Tricks of The Light: Silent Films at Bechtel International Center, The Golem: How He Came Into The World

This is a silent film with English subtitles. Shown with new electronic music soundtrack performed live by AHL-i Nafs.

While making his first film, "The Student of Prague", in 1914, German director Paul Wegener became fascinated with local Jewish legends about Rabbi Loew and his animated clay man, The Golem. Wegener would make three separate films on this theme in the years following. Our film "The Golem: How He Came Into The World:, was his last, fullest and best treatment of the theme. Set in 1580, it tells of how the learned scholar and Kabbalist Rabbi Loew creates a being from clay to protect the Jews of Prague from The persecution ordered by the Emperor Rudolph. The being is animated through a magic amulet inscribed with the Hebrew word EMET. After saving the community, Rabbi Loew deactivates the increasingly rebellious Golem. However, his assistant reanimates the creature to serve his own personal ends. But the Golem will not be controlled now, and the monster goes on a rampage nearly destroying the ghetto. The film was a huge success both artistically and at the box office in Europe and the US. It was not seen in this country until 1923, and its brooding, atmospheric horror had an enormous influence on James Whale and Boris Karloff when they came to make MGM's legendary monster film, "Frankenstein".