watch it like that, otherwise just rent or buy it. The Kino version comes with a nice Paul Leni short.And keep in mind how influential this film was. All wax museum films can be traced back to it, and it is widely believed that "Thief of Baghdad" took its inspiration from this film.

This is a movie that features 3 kind of different stories, when the owner of a wax museum hires a writer to write 3 stories for 3 of his models; Harun al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper. It provides the movie with 3 different stories, set at different times and each with a new different main character, played by the finest 3 German actors of their time period. It's a very creative and interesting concept, also of course really when considering that this movie got made in 1924.In order to keep all of the stories still somewhat connected and make the movie more coherent as a whole, all of the stories feature the two actors William Dieterle and Olga Belajeff, each time in different roles. But when you have 2 stories of about halve an hour and then another one of just 5 minutes, can you still really call this movie a coherent one? It can be presumed that budgeting reasons was the reason why the last story of the movie is so much shorter. It was originally even planned to shoot a fourth story about Rinaldo Rinaldini. The character can still be seen at the start of movie, standing between the other waxed characters. Even though all stories are different and set in completely different time periods, they still have the same overall style over it, which still is a reason why this movie still feels like a whole one.All the episodes are good looking but the stories for it aren't always that interesting. Basically since it at times it kind of dragging and despite some early action and adventure elements, the movie still is sort of a lackluster. Well lack-lusting perhaps isn't the right way to describe it. It's more that it's not really engaging enough at all times.But of course the looks and style of the movie compensate a lot. This is a real expressionistic German movie, with some fantastic distinctive expressionistic sets. That alone already makes this movie for the lovers of German expressionistic style an absolute must-see.It's absolutely a great fact that this movie features Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss, who were really the biggest, best known and best German actors of their time. The movie also features William Dieterle, who later gained more fame as a director of movies such as "The Life of Emile Zola" and the 1939 version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", with Charles Laughton.It's basically a fun entertaining movie from the early '20's, that is truly worth watching for plenty of reasons.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

"Waxworks" is an early example in film history of a movie that's clearly in homage to another film--in this case, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920). The expressionistic stylization in the film is obviously influenced by "Caligari", and a few references to that film reinforces that, beginning with the title. The literal translation of "Das Wachsfigurenkabinett" is "The Wax Figures Cabinet"--the keyword being "cabinet". Additionally, the frame narrative is purposefully set at a carnival, although a more dimensional one than the stage setting in "Caligari".The narrative structure is closer to Fritz Lang's "Destiny" (1921), with the framing of three odd stories. "Waxworks" has the clever device of a writer of the inner stories in the framing story. And, the three biggest stars of Weimer cinema (Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss) play the historical villains and waxworks come alive in the inner stories. For the three stories, a different expressionistic technique dominates, each relating to and enhancing their respective themes. In the Harus al Raschid narrative featuring Jannings, it's the sets (Paul Leni's sphere) with oddly shaped architecture more akin to "Caligari' than Baghdad. Especially nice is the staircase set. Rather than the horrific, dreamlike abstraction of "Caligari", however, the sets are delightfully peculiar, as is Jannings and the silly story. Low-key lighting dominates the Ivan the Terrible episode featuring a darkly paranoid Veidt, and the multiple exposure kaleidoscope imagery places Krauss's stalking serial killer everywhere.A clever film, and Leni and the other filmmakers seem to have had fun with it, which crosses over to viewers, but beyond that it's rather lackluster, not emotionally engaging as "Destiny", nor stunningly fresh as "Caligari".