The Student of Prague

Henrik Galeen's stylish remake of the 1913 original — one of German cinema's foundational horror texts and the film that established the Faustian bargain as a staple of the genre. A penniless university student, desperate for money to woo a beautiful countess, sells his mirror reflection to a sinister sorcerer. But a reflection, it turns out, is not so easily surrendered: the doppelgänger takes on a life of its own, committing the crimes and cruelties that the student only imagines. Conrad Veidt, in full Expressionist mode, brings his characteristic tormented intensity to the role, and Galeen's visual imagination fills the screen with eerie doubles, trick photography, and Gothic atmosphere. The film's exploration of split identity and the shadow self anticipates everything from Hitchcock's Psycho to Fight Club.