#kammerspielfilm

It’s that time of year when NOSFERATU (’22), F.W. Murnau’s interpretation of Dracula, appears on lists of recommended horror films. The oldest, existing film version of Bram Stoker’s novel, Nosferatu is likely Murnau’s most watched title. It’s eerie Expressionist style was a major influence on the American horror genre, but Murnau’s talent for mise-en-scène is evident in all of his films. I have been fortunate enough to see most of his movies, but one film, PHANTOM (’22), eluded me until recently. Currently streaming on FilmStruck, PHANTOM was one of those thousands of silents that had been lost to the pages of history. However, in the early 2000s, a print of the film was found in an old theater in Germany. The film was restored through the efforts of several organizations, including the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation.

PHANTOM was released just eight months after NOSFERATU. Despite the timing of its release and the title, this is not a tale of horror and the supernatural. PHANTOM is that specific type of melodrama popular in Germany during the 1920s dubbed kammerspielfilm. The stories focused on the plights of ordinary, good-hearted folks who are driven by poverty and desperation to cross moral lines into theft, prostitution, fraud, embezzlement and other illegal acts. Germany during the Weimar Republic and after was a society in shambles. Failing social institutions, from the economy to law & order to the medical establishment, resulted in the destruction of the working class and the decline of the middle class. Audiences could relate to these stories of characters in economic despair and moral crisis.