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"The Unveiling of a Secret in Five Acts." La Règle du jeu is at once detectable, a hunting party at a country manor delayed by rain and enlivened by intrigue. An uninvited presence among bluebloods, the saturnine Count (Lothar Mehnert) suspected of shooting his brother (Paul Hartmann), the widowed Baroness (Olga Chekhova) is one of the guests. (The stagecoach carrying her and her new husband emerges from behind a small hill to round a curve in a windswept landscape adorned with bare trees.) "So, you claim to have learned the art of prophecy in India?" The enigmatic nobleman replies with a premonition, "a shot will be fired... maybe... even two." A mystery worked out in Gothic doorways and corridors, grist to F.W. Murnau's already formidable formalist mill. Multi-plane groupings, rare sunlight silhouetting a maiden on the balcony, a delicate delineation of décor appreciated by Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) and Rohmer (The Marquise of O). The victim is remembered as a man whose holy ideals drove his wife to yearn for "something utterly evil," a murder, say, the aftermath is visualized as guilty figures at opposite sides of the screen with a deep architectural gulf between them. The baleful goings-on take their toll on the nerves of "the Anxious Gentleman" (Julius Falkenstein), whose slumber is interrupted by a hairy claw materializing at the window. (A second dream finds the shrimpy kitchen hand taking slaphappy revenge on his rotund boss in between sweet spoonfuls, cf. Polanski's Le Gros et le Maigre.) "It's getting downright creepy in here." A coup de théâtre gets to the bottom of things, and Griffith follows suit with One Exciting Night. With Arnold Korff, Lulu Kyser-Korff, Paul Bildt, Hermann Vallentin, Robert Leffler, Victor Blütner, and Loni Nest. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |