User Reviews

This is an unusual, very different sort of film, completely visual as it has no intertitles, in keeping with the original German version. About a man who is full of anxiety (his eyes continually popping out in jealous rages) over the attentions his woman has been paying to a handsome youth and several other male admirers (meanwhile, though she likes to flirt, she actually seems more interested in gazing at herself and posing in front of mirrors). The action all takes place at a house dinner party one evening, where our beautiful and alluring peacock lady is busy enticing the man, the youth, and three gentlemen, then all are "entertained" by a strange traveling entertainer and his shadow puppet play, who causes all to hallucinate a vision of "things to come".

This film is very interestingly photographed, full of sharp shadows against brightly lit walls that set some of the action, plus lavish period costuming and well-draped sets that look like they belong on a stage. The action is mostly slow and dreamlike, a bit too slow at times as this drags just a little through parts. Still, very interesting to see. The print on the DVD, tinted in sepia/yellow, pink, and bright lavender tones, looks quite nice. The music score is excellent and suits this very odd silent film quite well.

German expressionism is on display in this strange drama from director Arthur Robison. A rich aristocrat (Fritz Kortner) invites some other dilettantes over for an evening of entertainment. The aristocrat sees the silhouette of what appears to be his lascivious wife (Ruth Wyher) being sexually groped by the trio of guests. This understandably upsets the aristocrat, and things aren't helped by his mischievous butler (Fritz Rasp) who feeds into his paranoia. When the night's entertainment shows up, he's a Shadowplayer (Alexander Granach), meaning he uses shadows and shadow puppets to tell tales. His performance causes everyone present to consider their actions.

The highlights here are the numerous inventive ways shadows are used to tell the story, and Rasp as the evil butler. He's long been a favorite of mine among German character actors, and I loved seeing this early role for him. .

This had been something of a holy grail for me: while there's very little that's actually written about it (even following this DVD release from Kino - I came across only 1 online review!), its reputation as a highpoint of the German Expressionist movement had always preceded it and I had personally been intrigued for years by a single still from the film in the British periodical from the early 80s, "The Movie".

Well, having at long last watched the film (thanks, Kino, also the 'rescuers' of another rare Silent classic - Paul Leni's THE MAN WHO LAUGHS [1928]), I can say that it's a genuine masterwork which well and truly belongs with the other classics of the early German cinema (particularly the Expressionist horror films, even if WARNING SHADOWS is not a genre effort per se). Still, there are undeniable macabre overtones in the story about a dinner party comprising a jealous man, his flirtatious wife and her four suitors that's 'invaded' by the owner of a traveling puppet-show who may or may not be a magician as well.

Actually, the film looks forward to several others in its theme and approach: first of all, its complete lack of intertitles (this is a purely visual film) precedes F.W. Murnau's more celebrated THE LAST LAUGH (1924), the silhouetted puppet show anticipates Lotte Reiniger's THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926; the first 'animated' film) and the 'film-within-a-film' scenario (where we have the magician 'borrowing' the shadows of the guests in order to allow them to see for themselves what is to be the tragic outcome of the night) also looks forward to a similar 'morality play' performance at the centre of another Murnau film, TARTUFFE (1925)!

As I said, the film's look - sets by Albin Grau and camera-work by Fritz Arno Wagner (both of whom had worked on Murnau's NOSFERATU [1922]) - and the techniques deployed - particular attention is given to the lighting scheme as, in the absence of dialogue, this functions as much as an illumination of the various characters and what they may be thinking as the actors interpreting them! - are incredible (even after all these years): the plot itself is very simple and, in fact, if the film has a fault it's that it takes this a bit too slowly; all the various characters are introduced at the very start in a prologue which occupies the first five minutes of the picture! Then again, by the time the magician's terrifying and murderous visions had reached their crescendo (this here is, by far, the best section of the film), I had become so completely absorbed that I was actually surprised when the picture shifted back to the main narrative, indicating that it was nearing conclusion!

As befits an Expressionist film, the acting style (but also the make-up) is slightly exaggerated with the result that some of it may seem awkward today (the leading lady and the three elderly suitors, for instance). Much better are the three more notable names in the cast - Fritz Kortner as the husband, Gustav von Wangeheim (who had been Jonathan Harker in NOSFERATU) as the infatuated youth and especially Alexander Granach (yet another NOSFERATU alumnus, where he had made a creepy Renfield) as the scruffy-looking and somewhat unhinged magician; indeed, the latter makes for a truly memorable character - and I could just imagine him going to the next house or the next village after the end of our story to provide some more of his specialized 'entertainment'!

The figure of director Arthur Robison, then, is something of an enigma: he was an American who ended up working in Germany; I haven't seen any of his other work and doubt how much of it actually survives at this juncture - but he did contrive to make the original version of THE INFORMER (featuring, apart from a very young Ray Milland, German actors Lars Hanson and Lya De Putti!) in Britain in 1929, while in 1935 came his remake of the oft-filmed German folktale THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE, starring the great Anton Walbrook in the famous dual role...

Shadows are used to add distinction to a simple melodrama, in which four men try to seduce their host's flirtatious wife, introducing a gallery of different ways of using shadows for dramatic or storytelling purpose. However, I found the resource too distancing, especially the use the art of Chinese shadows to narrate a long tale that forces us viewers to relate representational metaphors to the actual story we are watching, as the play within the play in "Hamlet". In this case, the Chinese images are not clearly defined, and the filmmakers decided not to use intertitles... Add that wigs, costumes and sets are not particularly impressive, so there you have. A good try, but not as clear or clever as other German Expressionist movies.

"Warning Shadows" shouldn't work as well as it does. There are no titles, causing the plot to be confusing if not closely paid attention to; the Expressionistic elements are abundant but also strangely removed in style; the acting is often tongue-in-cheek, and the overall artiness is seemingly self-conscious. However, those same elements also contribute to this film's majesty and originality. There is simply no other film (that I'm aware of, anyway) that approaches the beauty and sheer erotic oddness of this obscure classic. I cannot adequately describe exactly what it is that makes "Warning Shadows" one of my all-time favorite motion pictures, so...just see it. It's available on DVD from our great friends at Kino.

One of the most influential of the German Expressionist films of the 1920's. The most radical aspect is the lighting, where the shadows are sometimes more important than the actors.

Also unusual is that there are no titles except at the start to introduce the characters, who are just types and do not have names, just descriptive titles (husband, wife, youth, servant, etc.).

The shadow puppet show is similar to what is seen more extensively in Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed, Die (1925).

I shudder to think what might have been of the German school if Caligari and Nosferatu had been among the lost films. There's just not a whole lot that has reached us from this movement, much less truly great works. Recently restored by the Murnau foundation, this is meant to be one of the most evocative ones, a great title we had been missing.

Most of it passes with little notice, a night of erotic angst, rivalry and a marriage falling apart with the lavish mansion of a baron as the stage of the theater. The prospective lovers feign and thrust, eventually really thrust; we get to see this in shadows. Shadows, a nocturnal hallucination as the title goes. It's the arrival of a shadow-player that is the most intriguing here. Oh, eventually his magick tricks were all serving a benign purpose, domestic bliss is salvaged from desire most foul, the soul restored into proper order.

The trick is that he gives the parties involved a vision of what might unfold, the dangers involved. His small audience wakes up from the cinematic illusion dazzled, baffled, rubbing their eyes with disbelief. And we pull further back in the final shot to see curtains falling on this level that we experienced as reality.

Is everything inside the nested story so artificial because it was the times still inflected by theater, or because the shadow play is inherently artificial? Is the shadow player the protagonist himself, made from his mirrored image, and so conjuring for himself a wish-fulfillment illusion where everything is made alright?

If you were looking to come to this for German expressionism, you might want to reconsider. There is a great shot of the illusionist pushing back, elongating the shadows of his players. But it's serving and is part of the great self-referential tradition of cinema, films about the illusion of watching films.

I'm a passionate advocate on behalf of German Expressionist films, especially from the silent era. I'm still bitter about an incident at the 1982 World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago, when an audience full of idiots (jaded by high-tech S/FX movies) laughed at the cardboard sets in 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'. Those morons didn't care that the high degree of originality and imagination in 'Caligari' more than made up for its tiny production budget.

'Shadows', however, while firmly within the Expressionist genre, is too arty for its own good. While this film does have some merits, its flaws greatly outnumber and exceed its merits.

All the actors perform their roles with hand-to-brow histrionics of precisely the sort which have given silent-film acting a bad reputation. Several of the actors in this movie have given good performances elsewhere, so I assume that director Arthur Robison deserves the blame for their mannered theatrics here. During one scene, when a swain aims a punch at his rival, the actor cannot simply throw a punch: he must put his fist up against the other man's face, and then shove.

Alexander Granach, as a showman with a shadow box and shadow puppets, demonstrates some extremely deft hand shadows, apparently with no other props supplementing his hands. But, when the puppet-master isn't performing, Granach lurches across the screen like Igor the hunchback. Ruth Weyher is pretty and graceful but is given no opportunity to behave like a human being.

This silent film was originally released with no intertitles. Several other silent features also eschewed captions -- 'The Last Laugh', "The Old Swimmin' Hole", 'The Last Moment' -- but those films had linear plots which the audience could easily follow. The plot of 'Shadows' is deeply confusing, made even more confusing by the arty pretensions, and the story would have been far easier to follow with some captions. A curator at the Murnau Archiv has told me that 'Shadows' was given intertitles by several exhibitors when it was released outside Germany.

The plot -- such as it is -- vaguely reminded me of Renoir's 'Rules of the Game' and Bergman's 'Smiles of a Summer Night': in a swank country manor, some people with more money than sense amuse themselves at each other's expense. But here the cast members are introduced in arty tableaux that are more alienating than edifying. After the final tableau, we're treated to the odd spectacle of a single upraised finger casting a shadow on the screen. What does this mean, please? Later, in hindsight, we understand that this signifies the beginning of the drama's Chapter One. (I saw this film in London, where the audience burst out laughing at the start of Chapter Two, symbolised by a hand with TWO upraised fingers: in Britain, this two-fingered gesture has obscene connotations.) The finger device is confusing, and adds nothing to the story ... nor does the decision to divide the narrative into arbitrary chapters.

The production design is impressive: judging by the furniture and clothes, this story takes place somewhere in Europe (probably Germany) circa 1830: again, some titles would have helped. But Robison considerably weakens the effect of these wonderful costumes and sets by obscuring them with elaborate shadows, and by gimmicky effects such as raising and lowering a proscenium curtain in front of the actors. (As if we need to be reminded that this very artificial story is merely a story!)

Considerable talent, effort and expense were put into 'Shadows', to little effect. Rather a lot of today's movie-goers are sadly prejudiced against silent films, misperceiving them all to be crude and laughably overacted. Sadly, 'Shadows' is precisely the sort of movie which would convince such people that all the negative stereotypes about silent movies are true after all. My rating for this failure: 2 out of 10, mostly for the production design.

For further reading I recommend an excellent article on the film in the film magazine 'Traffic' (nb. 33) by the German movie aficionado Enno Patalas. Patalas was also the driving force behind a complete restoration of the film at the Munich Filmmuseum - surprisingly there are some (hand- )colored sections in the original version. The shadow theater puppets shown in the movie were created by the German expressionist artist Ernst Moritz Engert, who was well connected to the early expressionist art- and literature-scene in Berlin and Munich. I adore the movie for exploring the deep aesthetic relations between the art of the shadow play and movie as an art itself - from my point of view the earliest and most reflected approach to provide a genuine philosophical statement on film.

During a dinner, given by a wealthy baron and his wife, attended by four of her suitors in a 19th century German manor, a shadow-player rescues the marriage by giving all the guests a vision what might happen tonight if the baron stays jealous and the suitors do not reduce their advances towards his beautiful wife.

What strikes me about this film is just how German it is. I have no idea what was going on in Germany in the 1920s, but they had a definite vision on how to use shadows and light in their films. While this is not German expressionism, it is not so far removed that we cannot see the German aesthetic.

In some ways, we might be better comparing this to "Prince Achmed", a cartoon that relied on shadows rather than drawing. Again, a German film. I am surprised by how much a country's boundary could define their films. Today, I do not feel that a film made in any one country is so obviously differently from another...

This is a movie that I learned about when searching through Letterboxd for movies from 1923 for my Centennial Club. These tend to be a bit difficult to find if they're not the bigger titles from that decade. I did find this on YouTube as it appears that there might be a restoration out there. Other than the year it came out and the year it came out, I came into this one blind.

Synopsis: a wealthy man invites the local wealthy bachelors over for a puppet show about men who covet another man's wife. The puppeteer is a witch and gives the men nightmares about what could happen if they date the lady of the house.

Since I came in with limited knowledge, it is funny that I tried to watch this movie late at night and couldn't get into it. I restarted it a couple nights later and it made a bit more sense. The version that I watched was set up like the original German version where there are no title cards. This makes it easier since there's no reading. It also makes it more difficult as you must pay attention to each scene and figure out what they're conveying through body language.

I did pick up on the fact that we have this traveling entertainer, Alexander Granach. He sees the house that belongs to Fritz Kortner and his wife Ruth Weyher. We see that he's madly in love with her, where she might not reciprocate. The husband has invited someone credited as youth, Gustav von Wangenehim. There are also three gentlemen that are invited: Eugen Rex, Max Gülstorff and Ferdinand von Alten.

What I didn't realize is that the traveling entertainer was invited. It seems more like him forcing his way inside from what I saw. It is from there that he catches the interest of the group and puts on a show. It is quite amazing what he can do with his hands and puppets. He uses shadows to do different things, hence the name. It takes a dark turn though when everyone falls asleep.

That is where I'm going to leave my recap as there isn't a lot to the story. Even though this movie is now 100 years old, I don't gain anything by revealing where it goes. What I do have to say is that I'm not always the biggest fan of what they do here. Since this movie is so early into cinema, it won't be anything that I hold against it. I do think that this is an interesting way to present the events of what we get here.

Now if you couldn't tell from the synopsis and what I've laid out, this is a cautionary tale to not covet your neighbor's wife. Ruth doesn't seem to love her husband as much as he loves her. I got that before the show began. Where things end up is interesting. I'm assuming that what they saw made her change her ways. Gustav is a youth that she has interest in. That doesn't show itself until the traveling entertainer arrives if memory serves. This is still an idea though that is relevant today with different things both in the horror genre and not.

Something else that I didn't necessarily know was that the traveling entertainer was a 'witch'. That seems to be a term they're using here since he does something that is supernatural. Everyone falls asleep, but I wasn't sure if it was his show that caused that or if was a drink that everyone had. Regardless, I did find it interesting that his early in cinema we are seeing a meta-approach. The show that he is doing with the shadow puppets is literally telling the same story as what we are getting just on a smaller scale. I did find that to be an interesting approach, especially since meta became so popular in the 2000s and beyond.

What carries this though is the acting. Since we don't have dialogue or title cards, it is all on their shoulders. What is interesting as well is that they don't go over the top. The performances are grounded. I figured out what needed to be conveyed just from their facial expressions and body language. Kortner is good as this 'older' man who is married and I'd say that Weyher is good as his wife. What is interesting is that her and von Wangenheim are what cause all the issues here. He is also good as this 'younger' man. I also like Rex, Gülstorff and von Alten as the guests to the party. I should give credit to Granach as well as Fritz Rasp, Karl Platen and Lilli Herder. This last trio are the servants/maid. The acting here is good.

Then all that is left would be with the filmmaking. I'd say that this cinematography is fine. We get a lot of stationary camera shots, but that is just due to when it was made. What we got there looked good. I had no issues. What impressed me though were the shadow puppets. I'm guessing some of this are in camera effects. Regardless, I liked it. It is something you do as a kid so seeing how advanced the traveling entertainer is with it is fun. Other than that, the soundtrack fit for what was needed. It is hard to tell if this was originally synced with it. There are sound effects to match what is happening on screen which is a good touch for a silent film.

In conclusion, this is a solid piece of early cinema. I like this cautionary tale that goes back to the bible. There aren't title cards or dialogue so I credit the acting to carry this movie. I got most of what was happening here just through their facial expressions and their body language. That isn't easy to do. There is a story element that I'm not overly fond of anymore. It works in the confines here of when this was made though. This is well-made just in general from the cinematography to the soundtrack. Won't be for everyone. I can only recommend this to those out to see the early history of the film or the horror genre.

My Rating: 7 out of 10.

I caught this at the Cinematheque a couple of times in Paris. It is a film with no intertitles (except at the beginning for identifying the characters) and, like "The Last Laugh", depends on the camera and editing to tell the story. The action in both films, then, would have to be slow as not to confuse the viewer. This is the lesser of the two but the Murnau film has long been an established masterwork. Frankly I don't know much about Art(h)ur Robison. He was an American working on German-looking films in Germany during the Expressionist phase.

This film does indeed feature shadows and the lighting is necessarily bright. What I particularly enjoyed was being pulled into the action of the shadows along with the guests. In this respect the film was quite brilliant. The acting is really quite good and despite the slow speed of action, the film has barely dated at all.

Curtis Stotlar

Have you ever gone to a country where you don't know the language and sat and listened to what was going on around you? If so, then you might have some idea what it's like watching "Warning Shadows". All sorts of things happen on the screen but the viewer is left wondering what this all means--and there is no explanation nor context nor any intertitle cards explaining anything. While I noticed a lot of people gave this one 9s and 10s, I just can't see it as the film seemed boring and incomprehensible.

Normally in a review I talk a bit about the plot, but in this one I have no idea WHAT is going on. There are a lot of men wearing early 19th century clothing and they all hang about a woman in a strange mansion. Periodically, they amuse themselves with shadow plays projected on sheets. What else is occurring? I dunno.

"Warning Shadows" has been described as an example of German Expressionism--the same odd sort of style typified in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". However, "The Cabinet" is a wonderful film and uses it's odd surreal look to the fullest. Here in "Warning Shadows" the sets just come off as simple or cheap. Additionally, I'd prefer to think of it as German OVER-expressionism because the acting is so overdone. Characters roll their eyes, stare and make a billion and one expressions using their eyes as well as wildly gesticulating to show emotions. Arty? I dunno--it just looks bad.

Aside from some nice costumes, I cannot find much of anything to admire about this film. While I have seen and reviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of silents and greatly appreciate them, this film seems like an artsy-fartsy mess--and a dull one to boot.

Germans after The Great War were a disillusioned lot: supporting and fighting for what they were told was a great ideal, most found out the country's end goals weren't what the military had promised. Its artists, particularly in expressionistic cinema, found that appearances to the naked eye were really something different when examining their deep, underlying truths.

In Arthur Robison's written and directed work, October 1923's "Warning Shadows," or its German title aptly named 'Shadows-a Nocturnal Hallucination,' the film is one of the most German Expressionistic film a viewer can find. The movement reached its heights in 1920 with 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,' but the art was still popular in 1923 when cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, who worked alongside director F. W. Murnau and his 1922 'Nosferatu,' designed a heavy layer of dark shadows and a strong dose of chiaroscuro lighting to create a dreamy, if bizarre world of the subconscious dominating the action of a dinner party's hosts and guests in a social setting. The unnatural world of expressionism, with its jarring acting style and exhibiting the darker impulses in ordinary people, was predominant in 1920s German cinema, but none so much as "Warning Shadows." A flirtatious wife, a jealous husband, four bold guests, young admirers of the wife, two servants and an entertainer who loves to shake up people's minds, all combine for a highly charged evening. The mischievous entertainer, using shadows to express submergible meanings, pulls the entire party at the table into a nether world of each one's thoughts and desires. The group as well as the servants enact a wish-fulfillment on the wife, who suddenly realizes all her cloying seductiveness does have its consequences.

What's remarkable of "Warning Shadows" is the entire movie, save for the characters' introduction, is told without one inter-title. Wagner felt these title cards were boring and destroyed the continuity of a film. Filmmakers at this period in cinema were aware of the problem and tried to minimize, and even attempted to eliminate these descriptive and dialogue titles.

Finally got around to watching "Warning Shadows" (1923) (original title: "Schatten: Eine Nächtliche Halluzination). This was my first time around with this one. It certainly is no "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" or "The Golem", but this German Expressionistic film has all of the character of that genre, and maybe then some. It is considered a masterpiece and rates with the best of the Expressionism films, but I must admit I'd only give five out of ten stars or two out of four, depending on which system is used. I found a great deal of it plainly boring, and a lot of it pretentious. Starring some of the top German stars of the day, Fritz Kortner plays Man, Ruth Weyher plays Woman, Gustav von Wangenheim plays Youth, then Fritz Rasp plays Servant #1 and Alexander Granach plays The Traveling Entertainer (the shadow man!).

All of the actors do a superb job of playing their parts. The plot takes place in what looks like 18th century Germany where Kortner is having a dinner party for three guests, and there is a young (the Youth of the cast) person, half the age of The Woman (Kortner's wife) there, too. There are also two servants, three musicians, and a lady house helper. All the men, from the Youth and the three gentlemen guests, and the two servants, lust for The Woman. She obviously enjoys the entire entourage lusting after her. The husband, jealous to the breaking point, obviously does not like the situation. In comes an entertainer who puts on a shadow show. The show is clever, but it is also long, long, long. It shows the possible consequences if the lusting is allowed to continue. Is the show real? Does it really occur? How much of this psychological razzmatazz is genuine. How much is possible hypnosis, etc.?

One thing became very obvious to me. Orson Welles had to have seen this and appreciated it at some time or other. For one thing, Fritz Kortner at moments LOOKS so much like Welles in his most muggy moments that it's uncanny! And then the mirror scenes... "The Lady from Shanghai" was definitely in the making 25 years before it was made!

I've avoided saying anything about the use of shadows, yet I must say something. They are beautifully used! It is the only part of the film I enjoyed 100%. I also wondered at certain sections of the film if some of the shadows were - yes, missing? There were sections where I thought the camera was supposed to be showing a shadow of the physical action, but it wasn't there. Anyway, the photography was everything one expects of Expressionism in the early 20s in Germany. Beautiful cinematography for the most part, but the idea was a three reeler, not a five or six reeler.

Sorry to those who love this iconographic piece of Expressionism. I liked it up to a point, but I did not love it. Enough said.

As the story unfolds, a night of entertainment slowly transforms into a nightmare of insane jealousy, violence, and death. Or does it?

Enchanting, fascinating, and oddly macabre, WARNING SHADOWS uses light and dark to explore human nature. The use of shadow by candlelight -whether through silhouettes, shadow puppets, or shadow / mirror images- is striking.

This is another silent, expressionistic masterpiece. Co-stars Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the Grand Illusionist / Shadow Puppeteer, whom he plays with unabashed, sinister glee!...