Algol

Short and Sweet

The first German science fiction film featuring aliens! An extraterrestrial from the planet Algol gives the miner Robert Herne the technology of an inexhaustible energy source. Herne seizes this opportunity of a lifetime and gains power and influence worldwide. But the greed for power and the concern for his secret lead to catastrophe…

Inhalt

One day, while working in the mine, he encounters an extraterrestrial from the planet Algol. The alien gives him the secret of the Algol waves and a machine that converts these waves emanating from the Algol star into energy. Herne now holds an inexhaustible energy source in his hands. He sees the opportunity of a lifetime and seizes it, using the machine to supply energy to the entire world. He gains power and influence everywhere. However, his girlfriend Maria leaves him and flees to an agrarian neighboring country that still resists Herne’s ambitions for power. Herne marries the wealthy mine owner Leonore Nissen, with whom he has two children. Twenty years later, Maria’s son Peter Hell approaches Herne to ask him to make the energy of the Algol rays available for the benefit of all humanity. Herne refuses. His daughter Magda follows Peter Hell to the idyllic neighboring country, which, however, is coming under increasing pressure due to Herne’s power politics. Herne’s wife Leonore dies in an accident involving the Algol rays, and his son Reginald plots to kill his father to seize world domination. Herne realizes how much the power of the Algol machine has corrupted him and destroys it.

About:

Werckmeister collaborated here with the architect Walter Reimann, who had designed the sets for Robert Wiene’s silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a year earlier. The film’s outdoor scenes were shot in Potsdam in the Sanssouci Park and at the Orangery Palace. Algol premiered on September 3, 1920, at the Berlin U.T. Kurfürstendamm. Contemporary critics particularly praised Reimann’s decorations and Graatkjaer’s cinematography. However, the film presents a strange mixture of realism and fantasy, with the fantastical being tangible and not arising from cinematic unreality.

Musical Score:

The music is inspired by the film-dramaturgical characteristics of the silent film era, but is a new composition that reflects a dialogue between the sound design elements of the 20th and 21st centuries, in the spirit of the “encounter with the unknown.” Strong sound distortions are also used (extreme pitches or layers of different timbres), and the piano is treated both traditionally and played directly on the strings with hands or various mallets.

Algol

Short and Sweet

Inhalt

About:

Musical Score:

Overview

Actors

New musical arrangement by Wilfried Kaets for cinema organ, simultaneous piano, and prerecorded elements