Destiny (1921)Memento mori means to remember that you will die--the unavoidable destiny of all living things. Destiny (1921) is a silent film about a young, unnamed couple in love--played by Lil Dagover and Walter Janssen--who cross paths with an ominous stranger who turns out to be the physical manifestation of Death (Bernhard Goetze). After Death spirits away the man, the woman falls into despair, and tries to end her own life to join her beloved. When she confronts Death, she proclaims that love is more powerful. In response, Death strikes a deal with her: she must save one of three doomed souls in order to return her love to the living.
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Directed by Fritz Lang, Destiny is a tale about the inevitability of death, and mankind's hubris in believing that it has any power over it. When the stranger comes into town, the power elite that rule the city debate about what to do with him. They are unaware that he is Death, although his emergence at the beginning of the movie--combined with his black cloak, wide-brimmed black hat, and stern, skull-like expression--makes it clear to the audience who he represents. Destiny underscores how people go to extreme lengths to avoid death--while only the insane court death, only the arrogant and foolish believe they are exempt from his dominion. Death establishes a foothold in the town by purchasing the property adjacent to the cemetery from the avaricious city council with gold, where he claims that he will build a "garden". What he produces instead is a sequestered realm bordered by insurmountable stone walls, with no apparent entrance. Death visits the tavern where the would-be newlyweds prepare to share a drink from a ceremonial wedding chalice, and leads the man away when she isn't looking--suddenly and without warning as is Death's wont. It is from her grief that she espies the phantom of her love walking through a spectral gate accessible only to the dead. Destiny is told in six parts, with the third through fifth parts being vignettes of other doomed lovers; the actors who play the man, woman, and Death play out different but parallel roles. These scenes are set in exotic locales--Arabia, Venice, and China--but the conclusions are always the same. Death's offer to the woman to "save" the doomed men in order to reclaim her love is clearly a one-sided game, foreshadowing Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal and his knight's ill-fated chess game with Death many years later. It isn't that Death is playing a cruel prank on the woman, but that he is stoically trying to make her realize the error in her reasoning; however romantic it may seem, love is not stronger than death, because nothing is in this world.
For a film made almost a hundred years ago, Destiny boasts some clever special effects and holds up remarkably well, largely due to the vast restorative efforts made by groups like the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation. Destiny employs such cinematic legerdemain as having ghostly figures interacting with the living by superimposing semi-transparent images over the action (quite a trick for 1921). The sets featured in Destiny are impressive, like the massive stone wall surrounding Death's demesne and the Arabian palace in which the Third Verse is set. There are several examples of special effects in Destiny, with a predominance of magic in the Fifth Verse, including the summoning of a miniature army, a flying carpet, and transmutation of people into pigs and cacti with a jade wand. The title cards throughout Destiny change in appearance for these more exotic episodes, with Arabic and Chinese fonts, transporting the audience away to foreign locales along with the woman who vicariously experiences each doomed scenario. Destiny often teases who the stranger really is, like when he first sits at the man and woman's table; when they glance at his beer stein, it transforms into an hourglass with a skeleton lurking within its shadow. Death's sanctum is filled with a collection of very tall candles, and describes that they represent each person's life, to be extinguished at the appointed hour. Death draws the woman's attention to one candle; as the light flickers out, an infant emerges in his cradled arms, only to vanish moments later. Elsewhere, a woman cries over the corpse of a man, mirroring the woman's torment for the loss of her fiancé. Destiny uses a variety of colored filters for different scenes, giving each moment a semblance of color and setting the tone with a simple yet effective visual flourish, despite color movies being decades away.
Recommended for: Fans of a haunting tale of love and death, exploring these universal aspects of life through what is essentially a proto-anthology film. Between the special effects, the tragic theme of humanity's inability to overcome death, and the expressive imagery and score, Destiny stands as one of the pillars of the silent movie era.
For a film made almost a hundred years ago, Destiny boasts some clever special effects and holds up remarkably well, largely due to the vast restorative efforts made by groups like the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation. Destiny employs such cinematic legerdemain as having ghostly figures interacting with the living by superimposing semi-transparent images over the action (quite a trick for 1921). The sets featured in Destiny are impressive, like the massive stone wall surrounding Death's demesne and the Arabian palace in which the Third Verse is set. There are several examples of special effects in Destiny, with a predominance of magic in the Fifth Verse, including the summoning of a miniature army, a flying carpet, and transmutation of people into pigs and cacti with a jade wand. The title cards throughout Destiny change in appearance for these more exotic episodes, with Arabic and Chinese fonts, transporting the audience away to foreign locales along with the woman who vicariously experiences each doomed scenario. Destiny often teases who the stranger really is, like when he first sits at the man and woman's table; when they glance at his beer stein, it transforms into an hourglass with a skeleton lurking within its shadow. Death's sanctum is filled with a collection of very tall candles, and describes that they represent each person's life, to be extinguished at the appointed hour. Death draws the woman's attention to one candle; as the light flickers out, an infant emerges in his cradled arms, only to vanish moments later. Elsewhere, a woman cries over the corpse of a man, mirroring the woman's torment for the loss of her fiancé. Destiny uses a variety of colored filters for different scenes, giving each moment a semblance of color and setting the tone with a simple yet effective visual flourish, despite color movies being decades away.
Recommended for: Fans of a haunting tale of love and death, exploring these universal aspects of life through what is essentially a proto-anthology film. Between the special effects, the tragic theme of humanity's inability to overcome death, and the expressive imagery and score, Destiny stands as one of the pillars of the silent movie era.