It’s a Grand Centennial of Cinematic Evil! See the Lang/von Harbou Masterpieces, the First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (1922) (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I), and Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (1922, released one month later) with English Subtitles, for Free, and Without Commercial Interruptions, at WEJB/NSU

Re-posted by N.S.

You won’t see these pictures on Red Eddie Muller’s crime movie show!

Fritz Lang (1890-1976) and his second wife, Thea von Harbou (1888-1954), were the greatest creative team in the history of German movies. Lang generally gets too much credit and von Harbou too little because, in addition to him being the director, he was a Jew; and in addition to her being the screenwriter, she was a Nazi.

In Hollywood, there’s an old saying: “The story is king.” However, Hollywood, too, has traditionally treated screenwriters like crap, while treating directors like royalty.

Von Harbou adapted Norbert Jacques’ (1880-1954) popular crime novel, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1920). Jacques said he was inspired to write Mabuse by observing a small-time criminal with big dreams on the ferry traversing the Bodensee (Lake Constance), which is surrounded by Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Eleven pictures, most of them sounding pretty dreadful, were inspired by Jacques’ novel.

Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) has a Wille zur Macht (Nietzsche’s “will to power”), which includes the power to hypnotize people, and make them his slaves. He is also a master of disguise. He creates a rule of chaos in Berlin and beyond (e.g., toppling financial markets, and sending men to their deaths through suicide). Only D.A. von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) has the willpower to stand against him.

Also starring Aud Egede Nissen and Gertrude Welcker.

Part I (released April 27, 1922) runs for two hours and 34 minutes; Part II (released May 26, 1922) runs for one hour and 54 minutes. The two pictures run consecutively.

The Mabuse pictures greatly influenced Akira Kurosawa. When Kurosawa made his Top 100 masterpiece, the police procedural, High and Low (1963), he was chiefly influenced by the police procedural novel, King’s Ransom (1959), and the Mabuse pictures.

King’s Ransom, by Salvatore Lombino, make that Evan Hunter, er, Ed McBain (Lombino wore many masks!) tells of a “perfect crime,” a kidnapping gone wrong from the get-go. The target is a shoe executive who worked his way up from the bottom, learning every job in the factory. Kurosawa completely identified with this figure, having first studied to become an artist, and then, training to become an assistant director, learned every job involved in movie making.

The movie kidnapper, who thinks of himself as a criminal genius, and beyond good and evil, was clearly modeled on Dr. Mabuse.

Lang and Von Harbou may also have influenced the Nolan Brothers’ Batman: The Dark Knight (2008). One recalls Bruce Wayne/Batman’s (Christian Bale) butler, Alfred’s (Michael Caine) explanation that the Joker (Heath Ledger) “just wants to watch the world burn.”

Lang and von Harbou collaborated on 11 pictures between 1920 and 1931:

Das wandernde Bild (The Wandering Image) (1920);

Vier um die Frau (Four Around the Woman) (1921);

Der müde Tod (Destiny/The Weary Death), 1921;

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (1922) (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I);

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II, also 1922 (Dr. Mabuse, Part II, Inferno);

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924);

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924);

Metropolis (1927);

Spione, 1928 (Spies);

Frau im Mond, 1929 Woman in the Moon;

M: Eine Stadt Sucht Einen Mörder (M: A City Searches for a Murderer, 1931); M); and

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse: Herrschaft des Verbrechens (1933), (“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse: Empire of Crime”) (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse) (N.S.: When I saw this picture on West German TV during the early 1980s, apparently the official title was Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, but at the beginning of the picture, the title Herrschaft des Verbrechens flashed on the screen. The concept of an “Empire of Crime” made an indelible impression on me.)

While working with her husband, von Harbou also wrote scripts for the prominent German directors Joe May, Carl Dreyer, and F.W. Murnau.

Von Harbou would research and write the scripts, while Lang would direct. Lang would also give himself a screenwriting credit, but I don’t take those credits seriously. I think he was just looking to create a Fritz Lang genius cult. And if he had been such a brilliant screenwriter, the pictures he directed after he and von Harbou broke up would have been vastly better than they were. Then again, both worked on many pictures after their break-up, none of which could hold a candle to what they had done in their heyday together.

I guess Jews and Nazis were just meant for each other.


Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I/(Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (both 1922)





Part II





Other Complete, Silent Classics Available at WEJB/NSU:

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton's One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director, Co-Starring Jackie Coogan.;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927); and

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), Plus Its Soundtrack Suite.