Maurice de Vlaminck had questionable politics and questionable taste in art. (But we do agree in one thing: fuck Paul Gauguin.)
Vlaminck was the rare Fauve who took main inspiration from Van Gogh (okay, they all did, but the Gauguin influence was huge). And it shows. The colours, however, are more. More. MORE.
Genuine is like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but more. More. MORE. And just like Vlaminck, the predecessor is better in everything.
My first foray into ~ German expressionist film ~, over a decade ago, went like this: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem: How He Came into the World, Nosferatu, Orlacs Hände, Waxworks, Der Student von Prag. And some other films after that. Genuine being one of those, back when only an incomplete sub-50-minute restoration existed. Now that a longer, almost hour-and-a-half version exists (making the film near-complete now), it was time to go back to it.
Like Caligari, Genuine is detached from our world, the sets, makeup and wardrobe make sure of that. They are more abstract, however. And that's fine. Like Caligari, it has a framing device.
Genuine's (played by Fern Andra) wardrobe is the most interesting of all. Gaudy headpieces, dresses with big, geometric patterns with contrasting colours. Andra does acting in the way of interpretative dance, not quite the same yet not quite different from Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (hey, had to put my blorbo in somehow).
So the sets, the wardrobe and the acting make Genuine the character some otherworldy being, a powerful entity.
Plot is bleh. Style is the substance here, but comparing Genuine's style with its contemporaries, it falls short indeed. The whole package is one big step under Waxworks, which is also poor on plot, but looks incredible. It also features Ivan the Terrible having orgasms over people dying, which Genuine does not.
It's always nice seeing Hans Heinrich von Twardowski (Caligari, Spione, Casablanca). He's doing his best hetero acting here.
Ah, yes. Racism. So much racism. (They lynched a black man. Holy shit...)
This longer version simply adds more scenes for the framing device, and some context scenes for the story proper, which was nice. Didn't have to go "oh, so this is what we're doing now" as often as I did when I first watched it.
EDIT: Unrelated.
Erdgeist available on the Digitaler Lesesaal of the Bundesarchiv.
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scifirenegade
