Vanina Introduced by Janet Bergstrom Vanina (Arthur von Gerlach, Germany, 1922). Stendhal's novel was adapted by the German Expressionist screenwriter Carl Mayer, with sets by Walter Reimann, who began his career with Caligari. "Vanina was the most Expressionist of Nielsen's films, full of shadows, maze-like corridors, and dank dungeons. Paul Wegener plays a demoniac governor whose daughter (Nielsen) falls in love with the leader of a revolutionary group (Paul Hartmann). The rebel is imprisoned, but Vanina frees him, only to find, after leading him through seemingly interminable, labyrinthine corridors, that the governor is waiting for them?.Nielsen brilliantly adapts her essentially naturalistic style to the demands of an emotionally claustrophobic plot. As Lotte Eisner says, 'If this film is more astonishing for us today than many others, the reason is that Nielsen's acting is intensely modern-her eyes, her hands, the sweep of her figure betraying an immense sorrow, give a violent intensity and resonace to this Kammerspiele of souls.'" (Robert C. Allen, Sight & Sound) Janet Bergstrom is Associate Professor, Department of Film and Television, UCLA. She is co-founder and co-editor of Camera Obscura, and currently is writing a book on Chantal Akerman. She made an important contribution to the research on Asta Nielsen with the essay, "Asta Nielsen's Early German Films," in Before Caligari: German Cinema, 1895-1920.