Being Film #25 for Hooptober 2024
I can imagine The Hands Of Orlac must have been a potboiler at its time of release in 1920s Germany. Director Robert Wiene adapts Maurice Renard’s novel wonderfully, showing a real sense of narrative and the dramatic in his depiction of a by now well-trod story. And for me that’s the main problem with The Hands Of Orlac – I’m familiar with the beats and main narrative thrust owing to my unwavering love for Karl Freund’s Mad Love, which twists the story to a more horrific and almost Lynchian tone, while Wiene’s more direct version of the tale highlights the drama rather that the horror. Still, it’s a solid, even remarkable silent film worth your time just for the film education on display.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Famed concert pianist Paul Orlac is on his way home via train to be reunited with his wife when the train derails, mangling his hands to the point of no return. A breakthrough procedure grafts the hands of a recently out to death criminal onto Orlac, a seeming miracle. Then, strange things begin to happen. The hands don’t want to play piano…but they DO really want to pick up knives. Soon murders start to occur, murders that Orlac can’t remember committing. What’s happening? Who’s killed Paul’s father and others? The truth will soon come into the light…
Two things become immediately apparent on watching The Hands of Orlac: Robert Wiene has complete command of his films, and Conrad Veidt was a damn master of his craft, even this early in his career. We’ll start with the first – Wiene’s direction is superb, and almost felt like I was simply watching with the sound off (despite the score this version of the film was using). He has an expert knack of blocking, framing, and moving the camera – the beginning sequence of the train wreck is astounding in its modernity, with lens flares and scale and scope immediately established. There’s very little of the film that feels “staged” – I share the sentiments by others that this is more potboiler and melodrama rather than another example of expressionism like Wiene’s earlier The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. That Lynchian vibe comes full force in Wiene’s nightmare sequence, where Orlac dreams of hands reaching out from the ceiling, and massive faces appear in the darkness.
What IS similar to Weine’s earlier output is the presence of Conrad Veidt, who never fails to mesmerize me as an actor. Though he will forever be the big baddie to me from his juicy roles in films like The Thief Of Bagdad and Casablanca, when he plays the more tragic lead as he does here he’s terrific. Wiene makes the most of his expressive face, and when you see his eyes and veins bulge you can get a sense of how much Veidt can emote and convey an expression. His look of horror when he contemplates his hands is always a delight in this film.
Strong as the work may be, I can’t help but feel this could use a little tightening. The horror is not as overt as it was later in Mad Love (not everyone can have Peter Lorre embody your nightmares), and The Hands of Orlac in the end has a fairly predictable and ho-hum explanation for what’s happening. But as an early thriller it’s a wonderful touchstone for so much of the horror that would come, and for that alone it’s worth the ride.
Cinema Dual 
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