Genuine

Same director, same writer, same cameraman, but... Rushed out six months after The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Genuine merely goes to prove how dependent the earlier film was on its cast and designers: painted cinema animated by the extraordinary acting skills of Veidt and Krauss. Here, with rotten actors mugging away in César Klein sets which look like recycled leftovers from a Christmas pantomime, Caligari-ism is reduced to grisly travesty. The Pygmalion plot concerns a painter whose creation comes alive, turns nasty after being sold in a slave market, and gloatingly drives her admirers to murder and suicide. Playing this supervamp in unfortunate costumes which at one point lend her a passing resemblance to the Tinman of Oz, Fern Andra leers and squirms like a demented Theda Bara.