DAS UNHEIMLICHE HAUS
DE 1916. D: Richard Oswald. Cast: Werner Krauß, Alfred Breiderhoff, Lupu Pick. Silent. 56 mins.
DAS UNHEIMLICHE HAUS, a “mystery” directed and produced by Richard Oswald in 1916, was his third directorial effort with his own company.
A young unemployed man gets a job as a private secretary by chance. Good salary, first-class apartment – but things do not go well in his new domicile. There are notes warning him, a beautiful woman appears in the mirror, valuable documents disappear from the firmly locked safe, in short: one excitement follows another. The young man is faced with a mystery – until a detective solves the “case”: in his inexperience, the private secretary has become the victim of some cunning crooks.
The press and movie audiences were enthusiastic about this story of deception set in a haunted house, a feast for the eyes with expressionistic settings, designed as a puzzle with doppelganger motifs.
