“After I signed the contract, I wondered if I was selling my soul, like Faust.”
Conrad Veidt is best remembered for two roles that bookended a successful career: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Casablanca.
He began his career on the stage and entered motion pictures reluctantly in 1917. After all, he could earn as much in a day of filmmaking as he could earn in a month on the stage. In spite of his initial, Faustian reservations, Veidt became one of the more popular actors of German cinema.
Veidt didn’t look like a leading man. However, his tall, rail-thin frame, angular features and wintry blue eyes (which photographed white) were a perfect match for the expressionist style of filmmaking. Popular among the more artistic German filmmakers of the period, expressionism was obsessed with the darker side of human nature.
The archetypical expressionist film was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Veidt played Cesare, a somnambulist and living sideshow exhibit. And serial killer. With set design best described as Salvador Dali meets Dr. Suess in Dracula’s castle, Caligari remains an influential film to this day. Veidt himself was outfitted totally in black with heavy eye makeup and black lipstick. A goth girl’s dream – and remember this was 1920!
Cesare, one of Veidt's signature roles.
Veidt also played more sympathetic roles and even a few comedies but his villains displayed his best acting. As the Maharajah of Bengal in the Indian Tomb films, Veidt (who was often cast in these so-called "turban roles") stole the show from the large and famous cast. The Maharajah wants a tomb for his wife to rival the Taj Mahal. He hires a famous German architect to design it and promises the richest materials to construct it. There’s just one minor hiccup. The wife’s not dead. Yet.
Veidt’s sensitive performance is the main reason to track the films down. The Maharajah may be murderous but he is not truly evil. He loves and wants to be loved in return. Veidt turns what could have been a clichéd character into a complicated antagonist.
European talent was migrating to Hollywood in droves by the mid twenties and the film that got Veidt noticed was Waxworks, where he played Ivan the Terrible. Leading man John Barrymore was so impressed that he insisted that Veidt play Louis XI in his upcoming swashbuckler The Beloved Rogue.
Veidt hams it up in The Beloved Rogue.
On a side note, the performance also impressed Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. He borrowed liberally from Veidt’s portrayal in both his own Ivan films of the 1940’s.
Veidt travelled to America for Barrymore’s 1927 film. Veidt and Barrymore both devoured scenery but Veidt’s delightfully weird performance as the paranoid French monarch was something new to audiences of the period. Veidt’s Louis was a spidery, wily, greasy, nose-picking goblin of a king. Can you see any American actor of the period attempting such a performance?
Veidt signed on with Universal studios, which was eager to replace Lon Chaney. Veidt’s best film of the period was The Man Who Laughs. Based on one of Victor Hugo’s lesser-known novels, Veidt played the son of a nobleman who had a smile carved into his face. If this sounds a bit like Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, there’s a good reason. Cartoonist Bob Kane based the Joker’s appearance on Veidt.
One of the more offbeat moments of The Indian Tomb.
Veidt was in the running to play Dracula but sound movies changed everything. Some European actors spoke enough English to remain working in Hollywood but many returned to their home countries.
Germany was undergoing changes of its own. Veidt found the rise of fascism repellent and did not hide his disgust. He consciously took roles that would irritate the Nazi government, took to claiming that he was a Jew when asked to fill out official forms and married the woman he loved, who happened to be Jewish.
Signed to play Jew Süss in England, the German government forbade Veidt to leave the country. Only the strongest insistence from his British studio allowed Veidt to escape. Once in England, he renounced his German citizenship, became a British subject and continued to act.
Hollywood came calling once more and Veidt began making films for MGM in 1940. He specialized in playing European sophisticates and Nazis. In 1942, he was loaned to Warner Brothers where he played the villainous Nazi Major Strasser in the beloved classic Casablanca.
One obstacle that Veidt could not overcome was a family history of heart disease. In 1943, he died of a heart attack while playing golf.
Veidt’s best performances are to be found in the wildly creative silent era of German filmmaking but his unique talent is enjoyable wherever he appears, whether in English, American or German films.
A Select Filmography of Conrad Veidt’s Silent Work
- Fear (1917)
- Different From the Others (1919)
- Opium (1919)
- Satanas (1920)
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
- The Indian Tomb (1921)
- Paganini (1923)
- Don Carlos (1924)
- The Hands of Orlac (1924)
- Waxworks (1924)
- The Student of Prague (1926)
- The Beloved Rogue (1926)
- The Last Performance (1927)
- The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Further Information
John T. Soister has compiled Conrad Veidt on Screen: A Comprehensive Illustrated Filmography. This is a valuable book that covers every known screen appearance and role that Veidt played, along with the film’s survival status. Biographical details and rare photographs are interspersed. It’s a treat for Veidt fans.
Sources
Conrad Veidt on Screen by John T. Soister
From Caligari to Hitler by John Krakhauer
Cinema Europe documentary series produced by Kevin Brownlow