The Head of Janus (German: Der Janus-Kopf) is a 1920 German horror silent film directed by F. W. Murnau. The film was an unauthorized adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the source material went unrecognized by some of the German media due to changes in the characters' names.
Released on 17 September 1920 by the Lipow Co., this is one of Murnau's lost films. The screenplay was written by Hans Janowitz, who collaborated with Carl Mayer on the script for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). While the film itself does not survive, the scripts and related production notes do.Synopsis
Conrad Veidt plays Dr. Warren (the Dr. Jekyll character) who changes into Mr. O'Connor (a parallel of Mr. Hyde). This transformation is brought about, not by experimentation with chemicals as in Stevenson's original, but through the supernatural agency of a bust of Janus (the Roman god of the doorway), which Warren / O'Connor purchases in the opening sequence as a gift for his sweetheart, Jane Lanyon (Margarete Schlegel). When she refuses the gift, horrified, Warren / O'Connor is forced to keep the statuette himself.
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