The Student of Prague

Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener, 1913, Prague: a student (Wegener) sells his reflection to a sorcerer (John Gottowt) for gold and a countess, and the reflection begins to live. From a Hanns Heinz Ewers scenario. German cinema inventing the doppelgänger as a special effect: the split screen, the empty mirror, the man who meets himself in the street. It is Expressionism before the word, and Wegener is already the golem he would play two years later. The city is the other character.