The Haunted Castle
About The Haunted Castle
Rain cancels a hunt at Castle Vogelöd. Count Johann Oetsch arrives uninvited. The guests believe he shot his brother Peter. Baroness Safferstätt, the widow, now remarried, wants to leave when she sees him, then stays because Father Faramund is expected and she means to confess. Oetsch accuses Baron Safferstätt. In flashbacks the baroness says her first husband turned to religion, she wished for something evil, and the baron, misunderstanding her, shot the husband. They married and found the marriage empty. Faramund pulls off a false beard and wig. He is Oetsch. The confession clears him. The baron shoots himself. The real Father Faramund arrives afterward. F. W. Murnau directed. The German title is Schloß Vogelöd.
Cast & crew
More about The Haunted Castle
Carl Mayer wrote the screenplay from a novel by Rudolf Stratz. Berthold Viertel is also on the writing credit. Erich Pommer produced. Fritz Arno Wagner and László Schäffer photographed it. Decla-Bioscop distributed it. The Berlin premiere was at the Marmorhaus on 7 April 1921. Wikidata times a version at 73 minutes. Wikipedia tables list 80 and 82 minutes. A video copy runs 80 minutes. Lothar Mehnert plays Johann Oetsch. Olga Chekhova plays the baroness. Paul Bildt plays the baron. Arnold Korff plays Lord von Vogelschrey.
Themes
Making
Murnau and Mayer staged a country-house murder as a rain-bound weekend, with the priest who hears the confession already in the room.
Look
Fritz Arno Wagner and László Schäffer shot the castle rooms and the flashbacks of the shooting.
Preservation
One of Murnau’s earliest surviving films. The Murnau Foundation reconstructed it in 2002. A copy is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- There is no ghost. The disguise is a priest’s beard and wig.
- The rain is what keeps the guests indoors for the confession.
- Paul Hartmann plays the dead brother, Count Peter Paul Oetsch, in the flashbacks.
- In 2002 the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation rebuilt the film from a negative at the German Federal Archives and a tinted nitrate print with Portuguese titles from the Cinemateca Brasileira.
Scenes
- Oetsch walks into the hunt weekend and will not leave.
- The baroness’s flashback shows the wish and the shot.
- The priest’s beard comes off. The baron shoots himself.
Influenced by
- A novel by Rudolf Stratz
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Haunted Castle (1921) by F. W. Murnau.webm)
