Matrixston Wow! Such a good movie.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Richard Chatten The fifth and - to date - last film version of Hanns Heinz Ewers' 1911 bestseller is handsomely mounted, interestingly cast and far too talky. It worked far better as a silent film, with Brigitte Helm much more convincing than dear Hildegard Knef as the soulless product of artificial insemination. By bestowing such inauspicious parenthood upon his creation Professor ten Brinken (Erich von Stroheim!) explicitly states that it's his desire that a bit of depravity in her genes will create a more exotic bloom than two upstanding citizens could have produced; although real life is constantly demonstrating that Mother Nature can be depended upon to regularly create plenty of young women with more conventional antecedents capable of wreaking just as much havoc among the male sex.Although Ewers was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the New Order and joined the NSDAP in 1931 - and 'Alraune' clearly reflected the eugenics debate that Hitler brought into disrepute - it wasn't filmed during the Nazi era. The director of this postwar version, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, had been an enthusiastic propagandist for the Nazi regime, which makes him an ironic choice for such potentially touchy subject matter.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Alraune" or "Mandrake" is a West German German-language movie from 1952, so it will have its 65th anniversary next year and this film was made less than 10 years after the end of World War II to put it in perspective. The director is Arthur Maria Rabenalt and it is possibly his most known movie now. Kurt Heuser, a pretty successful writer back then, was in charge of adapting the original novel by Hanns Heinz Ewers, the man who also came up with "Der Student von Prag", a pretty well-known silent movie. But back to this one here. It runs for almost 90 minutes and the title character is played by Hildegard Knef this time, Brigitte Helm in the past. You can compare Knef's turn with Helm's here and it is probably entirely subjective which one you will like more. it is the story of an artificially created woman and how she brings disaster and misery apparently to everybody around her (especially men) because she is not natural. There are certainly a couple connections to the classic "Metropolis" in here and you will recognize them when you see them. But sadly, all in all, it is far from being as good as this masterpiece. I found almost all the supporting characters, also the male ones, mostly uninteresting and Knef alone was not enough to let me appreciate the entire project. This is also because her character lost appeal for me in the second half of the film, or the last third maybe, as we see a plot development that just wasn't working for me at all, but it was needed maybe back then to please the masses. I will not go into detail any further to avoid spoilers. Anyway, this film is another example of how mediocre and forgettable the 1950s were in German cinema. I give it a thumbs-down and do not recommend the watch.

dlee2012 This version of Alraune is largely unremarkable but for another excellent performance by the always-radiant Hildegard Knef. Unambitious cinematography and a slow pace undermine any attempt to build real atmosphere. Most interesting is the film's theme of eugenics and the dangers of science just a few years after the fall of the Third Reich.In some ways, though, the Alraune fable is an inverse of Frankenstein: whereas, in Shelley's tale, science is shown to supersede alchemy, here it is the reverse. Alraune's creator has more in common with Rotwang in the sense that there is a blurring of alchemy and science. It is noteworthy that Brigitte Helm starred as the titular character in the early version of Alraune as well as her more famous role as Maria in Metropolis.This film is recommended to Knef fans and people interested in the Alraune myth. However, as a piece of cinema, it is workmanlike and nothing more.

melvelvit-1 Brooding scientist Professor ten Brinken (a stern Erich von Stroheim), thrown out of Uni for his blasphemous beliefs, creates a "daughter" (Hildegarde Knef) from the sperm of a double murderer and the egg of a prostitute in his castle laboratory and raises her under the gallows, where the mandrake root grows. It's an experiment in genetic theory but true to the plant's legend, Alraune will bring good fortune just before death and destruction as the movie opens with the girl escaping from a convent and making her father rich when she divines a mineral spring on land he bought. Falling for her cousin (Karlheinz "Peeping Tom" Boehm), Alraune feels something for the first time but luck won't last long and although her "evil" isn't premeditated (much), she's responsible for an attempted suicide, a framing for theft, a fatal accident, a duel, death from exposure, bankruptcy, and public disgrace. The story ends with the inevitable: Alraune, crying tears she never could before, gives up the man she loves lest he be cursed, too, and her "father", who gave her life, takes it away and goes to the gallows in a fitting twist of fate. The film equates artificial insemination with the crimes of Viktor Frankenstein but blames the creator since love is what gives us our souls and Alraune had become human.The German production's a handsomely mounted, atmospheric period piece with an Expressionism the original 1928 silent lacked, especially in the gloomy castle, and some thunder, wind, and rain are there to underscore a point or two. Obviously THE BAD SEED, a hit Broadway play and Hollywod movie about hereditary evil that came out a few years later, wasn't exactly innovative. The dubbed U.S. version, UNNATURAL: THE FRUIT OF EVIL, is missing ten minutes and eliminates any reference to artificial insemination.