Seven years before Benjamin Christensen directed his masterful "Häxan" (1922), Danish cinema was already toying with horror subjects. Robert Dinesen was a prolific director who made 85 films between 1911 and 1929, both in his native Denmark, and in Germany, the leading film industry of silent Europe. "Dr. X." (1915) is horror-themed drama, with some influence from Paul Wegener and Stellan Rye's "The Student of Prague" (Der Student von Prag, 1913). It is another tale of morals, with a clear lesson and one-dimensional characters. It's much less of a "horror film" than "The Student of Prague", but certainly carries some interest to historians.
The film is about two doctors, who are competing to find an important tonic. Amusingly, though they are shown to be competitors, they are working in the same room. Everybody seems to think that Dr. Felix (Carlo Wieth) is the man for the job. His research is far more advanced than that of Dr. Voluntas (Gunnar Tolnaess). But deep down, things aren't so sunshiny for Dr. Felix. He is a lonely man, in love with Margaret (Johanne Fritz-Petersen). So Felix confides to Voluntas, who promises he will have the woman he craves for, if Felix does everything Voluntas tells him. This leads you expect a darker narrative than what we are in for, since Voluntas begins by taking his buddy to beauty parlor, and giving him a make-over. Oh, the horror...
The general idea is, that now that the great scientist is chasing a lady, he ignores his work, and Voluntas gets the advantage. Many early horror tales resembled this one. The righteous man straying from the good path, evil thus triumphing. It's not terribly unlike "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", though that is a better narrative. The lesson of the film seems to be, "be happy with your lot". That is not very nice, since certainly we should all have time to pursue both scientific achievements and pretty ladies. The dualism of the film, the easy divide to good and bad, really lessens the psychological merit of the narrative. Also, the film initially tells you that the doctors are trying to create an important tonic, and only in the end is it mentioned, that the tonic is the cure for cancer. This turns the narrative around for the audience (though not for the characters), since this is too important a subject to be tackled in such a half-assed manner.
So in the end, this movie has little horror and much moralizing. The cinematic merit is not anything out of the ordinary, since by 1915 D.W. Griffith, Victor Sjöström and Yevgeni Bauer (just to name a few) were all telling narratives more coherent and better executed. For hard-core fans of silent cinema, this might be an interesting curiosity, but you can certainly find better silent horror-dramas.
