If I remember correctly, it was Peter Greenaway who wrote a few years ago that in the near future one will be able to make films about how somebody thinks and not only about what somebody does. When this time will be here, one should remember F.W. Murnau's "Phantom" (1922) which does exactly what Greenaways was speaking about. Lorenz Lubota is a little scribe, likes books and would like to be a poet. One day, on his way to work, he is hit by a carriage. In this moment, he sees Veronika, the daughter of a rich merchant, and chases from now on her picture like a phantom. It fills up his whole thinking and feeling. He even goes to her parents' house in order to ask for her hand. After he is thrown out, he stops working, neglects his belongings and sinks deeper and deeper in despair. I cannot remember whether anyone else in the "silent" time has made more appropriate use of tinting in order to show the inside of a person than Murnau did. By chance, Lorenz meets Melitta who looks like a twin of Veronika. However, she cheats on him and demands money which he does not have. So he steals it and even lies to his aunt, whom he tells that he needs the money for having his poesies printed as books. Not long after, his aunts finds out about the truth and threatens to turn him in to the police. So, one night, Lorenz and one of his new colleagues break into the house of the aunt. When they are caught by her, the colleague kills her. Lorenz goes to prison as an accessory. When he is released, the daughter of his former boss waits for him, telling him that she always loved him. Besides the unrealistic and rather fairy-tale-like end, this movie shows many motives that Murnau would use in the subsequent year when he shot "Nosferatu". One could say that in "Phantom", he filmed the imaginary world, whereas in "Nosferatu", he projected this imaginary world as a substrate of abyss-less gore into the outside world. However, one could also say that Lorenz, at the end, is rightfully awarded by a loving wife because he belonged to the very few people who really believed in a phantom and even gave up his whole existence for it. And simply the fact that a phantom can exist in our real brain proves its reality, isn't that so?
