Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Genuine (1920)

Genuine is a priestess once honored by her tribe, now captured and sold as a slave to a rich but dotty old European man, Curzon. In his village house, he cages Genuine who yearns for freedom and also for revenge on her captors.

Curzon is visited daily by his barber, Guyard. Filling in for the barber one day is his young nephew Florian. Genuine escapes her cage to discover Florian shaving her captor. She convinces Florian to murder the old man with the razor, then encourages Florian to kill himself. Instead, wracked with guilt he is bed-ridden.

When Curzon’s grandson Percy arrives, Genuine seeks to control and destroy him as well, but appears to fall in love with him instead. Meanwhile, the barber is stirring up village revolt against the house of Genuine. The mob bursts into the house, and Florian reaches her first and kills her.

As is implied by the opening scene, the whole tale is nothing more than the dreamy musings of Percy the artist, influenced by his favorite story and a painting of Genuine.

Approximately four reels of the film have survived, and viewings today are compromised by obvious continuity holes in the narrative. But enough of the film remains to give us a sense of the scope of the Carl Mayer story.

Wiene directs the film as a stylized ballet of death. Large gestures and dance poses are the order of the day. Fern Andra plays the frizzy-haired vamp, all flashing teeth and heaving breast. Hans Heinrich von Twardowski is Florian, her helpless puppet with an amusing hairstyle.

The set and costume design, largely by César Klein, is a standout feature of the film. The settings continue the Expressionist designs that were established in Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The settings are more detailed than the previous film but continue rely on its Expressionist features to denote a dream world.

The surviving footage from Genuine was restored in 1996 by the Munich Filmmuseum.

— Carl Bennett

This DVD edition is a 44-minute condensation of Caligari director Robert Wiene’s Genuine (1920). The source print for the full-frame video transfer was a 35mm preservation print from the Raymond Rohauer collection, now held by the Cohen Media Group, which is of good to very-good quality. The print often is contrasty, with bright highlights that often result in lost facial details and sections of overexposed footage, and a few moments of exposure fluctuations. The print is relatively clean, with occasional speckling, dust, emulsion damage, and rough splices.

The film is presented with an electric guitar music score composed and performed by Larry Marotta, which does a passable job of accompanying the film in its unusually spare and quiet way.

Short of the release of the 1996 restoration of Genuine on home video, this is the most-complete edition of the film available in Region 1. We recommend this edition for its lengthy, although incomplete, presentation.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 1 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This early DVD edition includes two windowboxed black & white excerpts from Genuine — Percy’s sleep with Genuine’s animation out of the painting from the beginning of the film and Genuine’s seduction of Florian in the expressionist bedroom set (right).

The excerpt is accompanied by a piano score performed by Robert Israel.

The excerpts are far too brief for viewers to gain a sense of the story and thus too brief to recommend this edition.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

As above, the excerpts are far too brief for viewers to gain a sense of the story and thus too brief to recommend this edition.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print of the condensed version of the film, which has more than the usual amount of dust, speckling, schmutz, vertical scratches, and other print flaws. Hightlights are blasted out to a detailless white.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

Supplemental material includes Webber and Sibley’s version of The Fall of the House of Usher (1928).

Not recommended, but that should be no surprise.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a 16mm reduction print (as is evident from the publisher-provided still frame).

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

Not recommended. Don’t do it.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

Other GERMAN FILMS of the silent era available on home video.