A Film Canon

The Student Of Prague makes the foundational gesture of translating the subconscious, or 'double', into cinematic terms, in the form of a young man's satanically enlivened reflection. Not only does this allow Rye and Wegener to display considerable technical ingenuity, choreographing mirrors, lights, camera angles and superimposition, but it imbues the protagonist with an eery, nascent vampirism, suffusing everything that he encounters with the coldness of the undead. In this way, the directors extrapolate an entire aesthetic from his dilemma, foregrounding frames, reflective surfaces and symmetrical compositions. The result is a palpable flatness, which, supervening mere theatrical residues, culminates at those moments when characters morph in and out of their backgrounds, creating an affronting conflation of two- and three-dimensionality that suggests some profound continuity between the cinematic screen and the mirrors that it portrays. This uncanniness is perfectly suited to the silent medium, if only because the protagonist's fragmentation creates a linguistic and communicative breakdown, clearest when he makes a solemn vow only to discover that his double has pre-emptively broken it.