The Golem: How He Came Into the World

Paul Wegener had already played the clay servant twice. In 1920, with Carl Boese, he went back to Rabbi Loew's Prague and made the version that survives. Hans Poelzig built the ghetto as a set of leaning houses that look inhabited from the inside. The rabbi shapes a protector for a community under an emperor's decree. Once the word is in its mouth, the creature does not stay a tool. Wegener, huge and almost still, is the Golem. Watch the gate, not the magic.