For movie lovers it is a pleasure to review Classic movies and contemplate that they retain all their greatness… although, sometimes, the opposite occurs. It is also interesting to review the evaluations and criticisms that they gather in portals such as Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB or FilmAffinity.
The vast majority of Classic movies They have a good rating on these portals. Legendary tapes like Smiles and tears, The Godfather either White House are just a few examples.
Have you ever wondered what is the best movie before 1950? Not all websites include all the films released in those years, as many of them have not survived the test of time, or have simply fallen into oblivion after so many decades.
Series not to sleep: terror on digital platforms
If we take a look at Rotten Tomatoes and we place the search filter in the years prior to 1950, we see that no, Citizen Kane (1941) It is not the best tape of those years (although it boasts a 99 out of 100).
So which movie occupies that spot? We are talking about the oldest film and at the same time the best valued film on the Rotten Tomatoes portal, so that you have a new recommendation to write down.
Expressionist terror in the 20s
Rotten Tomatoes Best Classic Movie is the golem, film released no less than in the year 1920 and directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese. It is one of the great films of the movement known as german expressionism.
maybe the most iconic movie of this cultural current is Nosferatu (1922)which at the same time inaugurated what we know today as vampire genre.
However, The Golem is the classic film that has the highest rating on Rotten Tomatoes. We talk about a resounding 100 out of 100 in critic ratingsafter 32 reviews, which is not bad at all.
It is surprising that, on the other hand, the user ratings are not so high. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 72 out of 100same note as in the web portal FilmAffinity (7.2 out of 10).
What is The Golem about? We could define it as the precursor of Universal’s monster movies (which would start in the 30s), and more specifically ”the german frankenstein”.
The Golem tells the story of Rabbi Löw, a magician who summons a legendary Jewish spirit called Astaharot, who becomes trapped in a clay figure that takes on a life of its own. All this happens in the middle of the Jewish exile following the orders of Emperor Rudolf II.
Many years have passed and Wegener’s tape has really lost that impact. However, it remains a 1920s horror classic and is a must-watch for fans of the genre.
Paul Wegener directed five years earlier, in 1915, a first version that unfortunately it is incomplete (Several chapters of the footage were lost.) There is another version transformed into a comedy that was released in 1917.
You’ve seen the golem? If you are a fan of horror moviewithout a doubt it is one of those obligatory classic films that already had many of the elements that we would see years later in The mummy, The werewolf, Dracula or the same Frankenstein.