Trivia

Expressionist German director, whose work influenced Eisenstein in Russia, as well as Hollywood film makers at Universal and RKO in the 1930's and 40's. A master at Gothic horror, he began as a stage designer for Max Reinhardt and Leopold Jessner. Directed films from 1913, as well as doubling up as art director, using stylized sets and accentuated contrasts between light and shade. His most famous films were Waxworks (1924) in Germany, and - during his spell at Universal from 1927-28 - the definitive classic haunted house mystery, The Cat and the Canary (1927).

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945". Pages 649-651. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

In 1927, he accepted Carl Laemmle's invitation to become a director at Universal Studios and moved to Hollywood. There Leni made a distinguished directorial debut with The Cat and the Canary (1927), an adaptation of John Willard's stage play. The film had a great influence over Universal's later classic "haunted house" horror series, and was subsequently remade several times, notably in 1939 with Bob Hope.

He directed the big budget The Man Who Laughs (based on the novel by Victor Hugo), one of the most visually stylized of late period silent films.

He became an avant-garde painter at the age of 15, he studied at Berlin's Academy of Fine Arts, and subsequently worked as a theatrical set designer, working for a number of theatres in Berlin (but not with Max Reinhardt).

In 1923 he participated in the creation of the theater cabaret-cafe Gondola in Berlin. Waxworks (1924) was planned as a four-part omnibus feature, but the last part was not shot when money ran out. He also made a series of unusual short animated films Rebus-Film Nr. 1-8, which were filmed crossword puzzles.

In 1913, he started working in the German film industry designing film sets and/or costumes for directors such as Joe May, Ernst Lubitsch, Richard Oswald, and E. A. Dupont.

Paul Leni was a German filmmaker and a key figure in German Expressionism, making Hintertreppe (1921) and Waxworks (1924) in Germany, and The Cat and the Canary (1927), The Chinese Parrot (1927), The Man Who Laughs (1928), and The Last Warning (1928) in the United States.

Leni designed short prologues for festive film premieres in Berlin cinemas, such as Lubitsch's Forbidden Paradise (1924), Herbert Brenon's Peter Pan (1924), and E. A. Dupont's Variety (1925).

During World War I, Leni started directing as well with films such as Der Feldarzt (Das Tagebuch des Dr. Hart, 1917), Patience (1920), Die Verschwörung zu Genua (1920/21) and Backstairs (1921).