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Exhibitor's Herald during 1921 praised the film "The Golem" for its "ingenious handling of the masses engaged in many of the scenes, persons numbering in the thousands", claiming, "the point of direction and composition" was a "splendid piece of work". It also added, "The lighting, photography and general detail is lacking, and the characters, many of them, are over done in make-up."
Author Lotte H. Eisner, in his volume "The Haunted Screen", explains the contemporaneity of "The Golem", "Paul Wegener always denied having had the intention of making an Expressionist film with his Golem. But that has not stopped people from calling it Expressionist." Seeing the film as an import, or "art film"- an idea particularly important to Scandinavian film companies during that decade almost up to the departure of Charles Magnusson from Swedish Biograph, and therefore an idea frequent in the extratextural film discourse of film critics and reviewers- Picture Play Magazine during 1921 also compared "THe Golem" to "Doctor Caligari" and the theater of Max Reinhardt in its having translated to the screen "the immense imaginative possiblities of the futurist school of dramatic expression". That year periodical highlighted the film with a two page photo dislay, each photo taking up half a page, explaining that "sensational success is predicted" while introducing the "foeign made film", "one of the most important European productions". The photocaptions pointed out the films "curious haunting beauty." The British peridical Pictures and Picturegoer during 1923did in fact approach genre theory by combining then recent early examples of the mystery thriller, including John BArrymore in his appearance in Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, in the article Macabre Movies, distinguishing "The Golem" as a "picturization of a mediaeval legend" but comparing its "Cubist scenery" with that of "Doctor Caligari" with its half-lit ineteriors.
Wegner had given a lecture during 1916 entitled "The Artistic Possibilities of Cinema" as a proponent of "cinematic lyricism" where lines would appear then change as moving surfaces.
Motion Picture World, rather, during 1921 chose to begin with the film's "subject matter" and its "preposteruous story". "He has grasped the most essential fact about his duties as a director- to tell a story in action and develop characters at the same time. Every foot of film advances the progress of the story. There are no cutbacks, no halts for bits of local color or parenthetical description of any of the characters. He knows the meaning of the word drama."
the oeriodical Motion Picture News during 1921 noted, "Wegner deserves double credit for he also plays the tile role and makes it an unforgettable figure." Silent Film Silent Film Lon Chaney
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Directed by D. W. Griffith, the film features the first photoplay written by Anita Loos. Subsequently, Loos was to write the scenarios and screenplays to films which starred Douglas Fairbanks. The New Movie Magazine during 1930 nostalgically related that the film had also introduced Lionel Barrymore to the screen and that Loos, who had only been sixteen years old at the time of its release, had received “the large sum of $15” for writing the film. Author Iris Barry explains that it was not only Anita Loos that was behind the scenes, “At this period, ideas for films were commonly bought from outsiders and members of the company alike. Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett and others contributed many of the plots Griffith used.” This in part can be taken into consideration when apply Autuer theory to the abrupt difference between the scriptwriting methods of D.W Griffith and Thomas Ince and when reconsidering autuer theory when comparing the directorial efforts of D.W. Griffith and Ingmar Bergman in the mileau of a theatrical acting company.
In the volume D.W. Griffith, American Filmaker, Iris Barry writes that 1912 was a year that D.W. Griffith was an innovator not only in the depiction of social themes and social problems but also in film technique and the uses of the camera as well as the legnthening of the onscreen running time of the two reeler. Barry describes the filmmaking involved in “The New York Hat” (one reel),The film uses cut-backs, close-shots and sharply edited scenes with ease and mastery: close-ups made acting a matter of expresssion and minute guestures instead of the stereotyped guestures of the popular theater.” Peter Cowie, in his volume Eighty Years of Cinema, writes, "Close ups already predominate this film."
In the short scenes of Griffith’s film, Mary Pickford is shown to the right of the screen in medium close shot, trying on a hat, her hands and elbows shown in the frame. Griffith cuts on the action of her leaving the frame to exterior shots. In a later scene, Griffith positions her to the left of the screen, and, his already having shown time having elapsed between the two scenes, then brings the action back to the right of the screen frame. As an early reversal of screen direction, or screen positioning, there is the use of screen editing in between the complimentary positions of showing her in the same interior. During the film the actress is, almost referentially, often kept in profile, facing to the right of the screen's frame. Although Griffith may have been still developing editing techniques, it has been noted that the acting style in the film can be seen as an example of a more naturalistic and less histrionic acting style than that of other contemporary films.
Silent Film D.W. Griffith Biograph Film Company
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