Different From the Others (1919, dir. Richard Oswald)

Different From the Others, initially released in Germany in 1919, may be the first feature-length film to address homosexuality.The silent film stars Conrad Veidt as Paul Korner, a renowned concert pianist & closeted homosexual who falls in love with his student (Fritz Schultz). Their secret romance is discovered by a blackmailer who threatens to expose Korner as a gay man, which in 1920’s Germany meant public disgrace & possible incarceration. The story ends tragically with Korner being shunned by society & driven to suicide.

Different From the Others had a specific gay rights law reform agenda - director Richard Oswald & co-screenwriter Magnus Hirschfeld, a prominent sexologist/gay rights activist, made the film as a response to Germany’s Paragraph 175, a law which made homosexual acts between men a crime (and which also had the effect of making gays vulnerable to blackmail).

Different From the Others was banned shortly after its release and prints of the film were among the “decadent” artworks burned by the Nazis after they came to power in the 1930s. As a result, only fragments of the film remain available for viewing.

Conrad Veidt, 1929. Photo by Edward Steichen.

“I had been longing to get my hands on Conrad Veidt ever since he came to England. He was such an overpowering personality that directors were afraid of him. He was tall, over six foot two inches, lean and bony. He had magnetic blue eyes, black hair and eyebrows, beautiful, strong hands, and a mouth with sardonic, not to say satanic, lines to it. He used an eye-glass. He was the show-off of all time. In private life, as I was to discover, he was the sweetest and most easy of human beings.

…Conrad Veidt was seated alone at a table by the window drinking coffee when Emeric [Pressburger] and I arrived at the studio restaurant. Emeric and I exchanged a glance. This magnificent animal was reserved for us. I went over and stood at his table. He looked up and I got the full impact of those deep blue eyes under black brows.

I said: ‘Mr Veidt, my name is Michael Powell. Alexander Korda has told me that we are to work together on ‘The Spy in Black’.’

He said: ‘Ye-e-e-s.’ Pumas purr like that.”

-Michael Powell on meeting Veidt (excerpted from Powell’s A Life in Movies: An Autobiography)

Conrad Veidt & Lil Dagover in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene) (via) (online here)

Conrad Veidt & Lil Dagover in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene) 

“I realized that the sets had to deviate completely in form and design from the usual naturalistic style. The images had to be like visionary nightmares - averted from reality, they had to acquire fantastic graphic form. No real structural elements could be recognizable…[Caligari co-set designer Walter] Reimann, who applied the Expressionist painting technique in his designs, succeeded with his idea that this subject had to have Expressionist sets, costumes, actors, and direction…

Furthermore, I would like to say that sets should remain as background in front of which the action takes place, reflecting it and supporting the actor, who is after all supposed to have the major supporting role. In Caligari, this relationship is reversed. In this single special case I will concede that the sets became the major means of expression.”

-Caligari co-set designer, Hermann Warm, Caligari & Caligarismus

Conrad Veidt, in an early version of his make-up for his character in The Man Who Laughs (1928), who later served as the inspiration for The Joker. The permanent grin was achieved by drawing back the corners of his mouth with hooks attached to the sides of his dentures. 

“Paul Leni, who made Waxworks, the cause of my coming to Hollywood, was the director of my picture, The Man Who Laughs, and we were all very happy about it. It was the Victor Hugo story of the man whose lips were cut away so that he has to go through life forever smiling, all his teeth showing in a horrible grinning grimace.  It took some months to make.  Sometimes I felt The Man Who Laughs never wanted to smile again.”

-Veidt (1934), quoted in American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema

Conrad Veidt & Lil Dagover in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene)

“The scenes in the steep, dark, crooked alleyways belonged to him. Even when he was not in front of the camera, he would prowl around the studio and startle us.”

-Lil Dagover on Veidt

(via)

Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924, dir. Robert Wiene) 

(via)

Conrad Veidt & Lil Dagover in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)

“I realized that the sets had to deviate completely in form and design from the usual naturalistic style. The images had to be like visionary nightmares - averted from reality, they had to acquire fantastic graphic form. No real structural elements could be recognizable…[Co-art director Walter] Reimann, who applied the Expressionist painting technique in his designs, succeeded with his idea that this subject had to have Expressionist sets, costumes, actors, and direction…

Furthermore, I would like to say that sets should remain as background in front of which the action takes place, reflecting it and supporting the actor, who is after all supposed to have the major supporting role. In Caligari, this relationship is reversed. In this single special case I will concede that the sets became the major means of expression.”

-Caligari art director, Hermann Warm (Caligari & Caligarismus)

Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)