ALGOL

 

ALGOL is a 1920 silent German film with plenty of expressionist & science fiction/fantasy elements, staring Emil Jannings. 

The film's prologue establishes that Algol is the name of a distant star, and then details the life of miner Robert Herne (Emil Jannings) who toils away in an unnamed country. An impish, strange fellow who calls himself Algol (John Gottowt) arrives at the mining community, posing as a replacement worker. Algol presents Herne with a bizarre contraption, and tells the miner he has one year to use the device to gain power and riches. A year later, Herne has used the secrets of the device to build what he calls a bio-factory that can offer clean and effective power to countries all over the world. The catch is Herne sells this power, and he receives money and influence in return. Herne soon has the world in his pocket, but the situation breaks up his family and causes some to rebel against him. 

ALGOL is a weird film, even by 1920s German Expressionist standards. The story has a lot of ambiguity to it--is Algol an alien, or is he some demonic figure? (One scene seems to suggest that Algol was somehow trapped in the mine that Herne is working in.) It's never explained why Algol offers Herne such power, or what exactly this power is. (In the second half of the film, Algol shows up at random intervals to affect events, in a negative way.) If Algol is doing this to sow discord all over the Earth, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why he should. 

The movie's message is very skewed as well. It appears the film is saying that "absolute power corrupts absolutely", but while Herne does become more and more important, he certainly doesn't act like a vicious tyrant. (Emil Jannings is quite subtle as Herne--at least, he's subtle compared to most of his performances.) Herne does become wealthy and influential due to his bio-factory, but he is also providing clean efficient energy to the world, and making the ordinary person's life better. (The story takes pains to show how depressing the miners' lives are, but when Herne's bio-factory makes coal obsolete, the workers complain that they're going to lose their jobs.) At the end, an elderly Herne is being pressured by his playboy son to share the secret of his power, and he destroys the machine instead. The movie then abruptly ends, without detailing the result of how the world would be affected by Herne's decision. 

What makes ALGOL notable is some of the production design and shot compositions follow the mode of THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (artist Walter Reimann worked on both pictures). The CALIGARI-like visuals are not used throughout the film, however.....the mining community is portrayed in a realistic manner. The result is that the movie is mixed up visually as it is script-wise. 

Some have suggested that ALGOL was an influence on Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS. There are some similarities between the two. When he becomes rich and powerful Robert Herne has a lot in common with Joh Fredersen--Herne's spacious office even resembles the one Fredersen has. There's also a scene where the young heiress who inherits the mine goes down into it to see what the workers' lives are really like--a scene very much like the one in METROPOLIS where Fredersen's son goes down among the machines to learn more about the lower classes. There's also the ongoing tension between labor and the upper class that both movies share. One can easily assume that Fritz Lang, and/or his wife/scenarist Thea von Harbou viewed ALGOL. There's also a heavy FAUST element to ALGOL--Herne basically sells his soul to an alien machine and gains riches and power, but causes trouble for those around him. (Ironically Emil Jannings would play the tempter in F.W. Murnau's adaptation of FAUST.) 

The director of ALGOL was one Hans Werckmeister, who doesn't get a lot of mention in the books on German Expressionist cinema. ALGOL was meant to be an important epic--one can tell that a lot of money was spent on it--but Werckmeister was no Fritz Lang. The movie has a sluggish pace, and is heavy going at times. One expects the major set-pieces one would see in a Lang film, but they never happen, and the ending is very disappointing from a dramatic standpoint. 

ALGOL can be viewed on YouTube in various versions. I expect that one day Kino Lorber or a similar company will release it on Blu-ray. It has a lot of elements that will attract the attention of silent film buffs, but I wouldn't rate it among the best titles of the German Expressionist period.