Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

student, Balduin (Paul Wegener himself), who sells his mirror image for the love of a
beautiful countess (Grete Berger) to a sorcerer, Dr. Scapinelli (John Gottowt), who turns
that image into the young man’s evil, murderous second self. The Student of Prague and
the topic of “double” has always been a particularly fascinating motif for cinema. 28
The techniques of visual representation employed in this film are good examples of
Expressionism’s ability to generate Stimmung, 29 to reflect the instability and ambiguity of
individual subjectivity or identity, which find an echo in film noir. Through the use of the
mask and double exposure of the film strip, the directors of this film developed a method
for enhancing visual perception in cinema or, rather, one can say that with The Student of
Prague they invented a new way of suggesting identity through photographic technique.
The trope would in fact be used in noir productions, such as Hitchcock’s Shadow of a
Doubt in which the British director introduces the sweet-natured young Charlie (Teresa
Wright) who also has a “second-self” that digs into the darker areas of her mind making
her tough-minded enough to contemplate the elimination of her sanguinary Uncle Charlie
(Joseph Cotten). Their common name cements their underlying similarity.
According to Thomas Elsaesser, the German influence is also observed in film noir
at the level of the so-called Straßenfilme (street films) in which a cultural German form is
replicated in the mean streets of Chicago, New York, San Francisco or Los Angeles. In
fact, noir productions abound in the topos of the street, especially those of the cities (and
everything that is associated with them: sidewalks, bridges, subway tunnels, docks and
piers, etc) and in combination with the lighting effects, they work as symbols for and major
elements in the plot or in characterising the noir inhabitants’ inner lives. Initially, the street
films were meant to serve a specific social purpose in the German film industry. German
city dwellers were examples of Aufklärungsfilme with the purpose of enlightening the
public in general as to the potential dangers of the street. Presumably concerned with social
problems arising from poverty and unemployment, the Straßenfilm is at the same time
fascinated by the underworld and illicit sexuality, recurrently connecting female sexuality
with criminality. Paul Monaco points out that the street in German productions of the
period was represented as “dark, gloomy and dangerous (…) the site of crimes, where low
life flourishes. More specifically, the street is the place in which order breaks down unless
28
Up to this day in fact, if one takes David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers (1988) or John Woo’s Face/Off
(1997) as a more recent example.
29
The emanation or generated mood evoked from an object filmed.
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