My obsession with Conrad Veidt continues

In an attempt to deny the fact that school has started again I have provided myself with a pointless obsession, the films of Conrad Veidt. Between those crazy kids at netflix and the used VHS tapes to be found on amazon, I am racking up quite a number of wasted hours watching movies no one even seems to know exist. So far, since The Man Who Laughs, I have seen Different From the Others (Germany, 1919) and All Through the Night (US, 1941). There's a contrast for you! Different From the Others is about a gay concert violinist Paul Korner (Conrad Veidt) who falls in love with one of his students and is blackmailed by a predatory criminal (Reinhold Schunzel) who threatens to expose him to the police. (Under Paragraph 175, Germany's anti-gay legislation, homosexuals could by imprisoned for up to five years) A sort of sex hygiene film, the well meant but didactic lecturing of "Dr. Magnus Hirschfield of the Institute for Sexual Science" tends to interfere with the storyline, being, as it is, only halfheartedly integrated into the plot. It's an interesting film, however, primarily because it reflects that brief moment of openness in Weimar Germany before Hitler came to power. The acting tends to be rather melodramatic by today's standards (Veidt spends rather a lot of time looking woebegone and lost with a hand to his head) and the makeup is a scream (I think we are supposed to intuit from the dark circles around his eyes that Reinhold Schunzel is the bad guy) but there are aspects of the film which make it worth seeing. Censored by the German government and later burned by the Nazis as "degenerate," a print of the film was found in the Ukraine and restored by the Filmmuseum Munchen. Missing sections of the film have been replaced with explanatory intertitles and still photos.

Tomorrow: All Through the Night