Scene Breakdown, pt. 2

One of the more remarkable scenes in the film portrays a telephone with a sort of television screen in Joh Freder’s office, far predating any such actual technology- including the television itself! The effect was created by projecting the footage of the workman shown on the screen backwards onto the screen using a projector before filming this with the camera positioned in front of it. The projector and camera were phase connected to ensure they worked at the same speed.


Multiple exposures of the film were the third major technique used in the film. This wasn’t done by copying one exposure on top of the other in post-production, but during the actual shooting in the camera, using the same reel of film rewound several times. This was done by Gunther Rittau and his assistant H. O. Schulze. This technique can be seen in the scene of the multiple eyes and male faces gazing on the dancing evil Maria in the Yoshiwara district.

Constructing the Scene: The Transformation Scene

The scene that continues to fascinate audiences the most to this day, however, is that of the transformation of Maria’s likeness onto the robot’s in Rotwang’s lab, and it has become the one of the most imitated scenes in cinema. It was achieved through a combination of all three major techniques, but particularly that of multiple exposures. The same piece of negative was exposed up to thirty times for every single component of the shot. First, there was the shot of Brigette Helms in the robot costume on the pedestal. The figure was then replaced by a black silhouette. Around this figure, two circular neon lights in tubes made from sandwich paper were repeatedly moved up and down by a type of elevator. This was filmed through a glass plate which was smeared with a thin layer of grease. Finally, the electrical discharges were filmed without this glass plate.