ORLACS HANDE

(vt The Hands of Orlac)

   Film (1924). Pan Film. Dir Robert Wiene, starring Conrad Veidt, Fritz Kortner, Carmen Cartellieri, Alexandra Sorina. Screenplay Louis Nerz, based on Les mains d'Orlac (1920) by Maurice RENARD. 92 mins, cut to 70 mins. B/w.

   In this Austrian film from the director of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919), a pianist whose injured hands have been replaced with those of an executed murderer inherits also the murderer's homicidal tendencies, and must struggle against the domination of the dead man. The central idea is scientifically absurd, but it has an emotional logic and has attracted several film-makers. The best version is the US remake Mad Love (1935; vt The Hands of Orlac), which deviates somewhat from Renard's silly novel, shifting the emphasis from pianist to surgeon. It was dir Karl Freund (best known as a brilliant cameraman) from a script by Guy ENDORE, P.J. Wolfson and John L. Balderston, and starred Peter Lorre, Frances Drake, Colin Clive, 70 mins,b/w.

   Lorre - in one of his few truly great performances and one of his first after arriving in the USA - plays the demented surgeon who grafts the murderer's hands onto a pianist whose wife he loves, and then attempts to drive him insane by masquerading as the executed murderer back from the dead. This stylish, Grand Guignol melodrama still seems stunning half a century later.Two later remakes were produced - one using the original title The Hands of Orlac (1960; vt Les mains d'Orlac; vt Hands of a Strangler) and the other called Hands of a Stranger (1963). The former wasa UK-French coproduction made in two versions, the UK version dir Edmond T. Greville, the French dir Jacques Lemare, both versions starring MelFerrer, Lucille Saint Simon, Christopher Lee, Donald Pleasence, Dany Carrel, Felix Aylmer, Basil Sydney and Donald Wolfit, with screenplay by John Baines and Grenville, 105 mins cut to 95 mins, b/w.

   The latter film was US, written and dir Newton Arnold, starring Paul Lukather, Joan Harvey, 86 mins cut to 73 mins, b/w.

   Both versions, particularly thelatter, are distinctly inferior to Mad Love.

   JB/PN