Prague student (film, 1913)

Student Balduin, languishing from lack of money, agrees to sign a suspicious contract with the mysterious Italian Scapinelli, which guarantees Baldwin wealth and marriage to Margit, the daughter of the count . Instead, Scapinelli will take what he wants from the student's room. Scapinelli takes with him the reflection of the student in the mirror . Balduin believes that the deal was a success and begins to care for Margit. However, Lidushka, who is in love with a student , tells Margit and her fiancé , Baron Valdis, about him. Baron insults Balduin and he, being the best swordsman of Prague , challenges him to a duel with sabers . Father Margit, not wanting the death of the Baron, comes to the student and asks him to save Valdis’s life. Balduin generously agrees and goes to a duel . However, on the way, his stroller gets stuck, and when the student finally arrives at the place of the duel, he meets his twin with a bloodied saber in his hands - the baron has already been killed. Then the double follows Baldwin everywhere, making his life unbearable. A desperate student shoots a double, but dies himself, since in fact they are inseparable from a double. Scapinelli over his body breaks the contract.

• Paul Wegener - Balduin
• Yon Gottout - Scapinelli
• Grete Berger - Margit
• Lida Salmonova - Lidushka
• Fritz Weidemann - Baron Valdis
• Lothar Corner - Father Margit

For the production of this film was allocated 30,000 marks . The shooting took place in the most picturesque corners of Prague - on the Alchemists Street and Mala Strana , in the Belvedere Castle . Pavilion scenery created by Robert Dietrich and Kurt Richter . The film operator is Guido Seeber (Zeber) . In "Prague Student", he widely used the techniques of shooting with porridge and double exposure. ^[2]

Special music for the premiere of the film was written by Josef Weiss , who performed it on the piano during the premiere on August 22, 1913. One hundred years later, in 2013, the premiere of the restored version of the film was accompanied by the same music (orchestrated by composer Bernd Tevez, conductor ) ^[3] .

"Prague Student" for the first time approved the topic on the screen, which turned into the obsession of German cinema - the theme of deep, mixed with the fear of self-knowledge. Rejecting Baldwin from his mirror counterpart and pushing them together, Wegener's film symbolically captured a special kind of split personality. Instead of ignoring the dualism of his own soul, Baldwin, filled with fear, realizes that he is at the mercy of a formidable adversary who is his second ego.

- Siegfried Krakauer ^[4]

The style of shooting, judging by the press reviews of that time, is very interesting and resembles the style of the Spanish artist Ribera .

- Georges Sadoul ^[2]

The “Student from Prague”, in which a special combination of naturalness and artificiality, reality with decorativeness, occurred, was extremely interesting for me.

- Paul Wegener

The film script was written by Hans Heins Evers , combining the motives of the story by Edgar Poe “ William Wilson ” and the poetry of Alfred de Musset . In addition, the film absorbed the motives of the old German legends about doubles, some influenced by the "Extraordinary Adventure of Peter Schlemill" Shamisso and "Adventures on the Eve of the New Year" by Hoffmann .

• Prague student (film, 1926)
• Alraune (film, 1928)
• Golem (film, 1915)