Horst in Translation ([email protected]) This is "Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination" or "Warning Shadows" and this film takes a path that many silent films back then. Include an ounce of horror, mystery, maybe even fantasy and hope the audience will be scared. Well.. maybe back then they were, but today this film that runs for slightly under 85 minutes did almost nothing for me. The usual problem is present again: not enough subtitles. If we don't understand what is going on, we lose interest and don't care about the story or characters. I really wonder why so few directors included a sufficient amount of subtitles during the silent film era. I guess there is a reason why nobody knows Arthur Robison today anymore, the writer and director of this German movie here. Another problem is overacting. Especially, the male protagonist who is also in the last scene really needed a lesson in subtlety. So yeah, a weak film with regard to basically everything: story, acting and directing. I do not recommend this over 90-year-old film. Not dramatic, not entertaining and especially not scary. Thumbs down.

MartinHafer Have you ever gone to a country where you don't know the language and sat and listened to what was going on around you? If so, then you might have some idea what it's like watching "Warning Shadows". All sorts of things happen on the screen but the viewer is left wondering what this all means--and there is no explanation nor context nor any intertitle cards explaining anything. While I noticed a lot of people gave this one 9s and 10s, I just can't see it as the film seemed boring and incomprehensible.Normally in a review I talk a bit about the plot, but in this one I have no idea WHAT is going on. There are a lot of men wearing early 19th century clothing and they all hang about a woman in a strange mansion. Periodically, they amuse themselves with shadow plays projected on sheets. What else is occurring? I dunno."Warning Shadows" has been described as an example of German Expressionism--the same odd sort of style typified in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". However, "The Cabinet" is a wonderful film and uses it's odd surreal look to the fullest. Here in "Warning Shadows" the sets just come off as simple or cheap. Additionally, I'd prefer to think of it as German OVER-expressionism because the acting is so overdone. Characters roll their eyes, stare and make a billion and one expressions using their eyes as well as wildly gesticulating to show emotions. Arty? I dunno--it just looks bad.Aside from some nice costumes, I cannot find much of anything to admire about this film. While I have seen and reviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of silents and greatly appreciate them, this film seems like an artsy-fartsy mess--and a dull one to boot.

chaos-rampant I shudder to think what might have been of the German school if Caligari and Nosferatu had been among the lost films. There's just not a whole lot that has reached us from this movement, much less truly great works. Recently restored by the Murnau foundation, this is meant to be one of the most evocative ones, a great title we had been missing. Most of it passes with little notice, a night of erotic angst, rivalry and a marriage falling apart with the lavish mansion of a baron as the stage of the theater. The prospective lovers feign and thrust, eventually really thrust; we get to see this in shadows. Shadows, a nocturnal hallucination as the title goes. It's the arrival of a shadow-player that is the most intriguing here. Oh, eventually his magick tricks were all serving a benign purpose, domestic bliss is salvaged from desire most foul, the soul restored into proper order.The trick is that he gives the parties involved a vision of what might unfold, the dangers involved. His small audience wakes up from the cinematic illusion dazzled, baffled, rubbing their eyes with disbelief. And we pull further back in the final shot to see curtains falling on this level that we experienced as reality.Is everything inside the nested story so artificial because it was the times still inflected by theater, or because the shadow play is inherently artificial? Is the shadow player the protagonist himself, made from his mirrored image, and so conjuring for himself a wish-fulfillment illusion where everything is made alright?If you were looking to come to this for German expressionism, you might want to reconsider. There is a great shot of the illusionist pushing back, elongating the shadows of his players. But it's serving and is part of the great self-referential tradition of cinema, films about the illusion of watching films.

psteier One of the most influential of the German Expressionist films of the 1920's. The most radical aspect is the lighting, where the shadows are sometimes more important than the actors. Also unusual is that there are no titles except at the start to introduce the characters, who are just types and do not have names, just descriptive titles (husband, wife, youth, servant, etc.). The shadow puppet show is similar to what is seen more extensively in Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, Die (1925).