The first ten seconds of „Das indische Tuch“ (1963), one of Alfred Vohrer’s  entries in the popular german Edgar Wallace franchise of the 1960s: a lesson in excessive artificiality.  The establishing shot of the film’s location is  nothing but a tapestry, but with some fog hovering over it, as if the embroidered house were set in an actual landscape. But then again the tapestry is nothing but a curtain to be lifted, exposing yet another location, bizarrely artificial like the former. The screen split by a candleholder, with taxidermied horse in one and oversized Beethoven bust in the other half: an aristocrat’s cabinet of wonders, gone crazy. B-movie genre cinema becomes surrealist exhibition installation. (I thank David B. who brought this scene to my attention).