Director Paul Wegener, who co-directed the film with Carl Boese and co-wrote the script with Henrik Galeen based on Gustav Meyrink's 1915 novel,[1] stars as the titular creature, a being in Jewish folklore created from clay.

After managing to remove the amulet, he reads that upcoming astrological movements will cause Astaroth to possess the Golem and attack its creators.

After Loew has left, the assistant promises Miriam that he will never tell anyone of her forbidden affair with Florian and asks for forgiveness for his actions in return.

Rejoicing and praying, they carry it back into the ghetto, the Star of David appearing on the screen as the film ends.

[8] In 1919, Wegener announced plans for Alraune und der Golem, uniting the two folklore characters in one film.

Architect and designer Hans Poelzig created the film's scenery as a highly stylised interpretation of the medieval Jewish ghetto of Prague.

According to Spiro, the film "sold out the Berlin Premiere at Ufa-Palast am Zoo on October 29, 1920, and played to full theaters for two months straight.

[9] Despite the hot summer, the film screened to full theaters on a daily basis, multiple times a day.

[10] The Golem is in the public domain[11] and over the years has been released many times in poor quality, unrestored black and white versions.

[11] In 2000, a second restoration was carried out by the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna at the laboratories of L'Immagine Ritrovata in Italy and licensed by Transit Film.

It was given an ensemble score by Aljoscha Zimmermann and released on DVD in Germany (Universum Film, 2004), the UK (Eureka, 2003), France (mk2, 2006), Spain (Divisa, 2003) and the US (Kino Lorber, 2002).

[citation needed] A third, fully digital restoration, this time based on the original domestic negative, was completed by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in 2017 and is available on DCP.

[13] It was given three unique scores and released on Blu-ray and DVD in Germany (Universum Film, 2019), the UK (Masters of Cinema, 2019) and the US (Kino Lorber, 2020).

The New York Times' 1921 review praised its "exceptional acting" and "expressive settings", the latter of which was compared to those of another early German expressionist horror film, Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

[17] In the following years since The Golem's release and rediscovery it has been considered an early classic in horror cinema, and one of the first films to introduce the concept of the "man-made monster".

[21] The Castle, Newcastle screened the film in 2016, again with a live soundtrack from Noize Choir, this time accompanied by artists Mariam Rezaei and Adam Denton from the Old Police House.