The Hands of Orlac

This silent movie horror from 1924 inspired several remakes and stars the great Conrad Veidt in the title role of Paul Orlac, a revered concert pianist who – after losing both hands in a train crash – find himself with a newly transplanted pair of hands, namely those of a recently executed murderer…

THE HANDS OF ORLAC (ORLAC’S HÄNDE) once again features the combined talents of director Robert Wiene and its star Conny Veidt four years after their collaboration on the ground-breaking German expressionist horror THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Based on the novel Les Mains d’Orlac by French writer Maurice Renard the plot concerns concert pianist Paul Orlac (C. Veidt) looking forward to being united with his beloved wife Yvonne (Alexandra Sorina) after an exhausting tour. Alas, fate has something altogether different in store! On the journey home the train is derailed and although Orlac’s life can be saved, his hands – his most important ‘tool’ – cannot. After desperate pleas by his devastated wife, the rather dubious Dr. Serra (Hans Homma) agrees to a transplant although he deliberately conceals the horrific truth, namely that Paul Orlac’s ‘new’ hands belonged to a recently executed murderer named Vasseur…

After a slow and gradual recovery the Orlacs should be a happy couple again but instead Paul suffers nightmarish visions while his new pair of hands seem to have a mind of their own. Unable to play the piano or even touch his wife in a tender way his psychological torment is further increased by the discovery of a dagger in his home. When he consults Dr. Serra and informs him of his torment the surgeon reveals the awful truth about Orlac’s hands… Now Paul finds himself plagued even more by nightmarish visions and is convinced that he is driven to evil thoughts and, worse still, possibly evil deeds because the transplanted hands belonged to murderer. In a final act of despair he begs Dr. Serra to remove the hands again and thus putting wrong to right but Serra is certain that a person’s actions are governed by rational and emotional thinking and not by hands.

Months have now passed since the operation and the Orlacs have entered a financial crisis owing to Paul’s inability to play the piano. With creditors breathing down the neck and Yvonne trying her best to conceal from her husband just how serious the situation has become she decides to visit Paul’s extremely wealthy father (Fritz Strassny) to ask for help – however, the embittered man seemingly hates his son (quite why is not revealed) and refuses any help whatsoever. Upon the advice of Regine (Carmen Catellieri), the Orlac’s somewhat oddly behaved housemaid, Yvonne eventually informs her husband of their mounting debts and sends him to beg his father for help though upon his arrival Paul discovers his father murdered with a dagger just like the one he discovered in his own place. Convinced that it must have been him who stabbed his own father, although he has no recollections of the deed, he enters a bar where he meets a man whose face he has seen before. The man introduces himself as the executed murderer Vasseur (Fritz Kortner)… and demands a lot of money once Paul has received his inheritance or else he will tell the police who killed the old man Orlac. Confused and perplexed in equal measure Paul decides to hand himself in – a decision that might just save him from a death sentence… and – as it turns out - a wise decision as is revealed in the finale that has more than one massive twist in store!

This really is Conrad Veidt’s film who demands our attention with every over-the-top gesture and exaggerated mimicry that he was famous for during his silent movie career. Sleepwalking, agonizingly writhing in a trance-like state and hallucinating in a feverish state – everything and everyone around him almost fades into insignificance so overpowering is his portrayal of the tormented Paul Orlac. Even the sets (although also exaggerated) are kept minimal – no expressionistic extravaganza here. The entire world inhabited by Orlac seems as unreal as the scenario of his newly grafted hands – a nightmarish tour-de-force both for the actors and also the viewer. Watching this at times slow-paced and overtly dramatically acted film makes huge demands.

The Hands of Orlac spawned several remakes of which the 1935 film MAD LOVE (a true Grand Guignol horror with a terrific Peter Lorre as the demented Dr. Gogol) is by far the best.
THE HANDS OF ORLAC is presented for the first time on Blu-ray in the UK and offers the following Special Features: film with the original German intertitles with optional English subtitles, alternate presentation of the film courtesy of the F. W. Murnau Foundation with English subtitles, audio commentary, new video essay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson, scene comparisons highlighting the differences between the two versions and collector’s booklet.