Film and theatre
Before it became entertainment, theatre was ritual: in medieval churches as in Japanese temples, the stage was the place where angels, demons and spirits of the dead took bodily form before the community. This section follows the thread that links those ancient apparitions to modern illusions. It begins with medieval religious drama and Noh theatre, passes through the masks of the commedia dell'arte, the magicians of Shakespeare and Goethe and the shadows of Java and Montmartre, and arrives at the magic lantern, Robertson's phantasmagoria and Pepper's ghost. Along the way we meet conjurors such as Robert-Houdin and Houdini, the thrills of the Grand Guignol and Pirandello's last myth. Finally comes silent cinema, from Méliès to Murnau, from Caligari to Metropolis, which inherited this legacy and turned the dark auditorium into a new space of wonder. Each article tells the history, sources and meanings, carefully distinguishing documented facts from legends.
Georges Méliès: the conjuror who turned cinema into magic
From illusionist at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin to pioneer of special effects: how Georges Méliès made the cinematograph a new instrument of wonder.
3 min readV.02The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and the expressionist nightmare
Painted sets, somnambulism and madness: the history and meaning of Robert Wiene's 1920 film, the manifesto of German expressionist cinema.
3 min readV.03Murnau's Nosferatu: a symphony of horror between occultism and plague
F. W. Murnau's 1922 film, the occultist Albin Grau and the lawsuit by Stoker's heirs: the story of the most unsettling vampire of silent cinema.
3 min readV.04Murnau's Faust (1926): light, darkness and the pact with the devil
Emil Jannings as Mephisto, the demon's wings over the town and the sources of the myth: an analysis of the Faust F. W. Murnau made for UFA in 1926.
3 min readV.05Benjamin Christensen's Häxan: witchcraft through the centuries
The 1922 Danish-Swedish essay film that reconstructed the witch hunts through engravings, the Malleus Maleficarum and psychiatry: a unique work.
3 min readV.06Paul Wegener's Golem: the Prague legend on screen
From Rabbi Loew to the clay creature brought to life by a word: how Wegener's 1920 film carried one of Europe's oldest legends into the cinema.
3 min readV.07Metropolis as myth: Babel, the machine and the artificial woman
The Tower of Babel, Moloch, alchemy and the pentagram in Rotwang's house: the mythical and esoteric symbols of Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece.
2 min readV.08Prospero in The Tempest: the magician who gives up his books
Ariel, Caliban and the broken staff: the magician of The Tempest between Renaissance magic, John Dee and theatre as a spell that bids its audience farewell.
2 min readV.09Mephistopheles on stage: from Marlowe to Goethe, from Gounod to Boito
The tempting devil on stage: how Mephistopheles passed from the 1587 chapbook to Elizabethan drama, Goethe's Faust and nineteenth-century opera.
3 min readV.10Commedia dell'arte masks: Harlequin, Pulcinella and their ancestors
From the Padua contract of 1545 to the Gelosi company: the history of the Italian masks and the folkloric, infernal roots of Harlequin and Pulcinella.
3 min readV.11The magic lantern: devils, skeletons and projected wonders
From Huygens and Kircher to the travelling lanternists: the history of the magic lantern, the 17th-century device that projected images like apparitions.
3 min readV.12Robertson's phantasmagoria: spectres and apparitions in the Paris of 1798
Étienne-Gaspard Robertson, the fantoscope and the Capuchin convent: how a projection show brought ghosts and spectres into revolutionary Paris.
3 min readV.13Shadow theatre: from the wayang of Java to the cabaret of Montmartre
Leather figures, oil lamps and summoned souls: the history of shadow theatre in China, Java and Turkey and in the Paris of the Chat Noir cabaret.
3 min readV.14Harry Houdini: the king of escapes against the fake mediums
From Budapest to stages around the world: Houdini, his impossible escapes, his friendship with Conan Doyle and his battle against fraudulent mediums.
3 min readV.15Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the watchmaker who invented the modern magician
Automata, second sight and the 1856 mission to Algeria: the life of the conjuror from Blois who brought magic from the fairground into elegant salons.
2 min readV.16The Grand Guignol theatre: fear, hypnosis and madness in Pigalle
A deconsecrated chapel, André de Lorde and the actress Maxa: the history of the Paris theatre of horror that staged terror from 1897 to 1962.
2 min readV.17Pirandello's The Mountain Giants: the magician Cotrone
Pirandello's last, unfinished myth: Cotrone, the villa of the Scalogna and the border between theatre and magic in the play staged at Boboli in 1937.
3 min readV.18Noh theatre and the spirits: ghosts, masks and Japanese dreams
Kan'ami, Zeami and mugen noh: how classical Japanese theatre staged ghosts, possessing spirits and demons with wooden masks, chant and music.
3 min readV.19Medieval religious drama: angels, devils and the mouth of hell
From the Quem quaeritis to the French mystery plays and Brunelleschi's machines: how the Middle Ages staged the sacred, the miracle and the devil.
3 min readV.20Pepper's ghost: the glass spectre of the nineteenth century
Henry Dircks, John Henry Pepper and Christmas 1862: how a sheet of glass brought ghosts onto the Victorian stage, in the footsteps of Della Porta.
3 min read