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There are times when the order in you see something affects the way that you understand them. The 1930s film Mad Love is a remake of the silent film The Hands of Orlac, trimmed down, sexed up, and starring Peter Lorre. I saw that remake before seeing the original, which means that while watching The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände if you prefer the original German), I had to remind myself that what I remember from Mad Love was done her first. The things that felt derivative were, in fact, not so at all.
The basic idea of The Hands of Orlac involves a sort of super-science that smacks of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein novel. Concert pianist Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt, a silent horror staple) is in a terrible train accident and his hands are crushed. Knowing that his hands are his entire life, the doctor transplants new hands onto Orlac. Naturally, those hands didn’t just come from anywhere or anyone. They are the hands of Vasseur, a recently executed murderer.
If you think this means that Orlac’s new hands are possessed by the spirit of the man executed as a murderer, you’ve to the right kind of thinking for a 1920s horror film, because that’s exactly the plot. When Orlac finds out the source of his new hands (never mind the idea that 1920s doctors could legitimately graft new hands onto someone), he becomes obsessed, particularly with the sorts of knives that Vasseur used in his crimes.
To drive home the point that the hands are not actually his, Orlac is no longer able to play the piano. Unable to pursue his career, he and his wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina) soon become destitute. Yvonne goes to Paul’s father (Fritz Strassny) for money, but is refused, and soon after, Paul’s father is found stabbed to death. Naturally, Paul assumes that he—through the influence of his new appendages—is responsible for the death. Even worse for him, as he tries to calm himself down with a drink, he meets a man claiming to be Vasseur (Fritz Kortner). How, when Vasseur was executed? He claims that the assistant who helped with the hand transplant surgery transplanted Vasseur’s head onto a different body—and that if Paul doesn’t pay him, he will turn him in for the murder of his father.
The idea of this is a lot of fun. There are, of course, plot holes big enough to drive a crashed train through. This doesn’t even have to touch on the idea of hand transplants or the idea of a transplanted head. Soon after his bandages are removed, Orlac sits down at the piano and discovers that he can no longer play. This is seen as a devastating moment in the film, despite the fact that, even if his hands hadn’t been transplanted, they were damaged in a train accident. The film seems to think that there’s no such thing as recovery time—that he should be able to use his hands perfectly (since he evidently can in every other way) the moment the bandages are off.
That said, if you don’t think about what is happening too hard, there’s a lot here to enjoy. This is overacted in the way that most silent films are. Since the only soundtrack we’re going to have is an orchestral one and the only dialog comes in the intertitles, the reactions to everything are melodramatic in the extreme. That’s what you sign up for with silent films in general. Veidt was a master of this, and while Lon Chaney is probably better remembered thanks to his creature creations, Veidt was no less important for the early horror genre—this, The Man Who Laughed, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari absolutely put him in the pantheon. He’s the reason to watch this, melodrama and all.
The biggest downside to this is the length. Admittedly, 98 minutes is not a terrible length for a film, but it is somewhat long for a horror movie in general. It’s also the case that Mad Love told this take in less than 70 minutes, a full half hour faster than this original version. Paring things down isn’t always for the best, but in this case, there’s a lot of fat that can be (and eventually was) trimmed. This could come in at 80-85 minutes and essentially tell the same story. Such is the cost of the melodrama. How slow is it? The murder doesn’t happen in the first hour of the film.
The Hands of Orlac isn’t going to be anybody’s favorite film, but it’s a dandy one and fun for what it is. Watch it for Veidt, who is by far the class of the production.
Why to watch The Hands of Orlac: It’s one of the first films to really embrace mad science in the horror genre.
Why not to watch: Mad Love tells the same story in just over an hour.