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The Castle film, I am informed, was recovered (oddly enough) from an abandoned Catholic orphanage outside Dessau where it had been placed in storage by one of the producers at UFA studios, who feared that it would otherwise be destroyed by the Nazis. (Apparently Castle's work was among those on the agenda for liquidation.) Frankly, the film is a pig in a poke. I haven't viewed it myself and probably won't. German silents are a taste I have not acquired. In any case, my policy is not to expose these prehistoric nitrate jobs to the light of day. I trade them off (as is) as quickly as I can.

I don't know much about Castle myself. You may have come across him during his later, more obscure, Hollywood years. I once owned a film of his from that period, something he did for Republic called
Bum Rap
—a true stinker and chopped to ribbons besides. But I hear his early work is of some artistic interest—if you can find it. You know about his notoriously ill-fated
Martyr,
of course. That provides the tiein with Louise. I have tracked down some old publicity material; it reports that her appearance as Mary Magdalen in
Martyr
was the
second
time she worked for Castle. About five years earlier, while Castle was still at UFA, she was cast in another Biblical opus of his that seems never to have been released. Now that might very well be
this
film, which seems to date from circa 1925. Whatever the movie is, it appears to be a complete, five reel, 35 mm. feature. Present it that way to Curt, and he is likely to bite.

Let's face it, Ira old friend. If I were your standard scholarly collector, I would treasure an item like this. But hopeless sentimentalist that I am, I simply must have
Wizard.
So I'm willing to include the Castle film with
Morocco
as the bargaining chip that could get you
Empress.
Deal?
Ever in hope,
Josh

There followed a letter in German from June of 1935. It was written on the letterhead stationery of the Universum Film Aktien Gesellschaft—UFA, the once famous studio that had established the German film industry, and which was taken over by the Nazis shortly after this letter was written. It was signed by a Thea von Pölzig who was identified as a senior studio executive. There was a rough pencil translation at the bottom of the letter, now barely legible, which might have been done for either Sloan or Goldstein. Where it had blurred away, Clare's German was strong enough to fill in. It read:

Dear Sister Irena:

We have received word that UFA can expect a visit from our evervigilant Reichsminister of Culture within the next several days. The result will no doubt be a significant reduction in the holdings of our film library. As good Germans, we will, of course, welcome this economy measure and the unsolicited lesson in Aryan aesthetic theory with which it is certain to be applied.

In order to save the Reichministry's valuable time, I am sending you a selection of films that I believe would otherwise take up an unwarranted amount of its critical attention and cost it the price of a good-sized bonfire. They are some of the early works of our own Max. You will please follow the instructions in my previous letters for their storage and safekeeping until further notice.
Cordially,
Thea

The oldest document in the bunch had the look of an office memo, again on UFA letterhead. It was dated May 14, 1924, and signed by the same Thea von Pölzig, whose title at that time was something like “Production Assistant.” Once more, there was a translation penciled in across the bottom of the badly crumpled page. It read:

To: J.M.B.

From: T.V.P.

No use.
Judas Jedermann
will not be licensed for exhibition. Three meetings with the Censor's Office since last fall and no progress. They persist in their opinion that the film is obscene, even though they cannot (or will not) identify portions for editing. Following
Simon the Magician,
Max's reputation seems to stain everything he does indelibly. I recommend we withdraw
Judas
for at least a year. Meanwhile, you should seek release in the United States, perhaps through our connections at Universal.

Poor Max! If he has not already made up his mind, this news is sure to send him on his way. A prophet without honor …

Clare placed the letters in a neat pile to one side of the table. We were finally down to the manuscript. And here we found ourselves running an obstacle course. Clare's French would have been more than adequate to giving the piece a read, but the more closely she studied this withered and congested sheaf of papers, the more illegible it became. Inked out and written over, filled with typos, annotated along the margins in a private shorthand, it practically defied comprehension.

“Well … it's an interview. An interview with Castle,” Clare observed. That much she could pin down by flipping through the first few pages. “Lots of mangled German scattered all over. Quotes, I guess. But, God, this will take hours to work through.”

Shuffling further into the creased and faded pages, she came upon a folded envelope, itself covered with notes. It bore Swiss postage and a postmark for August 1939. The return address, cramped into one corner and barely legible, read: “MK,
Sturmwaisen,
Zurich.” Clare loitered over the words. “MK. Max Kastell, right? But what's
Sturmwaisen?”
she asked, as if I might know. “Storm something.
Waisen …
that's waifs, orphans, something like that.” The translation told us nothing. She shrugged and went on. The envelope was addressed, in a sweeping Germanic hand, to a Geneviève Joubert at
CinéArt
magazine in Paris.

“Ha!” Clare burst out. The name struck a chord. “I knew her. Not well, but we met a couple of times. In Paris after the war. She hung out at the Cinémathèque. Wrote for a number of publications. I liked her. Strong tastes. Lots of savvy. I suppose this could be her work.
She did some interviews. Directors mainly. I have a marvelous piece she did with Franju—before he was a name.”

The envelope was too small to have held the bulky manuscript. It seemed empty, but wasn't. Opened and given a shake, it yielded a yellowed snapshot about passport size. Clare looked it over, then held it out to me. A man, perhaps in his thirties. Stern-faced, dark, messy hair falling into his eyes. “Castle … ?” she asked. “Could be a photo to accompany the article. If that's when the photo was sent, and
if
that's when the article was written, then this obviously never reached print.
CinéArt
went out of business when the war started—along with the rest of western civilization.” Then she sighed. “There's no telling what all this is. Or why it's in with the film. But I don't see that we have any choice but to decipher it.”

Inside, I gave a small, private prayer of thanks. The manuscript, along with the letters, had apparently distracted Clare's attention from my bungled attempt to capture
Les Enfants du Paradis.
Mercifully, she never mentioned the episode again.

“What about the film?” I asked. “Why don't we take it over to the theater and run it?”

Clare shook her head, opting for caution. “You have to be careful with old film stock like this. If it
is
as old as these letters from UFA say, you just can't expose it to the air. There have been cases of old nitrate films exploding if they're not handled right. We'd better leave this to Sharkey.”

Sharkey had a good deal of experience with delicate film—repairing it, projecting it, reshooting it. It was a special skill that earned him some decent money from time to time. Reluctantly, Clare phoned the number we had for him—a temporary beach residence in Venice West. The groggy female voice that finally answered promised to pass the message along to Sharkey when he came to, but hinted he might not be ambulatory until much later in the day. It took three or four more calls and a deal of wrangling before Clare persuaded Sharkey to meet us at The Classic that Wednesday afternoon. When he showed up for the screening, he looked much the worse for several days and nights of hard partying. A blond, busty young thing named Shannon came with him; she looked all of sixteen. Clare treated her, as she did all Sharkey's inamoratae, with practiced cruelty—not that it made much of a dent on Shannon. She seemed to move in a semi-stupor.

I still had no idea who had broken off with whom in this latest,
prolonged state of war between Clare and Sharkey. Each was behaving like the aggrieved party. After sparring through a few preliminary rounds of nasty knocks and jabs, Clare, as if calling for a truce, finally got to the subject of the Castle film.

“I don't suppose you remember the big screwup of the other night.”

Sharkey squinted back at her uncertainly, as if there might be any number of big screwups he should remember but didn't. He had so far shown no sign whatever of recalling our misadventure with Jürgen's car.

“Okay, okay, never mind,” Clare went on, summoning Sharkey to follow her back to the projection booth where the film was waiting. “Look, we want to screen this,” she explained. “It's old. Very old. Pre-1925 possibly.”

“Hey, wow!” Sharkey said. “Where'd you get this?”

“Promise not to tell? Jonny and a friend of his swiped it the other night.”

“No kidding!” Sharkey was impressed. He glanced over at me. “Where'd you get it, pal?”

Clare cut me off. “That's top secret for now. We just want you to run this for us, if it's in any shape for that. Wouldn't trust anyone else with the assignment.” Which was as close as I ever heard Clare come to giving Sharkey a kind word.

At once, everything between the two of them changed. A film—an undiscovered film—had entered their relationship, something that rose above personal hostilities. Hovering over the stack of cartons that held Max Castle's mysterious movie, they became totally clinical, partners in a professional enterprise.

“If this does date back to the twenties,” Sharkey remarked as he pulled a canister out of its carton, “we may never get it out of the can. We might not have anything but yellow dust in here by now.”

“It's been kept in film vaults for years,” Clare said. “As far as we can tell, it hasn't been shown since it went into storage.”

“Well, that could help, but … hello! What's this?” Sharkey was trying, without success, to slip a knife blade under the rim of the canister. “I'll be damned if this thing isn't soldered shut! Never saw that before. Well now, that's hopeful. But how do we get it open?”

After several minutes of trying in vain to pry the canister open, Sharkey had an idea. He hustled us out of The Classic and into a rear door at Moishe's. There he requested use of the deli's electric can opener. “If the can's been sealed tight, maybe we're in business.”

We watched with mounting anticipation as Sharkey punched the opener into the first canister. There was a faint hiss. He looked up, startled. “Did you hear that? The thing's vacuum-packed. Who the hell vacuum-packs movies?” He quickly ran the opener around the rim of all five canisters, but he wouldn't open them until we were back in The Classic out of the bright light. There, slowly, he uncovered the first can. Inside was a full thirty-five-millimeter reel. Sharkey sent up a cheer. “This, my friends, is like finding a live dinosaur in Griffith Park.” He quickly and expertly checked the film through, then announced it was in nearly perfect condition. He saw no breaks and the film stock seemed supple. “Okay,” he said. “Suppose we run her once around the track.”

Sharkey checked through all the reels, but could find no indication of the correct sequence. Each was marked, as the canisters had been,
Judas Jedermann,
but none was numbered. He chose a reel at random and proceeded to mount it on the projector. Within fifteen minutes, the four of us—Clare, Sharkey, myself, and a bored and bewildered Shannon—were watching a film that, very likely, had been made before any of us were born, and which might have been entombed ever since.

The theater lights dim, the projector chatters, a shaft of light shoots across the darkness. Like the miraculous finger of God, it touches the waiting screen, void as a desert, and the screen comes alive with images. After a sleep of possibly four decades, the film
Judas Jedermann
awakens and moves before my eyes.

The experience is as vivid now as it was when it first happened. Allow me to pause at this point to recapture that moment of discovery full strength, realizing, as I do, how difficult it must be to imagine a time when the name of Max Castle was all but unknown, a cast-off
on the cultural scrap heap. Some six months earlier I'd caught a few blurred and choppy minutes of the kind of movie the world remembered Castle for—or rather the kind of movie that explained why nearly nobody remembered him. I really couldn't say I'd seen
Feast of the Undead,
not even a fair sample; but I wouldn't have argued with Clare or anyone else who dismissed the man's work as garbage. That was one Max Castle movie; I was about to see another, the film that would mark the beginning of the Castle cult. No, not even the beginning. We stand at the door of the tomb, watching the first barely discernible twitch of a forgotten filmmaker's resurrection, uncertain whether the movement we see is real or a trick of the eye.

By the time a shambling and bleary-eyed Sharkey showed up to project the film, Clare and I had put in several days piecing together the surviving remnants of Castle's biography. There wasn't much to go on, and what there was included more rumor than fact. Certainly our research gave us no reason to believe that we were dealing with anything more than another of Hollywood's many hard-luck stories, a second-rater who washed out early and never made a comeback. Here's what little we knew about the man as we sat down to watch his
Judas Jedermann.

Standard film histories remembered Castle (or Kastell, or von Kastell) as one of the early German Expressionist directors, a wunderkind who rose rapidly to prominence in the years immediately following World War One. He made his first movie before he was twenty years old, a thriller produced at the UFA Studios called
Die Träumende Augen (The Dreaming Eyes).
It was listed in the filmographies as still another tale of hypnotism, lust, and bloody murder—obviously an imitation of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
on which the young Castle had worked as an apprentice technician. With some digging, we were able to find a fragmentary reference to Thea von Pölzig at UFA; she was mentioned as the script editor for
The Dreaming Eyes.