Michael (1924)
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Michael Movie Review
Michael is a 1924 German silent drama film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and starring Walter Slezak and Benjamin Christensen. It’s a flawed, but interesting melodrama.
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“Now I can die in peace
for I have known a great love“
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An art student is accused of causing the death of the renowned painter who secretly loved him. This movie is primarily known for its homosexual overtones and I would personally characterize this story as such because it’s never fully open with that theme. In fact, I’d expected a much bigger emphasis on the gay love story at its center, but instead what I got was an overly subtle treatment of that romance. Comparing this movie to ‘Different from the Others’, a film that came five years earlier, Michael comes up short in the directness and bravery.
Nora Gregor is fine in the role of the countess who gets entangled with the protagonist romantically, but she comes across as filler interspersed between much more important scenes between the two men. She takes so much screen time away from them, which was frustrating to witness as the meat of the story is between those men.
Speaking of the gentlemen, this is the first time I’ve seen Walter Slezak so young. He is an actor who got a pretty good career for himself during the talkie era in Hollywood, but as a young actor in this movie he was very good too and quite charismatic. The casting on this movie was excellent. But the standout is of course Benjamin Christensen in a tortured and very well realized role of the painter who is in love with his art student. He’s terrific.
Michael is also renowned for its German expressionist touches, but I personally found the movie lacking in that area. The sets are not all that interesting and the suspense is mostly non-existent. The melodramatic elements are tiresome and not particularly riveting, especially the aforementioned scenes with the countess. The directing from Dreyer is reliably strong, but this is still one of his least engaging and worst-paced movies.
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The technical highlight has to be the cinematography. Karl Freund did such a great job elevating the story at hand by making such a visually dazzling movie that still impresses to this day. The movie is elegantly and modernly shot, especially flourishing at those superb, emotionally rich power-ups. But the characters themselves are rather cold and the movie’s tone not particularly emotional, which negatively impacted audience’s emotional investment in the story. The dialogue is also too melodramatic and the script uneven.
Michael is a German silent melodrama that is renowned for its early treatment of homosexuality, but the overall plot is too melodramatic, the pacing is slow and the tone too cold, so you don’t feel emotionally attached to the characters. This is one of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s least engaging movies. But it still has its strengths – the acting performances are uniformly terrific, the ending is solid and the cinematography is amazing with particularly superb close-ups. It’s an interesting film visually and in its premise, but it felt lacking in plot and pacing.
My Rating – 3.5
This is the second film in my 4our series where I will cover one film per decade that is having an anniversary this year, from 1914 to 2014. Next up is the year 1934 where I chose The Merry Widow. Keep an eye on that one as well.
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