Summary
Robert Wiene’s three‑act opus *Satanas* unfolds across disparate epochs, each a tableau of moral turbulence. In the opening tableau, the sun‑baked sands of ancient Egypt cradle a court of pharaohs and priests, where a charismatic vizier, portrayed by Ernst Hofmann, wrestles with a prophecy that binds his destiny to a demonic entity. The second act transposes Victor Hugo’s apocryphal narrative *La Fin de Satan* into a baroque tableau of 19th‑century Europe, where Margit Barnay’s ethereal heroine confronts the lingering specter of the fallen angel, while Conrad Veidt embodies the seductive, tormented Satanic figure whose redemption teeters on a razor’s edge. The final segment catapults the viewer to the fevered streets of Petrograd in 1917, where Kurt Ehrle’s revolutionary commander leads a rag‑tag militia against the tsarist regime, the chaos echoing the ancient struggle for divine legitimacy and the Hugoan battle for spiritual absolution. Interwoven through these chronologically disjunctive scenes is a leitmotif of power’s corruptibility, the inexorable pull of darkness, and the flickering hope of redemption, all rendered by a stellar ensemble that includes Fritz Kortner, Sadjah Gezza, and Elsa Wagner, under Wiene’s meticulous direction.
Synopsis
A three-part historical film: the first episode takes place in ancient Egypt, the second is based on the Hugo novel La Fin de Satan, and the third takes place during the 1917 Russian revolution.
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