There were posters and photographs outside the film theatre near to Vienna’s famous Opera House. ‘Lucretia von Wolff as the mysterious, sinister Alraune,’ they said. And, ‘The Baroness von Wolff IS Hanns Heinz Ewers’ astonishing creation of soulless evil…’ ‘Von Wolff is the definitive child of the mandragora root…’
There were illustrations of mandragora – the plant said to grow in the shadow of the gallows – and there were brief descriptions of the legend.
‘All to do with the fable of the hanged man,’ Conrad had said, when Alice cautiously broached this subject once, wanting clarification, not wanting to appear na?ve before the film-makers or her fellow actors. ‘It is told that mandrake root – mandragora – grows beneath the gallows because of the seed spilled by the men hanged there.’
‘And – does it?’
‘Who knows?’ He had smiled at her. ‘There is a lewd old belief that when a man is hanged, semen is forced from him by the death spasms he endures. So to the legend of the half-mythical mandrake root growing where the seed spills—’
‘And so,’ Alice had said thoughtfully, ‘to Herr Ewers’ book, and Alraune’s conception. Yes, I see. It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with that aspect for the film’s publicity, won’t it?’
But in fact the posters merely said, quite decorously, that mandragora was said to possess powers to enhance men’s prowess as lovers, and mentioned, as a chaste afterthought, that the roots were said to shriek when torn from the earth.
‘A model of restraint and purity,’ said Alice drily, reading this as the taxi drew up before the theatre and the driver leapt to open the doors.
She took a deep breath, and, remembering to let the sables trail negligently on the ground, swept into the auditorium on Conrad’s arm.
She had seen rushes of the film, but tonight, for the first time, she saw the finished article flickering across the screen in its proper sequence; edited and trimmed and polished. It was astonishing and shocking but it was also utterly compelling.
The opening scenes were of Alraune’s macabre conception in the shadow of the gibbet. The gibbet itself dominated the first few frames: it was black and forbidding and it cast its unmistakable outline on to the patch of scrubland, and on to the figure of the unstable brilliant scientist as he scrabbled in the earth for the phallus-shaped mandrake roots.
Mandragora officinarum, thought Alice, who had managed to read up on some of the legends by this time. Sorcerer’s root. Devil’s candle. And mandrakes live in the dark places of the earth – they drink the seed spilled by dying men in their last jerking agonies, and they eat the flesh of murderers. Myths and old wives’ tales, of course, but still…
Now came the furtive meeting between the scientist and the prostitute and the prostitute’s unmistakable greed as he offered her money. She tucked the money into her bodice in the age-old courtesan’s gesture, glanced about her as if making sure there were no watchers, and then lay on the ground, her arms automatically held welcomingly out, but her eyes weary and bored. The camera moved away at that point – the censor would not have permitted anything explicit – but the director had focused on the uprooted mandragora roots, subtly suggesting movement from them, and this was so strongly symbolic, Alice wondered if the censor had missed the significance altogether.
It had been hoped to indicate a resemblance between Alice and the actress playing the prostitute, and Alice thought this had been reasonably successful, although the woman looked blowsy and over-painted on the screen. What Alice’s mother might have called laced mutton, although whatever you called it, it was to be hoped that Alice herself did not look the same in a few years’ time. I’ll cut down the kohl on my eyes when I’m thirty-five, promised Alice. I really will. Or could I stretch that to forty? But I think I’d rather become a plump grey-haired grandmother-figure than look so tawdry.