"M" - Fritz Lang (1931)

M, filmed in only six weeks, is far and away Fritz Lang’s most popular film and his own personal favourite. It tells the story of a pathological child-killer, superbly played by Peter Lorre. The story has three main phases.

1. In the first phase the situation of conflict is established. There has been a series of gruesome child murders that have gripped the city (said to be a city of four million people, suggesting Berlin, but the real events that inspired this story took place in Düsseldorf). The police are combing the city for everything they can to find on the killer, but there are no clues. As the frustrated police increase the intensity of their search, they continually raid all the houses of prostitution and known gambling parlours, interfering with “business as usual” for the criminal underworld.
2. In phase 2, the criminal underworld decides that they, themselves, must capture the killer in order to get the police off their backs. This stage of the film tracks the parallel activities of the two groups, the police and the criminal underworld, as they work separately to hunt down the killer. Most people find this clever back-and-forth switching between parallel scenes showing the two contrasting groups working towards the same goal to be the most intriguing and satisfying aspect of the film.
3. In the third phase, the killer is cornered and eventually captured by the criminal underworld. They proceed to hold a mock trial, which seems to have about the same degree of "fair hearing" court procedures as those conducted by the government authorities. It is here that the killer, played well by Lorre, finally breaks down in a dramatic confession of his guilt.

The killer, Hans Beckert, is presented in the film with a certain amount of sympathy for the way in which he is the helpless victim of his own pathology. Because of Lang’s sensitive treatment of the killer, his characteristic fatalistic development of events gains a rare tragic intensity. This brings out a difference between Alfred Hitchcock and Lang. Hitchcock’s dramatic tension emphasises the suspense, while Lang’s emphasises the fatality of character. Lorre, as the culprit, squirms in a relentlessly encircling web. The killer, tracked down and caught like a dangerous animal, is presented as unable to check his sick urges. After each of his crimes he remembers nothing of the details and his urges. His attitude is one of utter disbelief and sorrow. With M, Lang gives a new dimension to the “dual personality” theme which has so often fascinated the German mind.

Stylistically, M is especially significant in several respects. It marks a transition for Lang as a director. Although he still uses people and objects expressionistically, he has opted, on the whole, for a more realistic depiction of character and events. Cardboard characters, monumental sets, and the grouping and movement of crowds no longer have such a complete monopoly on Lang’s attention as they did in Metropolis.

Also M was Lang’s first sound film. He immediately incorporated sound not only as an additive feature but as a separate, independent element. Long before the audience gets a first view of the main character, they hear him talking to a young girl or whistling a melody from Grieg’ (Peer Gynt Suite, Hall of the Mountain King”,) which remains his “leitmotiv” throughout the movie. Sound is also often used to tie up different elements; while the sound of one scene lingers, the camera moves through a sequence of different, but related takes. Possessed of a quickness in learning technique, Lang became a master of the use of sound in his first attempt.

Throughout the film, there is an interesting subtext conveyed by presenting the parallel activities of the police and the underworld. Both forces are led by charismatic leaders: Inspector Karl Lohmann for the police and the ruthless Schränker (himself wanted for three murders) for the underworld. Because both forces are highly organised and are undertaking the hunt in parallel, many viewers think that Lang is representing the two forces as essentially and morally equivalent. But I don’t hold to that opinion. The two forces actually represent two competing and contrasting world views, and this may have represented a commentary about contemporary German society. Throughout the film the police attempt to use science and technology in order to hunt down the killer, Beckert. They represent the Western rationalist view, including the notion that a psychotic criminal is, himself, the victim of some forces outside of his control and needs medical care, rather than punishment. On the other side, Schränker and the underworld use more traditional social operations to track down the killer. For example, they organise all the beggars in the city to follow every single school child as they walk home from school. They can be seen to represent more traditional forces of social control that are closer to mob rule than the rule-driven mechanisms of the police. This mode of operation can sometimes be more efficient in the eradication of evil-doers, but is it desirable? Their leader, Schränker, is simply the most ruthless and cunning among them, even resorting to torture; whereas Police Inspector Lohmann is more cerebral and reliant on rational procedures of evidence gathering. In the end Lohmann succeeds in locating the whereabouts of the mock trial and just barely halting what would have been a gangland-style execution. Justice has prevailed. Even today, though, viewers are likely to be divided on what really should be the ultimate fate of Beckert.
★★★½

"Siegfried" - Fritz Lang (1924)

“Fritz Lang’s cinema is the cinema of the nightmare, the fable, and the philosophical dissertation. His films take place in a closed world, but their formal brilliance and intellectual conception are incontestable.”

– Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema

Siegfried (Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, 1922-24) is the first part of Lang’s titanic Niebelungen (part two was The Vengeance of Kriemhild, 1924). Thea von Harbou’s script was not taken from Wagner’s Lay of the Nibelung, but from the original ancient myths and so differs vastly from the opera. Often compared to Destiny (1921), Siegfried’s stylized ritual was designed to stress, in the words of Thea von Harbou, “the inexorability with which the first guilt entails the last atonement.” The film was said to be the ultimate expression of the German national character, and, for this reason, its stunning effects were blatantly copied in Nazi propaganda films, vide Triumph of the Will (1935). Paul Rotha, citing Destiny and Siegfried as the supreme examples of the German art film, noted in particular that the “sheer pictorial beauty of structural architectured [of] Siegfried has seldom been equaled.”

The following comments on the film are those of Siegfried Kracauer (From Caligari to Hitler):

This Fate-conditioned story materializes through scenes which seem to be staged after decorative paintings of a bygone period. Lang new why, instead of resorting to Wagner’s picturesque opera style or to some kind of psychological pantomime, he relied upon the spell of such decorative compositions’ they symbolize Fate. The compulsion Fate exerts is aesthetically mirrored by the rigorous incorporation of all structural elements into a framework of lucid forms. To heighten the impression of pictorial unity, extensive use is made of simple, large and solemn architectural structures dominating the scene. As if the inherent ornamental characters of these compositions were not sufficient, primitive ornaments cover the walls, curtains, ceiling, and costumes. Frequently the players themselves form ornamental figures.

[Siegfried] unfolds in lingering scenes that have all the qualities of stills. Their slow procession, which characterizes the mythic realm as a static one, is calculated to draw attention to the action proper. This intrinsic action does not coincide with the succession of treacheries and murders, but is to be found in the development of smoldering instincts and imperceptibly growing passions. It is an all but vegetative process through which Fate realizes itself.

★★★

"Metropolis" - Fritz Lang (1927)

After the success of his “Niebelungen” films (1922-24), director Fritz Lang was given virtual freedom to make Metropolis (1927). The film was completed after eighteen months and the participation of 36,000 people – at unprecedented expense. Advertised as the “costliest and most ambitious picture ever screened” in Europe, it opened in Berlin on January 10, 1927 as a major social event, attracting cabinet members, diplomats, and literary and social figures alike. Despite the intense interest it stirred, it failed to recoup its investment. From the beginning reviews were mixed, but reactions were invariably strong, whether favourable or not. It has been criticized for its insufficient development of characters, naive attempt at social comment, and simplistic melodramatic movement of plot. True, there are moments when one is reminded of Flash Gordon, but as a testament to one of the most fertile imaginations nurtured during a time of rarely paralleled creative outpouring, it is an important, if flawed, example. Its unmistakable virtue lies in its visual presentation, especially its grandiosely conceived sets – certainly a landmark in German studio production.

Fritz Lang originally studied civil engineering at the Technical University of Vienna before switching to art and architecture. Shortly thereafter he studied painting in Paris. Given free rein, Lang unleashed the full force of his visual predilections in Metropolis. Paul M. Jensen, in The Cinema of Fritz Lang had these further observations on this score:

The settings, particularly the workers’ homes, are stylised into mere forms with black rectangles for windows. A number of these were models, which were combined with live actors through the Schufftan process. Invented by photographer Eugene Schufftan, it used a camera with two lenses which focused two separate images onto a single strip of film; this allowed actors and models to be recorded together without resorting to double exposure or laboratory work. The designs are Expressionistic, but the architect in Lang rebelled against the surface distortion and linear anarchy of Caligari’s use of the style. Instead, his settings are solid and substantial, extending in more than two dimensions. Their design is regular, controlled and organised, dwelling on simplicity rather than clutter.

A painter’s eye for composition and staging is again revealed in Lang’s direction. Any selection of the best examples tends to be determined by memory and subjective inclination, but particularly effective are the bearing of injured workers in silhouette past Frederson, the shots of children running along the street with the water’s edge flowing a few seconds behind them, and the tent of electricity surrounding the robot during the creation scene. Only in Die Niebelungen, and to a lesser extend in Der Müde Tod, did Lang allow his painter’s eye and architect’s pen to create as much excitement.

★★★½ 

"Destiny" - Fritz Lang (1921)

Destiny (Der Müde Tod, 1921), along with Fritz Lang’s succeeding effort Siegfried (1924), stands as one of the most essentially Expressionistic German films. The story, part legend, part fairy tale, is primarily a dream-vision of a young woman who is searching for her missing lover. The dream consists of three elaborately conceived episodes involving the young lovers as they try to elude the murderous designs of a cruel tyrant, who is always aided by the Angel of Death. This three-stories-within-a-story compositional device was later adopted in Waxworks (1924).

Lang had been the original directorial choice for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but was forced to decline due to other commitments. For Destiny he chose as two of his art designers, Walter Rohrig and Hermann Warm, both of whom had designed the sets for Caligari. Together with Robert Herlth they arranged such a memorable cinematographic decor, that compared to it, in the words of Lotte Eisner (The Haunted Screen), “the sets of Caligari appear reduced to purely arabesques, totally lacking the magic of chiaroscuro.” Lang’s use of lighting was as innovative as the original ideas of Max Reinhardt. Both realized the great extent to which light sculpts and transforms space. After Destiny, the technique of emphasizing the relief and outline of an object became standard. It became almost an article of faith to have sets lit from the base so as to transform and deform the banal shapes of tings by means of unexpected lines – or to have enormous spotlights to one side of the set, so as to use the projecting surfaces for strident shadow effects. Siegfried Kracauer (From Caligari to Hitler), recollecting these effects, expressed the following:

The long-lived power of DESTINY’s imagery is the more amazing as all had to be done with the immovable, hand-cranked camera, and night shots were still impossible. These pictorial visions are so precise that they sometimes evoke th eillusion of being intrinsically real. A “drawing brought to life”, the Venetian episode resuscitates genuine Renaissance spirit through such scenes as the carnival procession – silhouettes staggering over a bridge – and the splendid cockfighting radiating bright and cruel Southern passions in the mode of Stendhal or Nietzsche.

The environment, unlike some of the purely decorative films, is crucial to the meaning. Fate, holding all of the characters in its inevitability, becomes the main actor, and manifests itself in the settings. Even Death, who appears almost sympathetic to the appeal from the girl (the German title of the film means “the tired Death”), is compelled by Fate to carry on with his grisly work. It is not surprising that such thematic content has interested modern political historians.
★★★½ 

Fritz Lang

About Fritz Lang:

• Michael E. Grost, "Fritz Lang", Classic Film and Television

Films of Fritz Lang:

• Destiny - Fritz Lang (1921)
• Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Fritz Lang (1922)
• Siegfried - Fritz Lang (1924)
• Metropolis - Fritz Lang (1927)
• M - Fritz Lang (1931)

"Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler" - Fritz Lang (1922)

Fritz Lang, one of the true geniuses of the cinema, has been one of the most successful as well. Trained as an architect and heavily influenced by the new techniques in lighting developed by max Reinhardt, Lang’s films are the most consistently pleasing of the German films to modern audiences.

For the script of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Ein Bild der Zeit (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, 1922), Lang collaborated with his wife, Thea von Harbou. Despite the fantastical nature of this spy yarn, Lang isisted then, and so did Berlin critics, that the film was a document about the current world. Mabuse, like Caligari – an unscrupulous master mind, heads a gang of killers and criminals, all of whom he has u nder his power by hypnosis. Mabuse successfully evades identification by impersonating a psychiatrist, a drunken sailor, and a financial magnate. When Mabuse is finally apprehended by the forces of Virtue, he goes mad. The obvious parallel in this film to the Nazi criminality h as been frequently overemphasized, but the plot does suggest a kind of sociological milieu given to extremes. At least the plot does show how closely tyranny and chaos are interrelated. Unfortunately, however, it, like many other German films of this times, seems to present either demonic tyranny or chaos as the nly two possibilities.

Lang’s skill in the use of lighting and his concern for detail and authenticity are apparent from the first sequences. An example is the attack of the man bearing the contract in the train. On three occasions three characters consult their watches in three different places. Step by step, the intrigue moves forward, and the editing emphasized the quasi-simultaneity of the actions. As a young man, Sergei Eisenstein was so dazzled by the editing in this film that he obtain a copy of it for his own analysis.

Lang used Expressionism as a tool for his own creation of moods. In many ways he prefigured Hitchcock with his comic touches, his ability to introduce characters with a few deft strokes, and his overall flair for the “thriller”.

Attention has been dranw to the effectiveness of Lang’s shot wherein Mabuse’s face, a small bright spot ona black background is suddenly projected forward at frightening speed, until the cruel visage fills the screen. This technique was also used, in a modified way, in Murnau’s Nosteratu.
★★★