Michael (1924) (Kino Classics, F. W. Murnau Stiftung, s/w)

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Based on Herman Bang's 1902 novel of the same name, Dreyer s film is a fascinating fin-de-siècle study of a decadent elderly artist (Benjamin Christensen) driven to despair by his relationship with his young protégé and former model, Michael (Walter Slezak). With suffocatingly sumptuous production design by renowned architect Hugo Häring (his only film work), this Kammerspiel, or intimate theatre , foreshadows Dreyer s magnificent final film Gertrud, by forty years with its Now I may die content, for I have seen great love epigraph.