Robert Wiene

Robert Wiene was born on April 24, 1873 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany. He was a writer and director, known for The Cabinet of Dr.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 1202-1206. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

Although one German obituary identified him as a Jew, he had identified himself as a Protestant in Viennese university and residence records from 1894 through 1925.

His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also started to act, at first in small parts on stage.

His first involvement with film was in 1912, writing and (possibly) directing Die Waffen der Jugend.

Former stage actor, writer and director, graduate of Vienna University, who first worked in films from 1913. Had a reputation as a director of melodramas, before his making his most famous picture, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Full Sound (1920), which is considered one of the best examples of German expressionism. His other noteworthy effort in the same vein was the horror film The Hands of Orlac (1924). Wiene escaped Nazi persecution by seeking exile in France, where he died in 1938.

Crime, madness, identity, and contrasts between Western and Eastern cultures were themes that occupied him throughout his career; he tackled all of them in "Fear" (1917) and "The Doll Maker of Kiang-Ning" (1923).

In 1919 Wiene helped create, with Heinz Hanus in Vienna, a professional association of film directors, which he managed until 1922. That same year he began a production for Erich Pommers of Berlin's Decla Film on the project The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). Acknowledged by contemporary critics as the epitome and starting point of the expressionist films, the picture, for which Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz supplied the film script and Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig the set design, marked a turning point in Wiene's career. Werner Krauss played the role of the mad physician Dr. Caligari, who puts on fair-ground shows by day and uses his somnambulistic slave Cesare (played by Conrad Veidt) to commit murder for his master by night. The film was an extraordinary public success, both in Germany and abroad.

Caligari Full Sound (1920), L'autre (1930) and The Hands of Orlac (1924).

Wiene had adapted from a novel and directed the 1923 silent religious film I.N.R.I., depicting in a conventional way the events preceding the crucifixion of Christ.

In 1924 Wiene moved to Austria in order to take over direction of the Wiener Pan-Film company, as well as to work with the author Ludwig Nerz who was under contract there.

Wiene never returned to Germany, although the reason is unclear. He had no connection to left-wing politics, and had collaborated with Nazi favorite Richard Strauss on "Der Rosenkavalier" in 1925.

Four months after the Nazis took power, Wiene's latest film, Taifun, was banned on May 3, 1933. A Hungarian film company had been inviting German directors to come to Budapest to make films in simultaneous German/Hungarian versions, and given his uncertain career prospects under the new German regime Wiene took up that offer in September to direct "One Night in Venice" (1934).

After 1934 Wiene went to London, and finally to Paris where together with Jean Cocteau he tried to produce a sound remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.