Dir. F.W. Murnau
84 Minutes
Germany
1921
Starring: Olaf Fonss, Erna Morena, Conrad Veidt, Gudrun Bruun Stephensen
***1/2/*****
Journey into the Night is the sixth film directed by F.W. Murnau, but due to a combination of poor foresight and force majuere it is the earliest surviving document of his work, an extraordinarily depressing sentiment when one looks at some of the existing promotional material and stills from his previous efforts: Emerald of Death, Satanas, The Hunchback and the Dancer, The Head of Janus, Evening--Night--Morning, and, from this year, Desire, none in any type of moving form but with small fragments that just make it easy to yearn for more of this work. It is an odd starting point for going through his works in sequence, a career so sadly in media res in its current state that one can only use the proceeding works as a point of comparison for seeing the development and sustaining momentum of his interests. But Journey into the Night offers pleasures that go beyond curiosity, and it is unfortunate that it can only be currently considered as a foundation for later works rather than its place in a run of films that was already moving along at a solid clip, and a film that is clearly considering themes and ideas already being explored that would sustain Murnau's works through the 20s and up to his untimely early death in 1931.
Journey into the Night begins with the trappings of a simple love triangle melodrama. The well-respected Dr. Eigil Börne (Olaf Fonss) is engaged to marry Hélène (Erna Morena), though finds himself resistant to the full commitment. On her birthday, he takes her to a cabaret where he becomes intrigued by dancer Lily (Gudrun Bruun Stephensen), who feigns injury in order to engage the doctor in a private conversation. Smitten by Lily's interest in him, Börne calls off his engagement and runs off to the seaside country with the dancer. Their Eden is interrupted with the arrival of a blind painter (Conrad Veidt) who Lily irrationally fears but Börne is insistent on curing. His trials work and the painter can see, but is most surprised when Lily and the artist fall in love. The overlapping triangles drift into tragedy when the blindness returns and Börne refuses to help Lily return to the happiness she had experienced.
Murnau and screenwriter Carl Mayer are light on inte titles, giving just enough information to be coherent but not enough to fully allow one to become immersed in the narrative. There is a purposeful detachment at work here, especially with the great shift in performance between medium shots and close-ups. Drama is immensely intensified when the characters are up close, their reactions becoming heightened beyond the norm, almost having the appearance of a fourth wall breaking as if they are knowingly letting the audience into their deepest feelings at that moment before returning to the less dramatic acting that is inherent with distance. These moments somewhat fill in the gaps that are left in the narrative, with an occasional disorientation that feels purposeful to give a greater weight to these types of shots.
But the film is insistent on finding a way to create unease while maintaining some semblance of reality. At this point, Murnau's interest in Expressionist visuals would have been already situated in his style: Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had been released the year before, but surviving scripts for Murnau's lost The Hunchback and the Dancer and The Head of Janus give a hint of the familiar "crooked houses" visual scheme most often associated with his works. There are never any extreme moments where environment becomes altered as a result of imagination, though a sequence where Lily gives an erotic night time dance in front of two flowing floor-to-ceiling curtains on the night of the painter's arrival has echoes of the dream sequence hand-through-the-window centerpiece of The Haunted Castle, the closest either film gets to full-blown horror. Instead, Murnau creates an unease through angle and composition rather than constructed sets. Shots are barely dead-on, almost always positioned in such a way where walls and character movement are diagonally presented, and a late in the film shot of the painter, Lily, and Börne standing in a row, visually flat, is almost striking in comparison. It gives the later drama more of a poetic impact, the weight of their actions magnified by being placed more on the consequences of them and their actions and less so a result of their twisted surroundings. Environments are oddly shaped but still in the realm of the real, not a reflection of their temporary madness but simply how their emotions and actions allow them to see the world.
The film has shades of Nosferatu in small moments: an early shot of Hélène standing dreamily at a window brings to mind Ellen's ethereal "what pretty flowers-why did you kill them?" at its start. But Veidt's haunting work as the painter has whispers of Max Schreck's vampire with a much needed humanity required for the character. Veidt wanders through the film with a creepy dexterity, rail-thin, lanky limbs, his hands appearing from his overcoat pocket saying more than any inter title can (and should). Murnau continues to show an interest in the body and the way its movement is only enhanced by the forced silence of the medium. Veidt is the perfect subject for such a fascination, the eyes of The Man Who Laughs stoking both fear and pity depending on what is meeting their gaze and causing reaction. The performance is quite engaging in its theatricality, and there is a real intrigue in his painter that makes the films obscurity a bit puzzling as the character stands alongside Cesare in Caligari, Orlac in The Hands of Orlac, and Erik in The Last Performance for their terrifying magnetism and tragic undercurrents.
As briefly considered, the tragedy of this film comes from the decisions of its characters over their environment, and the climax is built upon an irony that comes from hasty reaction and an inability to communicate beyond such a mentality. The film offers a number of binaries and extremes: it is not enough for Börne and Hélène to break off their engagement, instead they must never see each other again, though this subplot suggests that there is always a middle way regarding such a spectrum of love and hate. Börne must completely extricate himself from the urban space, distancing himself (from himself) as far as possible into the other realm of the countryside. As the film nears its end, it is the painter who accepts a life beyond binary: once shrouded in a world of darkness, he discovers the world of light, only to be thrown back into black again. But he comes to understand that he did not simply move from one mode to another, he experienced a marvelous change during that switch, a change that he is content to keep in memory for the rest of his life. It is Börne who cannot fathom such an existence and for him life is not about consideration and reflection but momentary pleasure built upon by extreme emotion. While the tragedy of the narrative comes from his inability to see this before the arc of his character comes to an end, the painter's acceptance and his embracing of the dark gives the film an eerie glimmer of light, suggesting that perhaps ones education continues beyond death rather than stopping when life is extinguished.
Film viewed on August 18th, 2020
Part of the ongoing F.W. Murnau project.