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Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses the intertwining of technology and esoteric motifs in 1920s cinema, which reflects notions of the new technology of cinema itself as uncanny. It is argued that this needs to be situated in a longer tradition reaching back to Spiritualist use of photography and other technologies.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on the films Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (Paul Wegener, 1920), Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1922), and Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922), the paper discusses how technology and esoteric motifs are intertwined in 1920s cinema, and how this reflects notions of the new technology of cinema itself as uncanny.

In Der Golem, magical technologies bringing dead matter to life through a secret word (and the use of amulets) parallel how cinema technology creates movement where there is none and can make mortals live perpetually on screen.

Häxan dissects magical technologies like love potions, flying ointments, and spells, taking as its task to explain their supposed effects in a rational manner, whilst paradoxically relishing every opportunity to use the cinematic technology of special effects to draw the audience into a realm where the aesthetic pleasures of uncanny magical spectacle trumps cold rationality.

Nosferatu shows the simultaneously esoterically inclined and scientific professor Bulwer making the invisible – microbes – visible via the technological means of a microscope, in the same manner that cinema can uncannily display things we could not see in the “real” world, such as supernatural occurrences. For example, when the vampire drives his carriage through the forest the cinematic technique of undercranking allows us to see its supernatural speed.

The technological advances of cinema on display in these films – including camera techniques such as double-exposure, undercranking, reverse-motion, and stop-motion animation – are, then, employed to conjure a sense of the uncanny, and marks cinema itself out as uncanny. The paper contends that this mirrors the effects of technological devices, such as cameras, used in Spiritualist contexts in the preceding decades, which were arguable used concurrently to provide “scientific proof” of the supernatural, to debunk it, and to strengthen the uncanny aura of Spiritualist phenomena.