« Sauver l’artiste avec l’homme »: Representations of a Pianist and His Hands in Robert Wiene’s Orlacs Hände (1924) KU Leuven
« To save the artist as well as the man »: the surgeon who endeavours to save the life and the hands of Paul Orlac, the protagonist in Robert Wiene’s silent film Orlacs Hände (1924), sets himself an ambitious goal. In a successful operation, the world-famous pianist who lost both hands in a train crash is given the hands of a con-victed murderer. It is Orlac’s impression that the hands live a life of their own, and that they drive him to commit ...