The Mummy (1932)
Part 2
The Mummy was golden at the box office, attracting not only genre fans, spiritualists and believers in reincarnation, but any number of viewers who were drawn both by the grandeur of the love tale and by the novelty of a “horror picture” without explicit violence. — John T. Soister, Of Gods and Monsters: A Critical Guide to Universal Studios’ Science Fiction, Horror and Mystery Films, 1929-1939
With scenes of confrontation between good and evil similar to Dracula, and the romance of undying love and reincarnation gleaned from H. Rider Haggard’s She, Balderston crystallized his story of The Mummy. The unsensational and restrained visual tone was added by director Karl Freund, who’s moody cinematography captured the supernatural demeanor and timelessness of Bela Lugosi’s centuries-old vampire count in Dracula. Although using more camera movement here than in Dracula, Freund deliberately lingers on somber scenes to evoke a mystical aura, tinted with sadness, over the proceedings and Egyptian antiquities. His use of stimmung–a mood-building pause seen in German Expressionist Cinema of the 1920s–especially during Im-ho-tep’s resurrection, shows carefully measured glimpses of Jack Pierce’s elaborate makeup, leaving us in horror for what is not shown.
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