Opera Philadelphia is serving up scares this week as Halloween approaches.
From Monday, Oct. 27 through Friday, Oct. 31, a week-long series of classic silent horror films will be presented in the Wanamaker Building’s Greek Hall accompanied by live organ music. The series, curated by acclaimed former film critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Carrie Rickey, is a part of the Opera’s PIPE UP! programming that takes place in the iconic, and now vacant, department store space.
Metro has your guide to Opera Philadelphia’s haunting week ahead.
Directed by F.W. Murnau; featuring Ian Fraser on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ. Screening is Monday, Oct. 27.
Murnau’s take on Germany’s national legend simplifies its telling as a battle between shadow and light (the basic elements of film). Mephistopheles (Emil Jannings) bets an Archangel (Werner Fuetterer) that he can corrupt a righteous man. When the devil approaches a disillusioned elder, Faust (Gosta Ekman), the alchemist is desperate to save his village from the plague. Thanks to Mephisto, Faust does. As a reward, Mephisto returns Faust to his virile youth. The alchemist fails to recognize this as a bait-and-switch and becomes incrementally corrupted. Can his soul be saved?
Directed by Victor Sjostrom; featuring Don Kinnier on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ. Screening is Tuesday, Oct. 28
Sjostrom, who directed and stars in the ghostly adaptation of the Swedish folk tale by Selma Lagerlof (the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature), is an alcoholic who dies at midnight on New Year’s Eve. According to the legend, his retribution is to serve as the doomed coachman who rounds up the dead — a task that gives him ample time for reflection and atonement. The film employs flashbacks within flashbacks and sophisticated double-exposures for its special effects inspired by Ingmar Bergman, who paid tribute to it in 'The Seventh Seal' and 'Wild Strawberries'.
Directed by F.W. Murnau; featuring Peter Richard Conte on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ. Screening is Wednesday, Oct. 29
Most of the filmmakers involved in this unauthorized version of Bram Stoker’s 'Dracula' were World War I veterans, including producer and art director Albin Grau who observed that the war was “unleashed...like a cosmic vampire to drink the blood of millions and millions of men.” But viewers might recognize other metaphors in the film, one of the first vampire movies. Stoker’s original story suggested that vampirism is communicable, like syphilis and tuberculosis. Max Shreck plays Count Orlok, a bloodsucker with sharp fangs, menacing talons and creepy rodent gait. He can attack, dismember, or devour with various parts of his grotesque form.
Directed by Robert Wiene; featuring Peter Richard Conte on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ. Screening is Thursday, Oct. 30.
Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) is a hypnotist, and his sidekick, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), is a sleepwalker. Their appearance at a rural carnival coincides with a string of murders. 'Caligari' was conceived as an artistic response to the horrors of World War I and inspired by German Expressionism. Wiene and his collaborators set the characters in a fearful mindscape where everything natural is threatening, everything man-made is unstable, and looming shadows suggest hostile forces. Like many silent horror films, the movie’s visuals were an influence on film noir.
Directed by Benjamin Christensen; featuring Don Kinnier on the Greek Hall Wurlitzer Organ. Screening is Friday, Oct. 31.
Pronounced as “Hex-on,” this Swedish/Danish production announced itself as a history of witchcraft, implying that many strange acts of medieval sorceresses were comparable to what Freud might have diagnosed as female hysteria. Christensen cast himself as Satan in the hybrid documentary/occult fantasy that Variety declared “unfit for public exhibition” — while also lauding its innovative camerawork and special effects. Imagine walking into a large-scale Hieronymous Bosch painting, both grotesque and fantastic, that boasted hand-tinted sequences and sympathy for the devil.
Screenings are free with advance registration required at operaphila.org/pipe-up. Audiences should enter through the Juniper Street door. More information and a complete schedule is available online.
