Steppenwolf

Year: 1974

Runtime: 107 mins

Language: English

Director: Fred Haines

Drama

Set in post‑World War I European bourgeois circles, the film follows solitary intellectual Harry Haller, haunted by his split nature—human and beast—and his resolve to end his life on his 50th birthday. He is drawn out of his isolation by the enigmatic Hermine, who introduces him to dancing, jazz, and the spirited Maria. Through Hermine’s guidance he enters the hallucinatory Magic Theater, a nightmarish journey that forces him to confront humor, sin and derision in a search for redemption.

Direct adaptation

Read the Steppenwolf book behind the movie

A Solitary Intellectual Who Divides Himself between Man and Wolf Enters the Magic Theater, where Love, Music, Humor, and Multiplying Selves Challenge His Desire for Death · by Hermann Hesse, Basil Creighton

Why this book?

Fred Haines's Steppenwolf directly adapts Hermann Hesse's novel, following Harry Haller's divided self-image, suicidal plan, meeting with Hermine, lessons in dancing and desire, Pablo, and the Magic Theater. The film uses elaborate visual effects to represent episodes conveyed through prose, and it necessarily reduces the treatise and philosophical narration, but the characters, psychological passage, surreal trials, and demand that Harry learn humor remain Hesse's.

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