The Hands of Orlac (1924)

Just curious as to where I might find a good DVD or VHS copy of Robert
Wiene's _The Hands of Orlac. I recently bought a DVD through Grapevine
Video but am not happy with it. The print is bad, the dialog cards are
subtitled in Spanish, and the score is--well, whoever decided that this
was a good score for the movie should have been stood up against a
wall.

The movie itself I liked. Conrad Veidt really is creepy in the role of
Orlac, a pianist whose hands are crushed in a railway accident and who
undergoes an operation in which he is given the hands of a criminal (at
a time, of course, when such transplants could not be done). Indeed,
he is creepier here than in _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_. The story
builds up to an interesting conclusion, although the latter is more a
Hollywood ending than a Germanic one. A somewhat irritating technique
was to exaggerate the movements of all the actors. The whole movie
seems to have been made in slow motion.

Bob Champ

Bob Champ wrote:
> Just curious as to where I might find a good DVD or VHS copy of Robert
> Wiene's _The Hands of Orlac. I recently bought a DVD through Grapevine
> Video but am not happy with it. The print is bad, the dialog cards are
> subtitled in Spanish, and the score is--well, whoever decided that this
> was a good score for the movie should have been stood up against a
> wall.
>
I've seen the dvd issued by a small Spanish outlet (presumably
this is the version used by Grapevine) and the music is indeed awful.
A few years ago ARTE showed the best, most complete copy of the
film. The music is pretty eerie and fits for the most part but at one
point-when Orlac goes to the police station-things get a bit crazy on
the soundtrack with multiple voices (sounding like newscasters) talking
about different people who've lost their hands! Unfortunately, this
version of the film hasn't been given a proper dvd release.
The film has its flaws-especially that rather anticlimatic
finale-but the atmosphere is great and there are some superb
moments-the search through the trainwreck, Orlac at the hospital and
later his hallucination in the cafe when he reads about the man whose
hands he has been given.
Henry Nicolella