The Artificial Man
About The Artificial Man
Professor Ortmann has failed for years at making an artificial human, and he resents it when his student, Dr. Hansen, succeeds. The Homunculus, played by Olaf Fønss, is flawless except that he cannot love. At 25 he traces his origin, hates Hansen, and is loved by Hansen's daughter Margarete, who knows he cannot love her back. He drives Margarete to her death and swears he will spread fear through humankind.
Cast & crew
More about The Artificial Man
Otto Rippert directed the first episode of the six-part Homunculus series, German title Die Geburt des Homunculus. Robert Reinert wrote it from his own novel. Hanns Lippmann produced it for Deutsche Bioscop in Berlin. Carl Hoffmann photographed it. Robert A. Dietrich designed the sets. It is four acts, 1,588 meters. A special showing played the Marmorhaus in Berlin on 22 June 1916. The premiere was there on 18 August 1916. Censorship number B.39498, August 1916, barred children.
Themes
Background
Bioscop released the opening episode in Berlin in the summer of 1916, while the war was still shutting foreign features out of German theaters.
Making
Reinert's script makes the teacher the failure and the pupil the man who actually builds the creature. Ortmann's jealousy is the start of the episode, not a laboratory triumph of his own.
Reviews
Lichtbild-Bühne of 24 June 1916, after the Marmorhaus preview, called the film literary and praised the scale of what Rippert and Reinert had taken on. B.Z. am Mittag, quoted in Lichtbild-Bühne on 26 August 1916, said psychology had come onto the screen and that the picture stood at the edge of a new kind of filmmaking.
Look
Carl Hoffmann photographed the black-and-white 35mm episode, four acts, 1,588 meters.
Music
Silent, with German intertitles. Siegbert Goldschmidt wrote a score for the series.
Preservation
For decades only a shortened copy of episode 4 was known. In August 2014 Stefan Drößler of the Filmmuseum München premiered a 196-minute reconstruction of all six episodes at the Bonn Silent Film Festival, with piano by Richard Siedhoff. That copy was later tinted.
Notes
- Ernst Ludwig plays Professor Ortmann. Albert Paul plays Dr. Hansen. Lore Rückert plays Margarete. Friedrich Kühne plays the famulus Edgar Rodin, not the creator.
- Lichtbild-Bühne of 6 May 1916 said Olaf Fønss was being paid the highest fee yet given an actor in a German film.
- The other 1916–17 episodes are Das geheimnisvolle Buch, Die Liebestragödie des Homunculus, Die Rache des Homunculus, Die Vernichtung der Menschheit, and Das Ende des Homunculus.
- In 1920 censors cut the series from 9,163 meters to 6,315 meters and reissued it in three parts, one of them titled Der künstliche Mensch.
- Siegbert Goldschmidt wrote music for the series.
Scenes
- Hansen, not Ortmann, is the one who brings the Homunculus through.
- At 25 the creature learns how he was made and turns on Hansen and Margarete.
- Margarete is driven to her death, and the Homunculus swears terror on everyone else.
Influenced by
- Robert Reinert's novel
Also available
- Internet Archive (silent-homunculus-1-teil)
