Fritz Lang (1890 - 1976)
Fritz Lang is the cinema's master
portrayer of the dark and sinister. Hitchcock surprised audiences by
having exciting happenings in the everyday, Lang's films have an other
worldly atmosphere throughout, he wasn't good at portraying anything
resembling real life, even his Westerns like The Return of Frank James
(1940) and Rancho Notorious (1953) have little of the cosy familiarity
of that genre. He was quite a Germanic solemn director whose visual
flair is probably unrivalled but at times his characters fail to touch
the heart and his attempts at humour are usually disastrous. Although
he made films in other genres Lang was probably best known for dark
thrillers, he was an important link between German Expressionism and
Film Noir making excellent examples of both two decades apart.
Expressionism informed much German art in the Weimar period after World War I, a reaction against the crumbling German economy, authority and realism. It was a style steeped in pessimism, despair and alienation. It was against this cultural background that Lang began his directing career.
He was probably at his most sylistically influential in his German films of the Twenties starting with Der Mude Tod (Destiny) (1921), the two part psychological suspense thriller Dr Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and another two part film Die Nibelungen (1924) based on the 13th century Germanic cycle which also inspired Wagner's opera cycle.
Metropolis (1926) with its incredible futuristic sets is probably the director's most famous film though it wasn't one of his own favourites. He completed the silent era by returning to science fiction with Woman On The Moon (1928) and the psychological thriller with Spione (Spies) (1929). Lang's first talkie M (1931) was probably his greatest film and used sound brilliantly, the final confrontation of the child murderer played by Peter Lorre is one of his greatest sequences. The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1932) was fairly obviously anti-Nazi and was banned by the Third Reich. Goebbels though neglected to mention the film when he offered Lang the job of heading Nazi cinema (Hitler had apparently been impressed by Metropolis (1926)), the director rejected this poisoned chalice by fleeing the country the next day.
For twenty years Lang worked in America, his best American film there was the first Fury (1936), a powerful anti-lynching melodrana starring Spencer Tracy. His American films were a bit more realistic than his German work even though his basic concerns remained the same, he tended to work in the studio rather than on location and got a reputation as a hard taskmaster among actors.
Lang returned to Germany but his final films were disappointing, he was highly praised by the writers of the Cahiers du Cinema in the Fifties and Sixties as one of the great film directors.
Expressionism informed much German art in the Weimar period after World War I, a reaction against the crumbling German economy, authority and realism. It was a style steeped in pessimism, despair and alienation. It was against this cultural background that Lang began his directing career.
He was probably at his most sylistically influential in his German films of the Twenties starting with Der Mude Tod (Destiny) (1921), the two part psychological suspense thriller Dr Mabuse the Gambler (1922) and another two part film Die Nibelungen (1924) based on the 13th century Germanic cycle which also inspired Wagner's opera cycle.
Metropolis (1926) with its incredible futuristic sets is probably the director's most famous film though it wasn't one of his own favourites. He completed the silent era by returning to science fiction with Woman On The Moon (1928) and the psychological thriller with Spione (Spies) (1929). Lang's first talkie M (1931) was probably his greatest film and used sound brilliantly, the final confrontation of the child murderer played by Peter Lorre is one of his greatest sequences. The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1932) was fairly obviously anti-Nazi and was banned by the Third Reich. Goebbels though neglected to mention the film when he offered Lang the job of heading Nazi cinema (Hitler had apparently been impressed by Metropolis (1926)), the director rejected this poisoned chalice by fleeing the country the next day.
For twenty years Lang worked in America, his best American film there was the first Fury (1936), a powerful anti-lynching melodrana starring Spencer Tracy. His American films were a bit more realistic than his German work even though his basic concerns remained the same, he tended to work in the studio rather than on location and got a reputation as a hard taskmaster among actors.
Lang returned to Germany but his final films were disappointing, he was highly praised by the writers of the Cahiers du Cinema in the Fifties and Sixties as one of the great film directors.
Written content copyright Derek McLellan,2005.
Copyright © The Fedora Chronicles
Fritz Lang image from
http://www.dga.org/news/images_ezine/oct-03/lang2-full.html