Cinema, Phenomenology and Hyperrealism

Traditionally, hyperrealistic mannequins have embodied the dream (or rather the nightmare) of animating the inanimate: by imitating the living model to such an extent that any distinction becomes (almost) impossible, they blur the threshold between life and inert matter. It thus comes as no surprise that wax figures have often been taken as a symbol of cinematic creation and its attempt to recreate motion (a quality immediately associated with life) by means of a sequence of static frames. By focusing on three classic movies—Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paul Leni’s Waxworks (1923) and Michael Curtiz’s Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)—the essay explores the tension between reality and unreality as the crux of cinema tout court.