Journey into the Night

Directed by F. W. Murnau

With Olaf Fønss, Erna Morena, Conrad Veidt, Gudrun Bruun Stephensen and Clementine Plessner

Dr. Egil Börne, an eminent physician, comes under the spell of an unscrupulous cabaret dancer and deserts his fiancée. The plot finds echoes throughout the Weimar period, including Sternberg’s The Blue Angel. Conrad Veidt appears in a supporting role as a sinister blind painter, whose entrance eerily presages Murnau’s Nosferatu. Der Gang in die Nacht, the earliest surviving film by F. W. Murnau, is also, paradoxically, the only Murnau film for which the original camera negative exists.