The period between Halloween and Hanukkah forms a perfect pocket in which to view The Golem, director Paul Wegener’s 1920 silent marvel of German expressionism. Based on ancient Hebrew folklore, The Golem is part monster flick, part religious epic. It concerns a Czech rabbi who creates an outsize clay “robot”–which some people think of as the “Jewish Frankenstein”–to protect the residents of his ghetto from state-sponsored pogroms. When he needs to awaken the slumbering giant he uses–instead of a bat signal or supersonic watch-radio–the Hebrew word for “truth,” which he inscribes upon the Golem’s forehead.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I’ve seen The Golem twice: once without any sound track, and then at the 1989 Next Wave Festival in New York, which offered a short series of newly scored silent films. This time The Golem featured a dense, brooding, and preternaturally effective sound track designed by guitarist and noisemeister Gary Lucas. Lucas managed to capture the story’s oppressive context with music that drew equally upon eternal mythography and postindustrial improvisation. By the time of that performance, the idea of matching silent films with new music had already attracted Michael Dorf, proprietor of the Knitting Factory, one of the busiest programmers of new jazz and performance in New York.
So bassist Mark Dresser’s trio–comprising Anthony Coleman on prepared piano and the versatile and often stunning trumpeter Dave Douglas–dips into a broad range of musical techniques to match the groundbreaking imagery of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Robert Wiene’s 1919 masterpiece depicts a young man’s descent into madness; Dresser’s music, which appears on a 1994 CD (Knitting Factory Works), weaves its own tales of horror, delights both dark and light, and impending discovery.
