Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: THE GOLEM (1920) -- request for info --

This is topic THE GOLEM (1920) -- request for info -- in forum Feature Info, Trailer Attachments & REAL Credit Offsets at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-17-2007, 03:07 AM:

Anyone run this within the last few years? The only contact I can find for it is Transit Films in Germany and from what I understand, their version has German intertitles. Surely this classic must have a US distributor and there's got to be a print with English intertitles somewhere over here....he says as hope springs eternal.

If Transit ever gets back to me, I guess they will know of a US contact, but I just thought I'd throw it out here in case anyone has run it.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-17-2007, 05:30 AM:

16mm prints are available through the Goethe Institute; ours had English intertitles and was in good shape (this was a few years ago)

I don't believe that they had it in 35mm.

Boring film.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 01-17-2007, 02:47 PM:

i like this film.

it's some time since i saw it so i don't remember the gauge or the language of the intertitles. but one thing you can do even if they are in german is to have someone read a translation live. the pacific film archive has done this with many films. it's not perfect, but it's passable.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-17-2007, 04:44 PM:

Not wanting to descend into 'chit chat', but my memory of the film is that it's like a lot of German 1920s stuff - keeps intertitles to a minimum. At one film society I was involved in we showed Die Niebelungen part 2 and Mennschen am Sonntag with untranslated intertitles, and got round it by giving each customer a photocopied handout containing a 500-1k word plot summary of the film, with translations of key dialogue intertitles and an explanation as to where they come. When we handed them out, we said 'You'll probably want to read this before the film starts' or words to that effect, and followed that up with an announcement from the stage stating that the intertitles were German only, but that if non-German speakers read the handout, they shouldn't have any problem following the film. We didn't get any complaints. The German 1920s filmmakers (and to a lesser extent, French and British ones - you could lose the intertitles on most silent Hitchcocks entirely and still have a fair idea of what's going on) told their stories really in pictures alone: where intertitles do exist, most of them aren't essential for following the plot.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-18-2007, 04:31 AM:

I will probably go with the 35mm print with German over a 16mm print with English. We have a system that uses Powerpoint & an LCD video projector to project supertitles for live opera; worst comes to worse, I can use this to project the English titling on the screen along with the German. Luckily this will only need to play for two days. We are commissioning the BQE Ensemble to compose a score for the film and so we will definately be limited as to how many screenings we can afford to pay the orchestra.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 01-18-2007, 07:08 AM:

It would bw worth trying to check the quality and condition of any available prints; a good 16mm one could be better than a bad 35mm one.

The full title of the film is: Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam

For home viewing there used to be a download of the film available; I've got a copy and the quality wasn't too bad. I'm pretty sure it came from www.archive.org, but when I looked there yesterday I couldn't find it. It's available on DVD now, so maybe they had to remove the download.