Fritz Lang

1.2 Expressionist lms: the Weimar years

(19181933)

Friedrich Christian Anton Fritz Lang (December

5, 1890 August 2, 1976) was a German-Austrian lmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional lm producer and
actor.[1] One of the best known migrs from Germanys
school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the Master of
Darkness by the British Film Institute.[2]

Langs writing stint was brief, as he soon started to

work as a director at the German lm studio Ufa, and
later Nero-Film, just as the Expressionist movement was
building. In this rst phase of his career, Lang alternated between lms such as Der Mde Tod (The Weary
Death) and popular thrillers such as Die Spinnen (The
Spiders), combining popular genres with Expressionist
techniques to create an unprecedented synthesis of popular entertainment with art cinema.

His most famous lms include the groundbreaking

Metropolis (the worlds most expensive lm at the time of
its release), and M, made before he moved to the United
States, which is considered a precursor to the lm noir
genre.

1
1.1

In 1920, he met his future wife, the writer and actress

Thea von Harbou. She and Lang co-wrote all of his
movies from 1921 through 1933, including Dr. Mabuse,
der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse the Gambler; 1922), which ran
for over four hours in two parts in the original version and
was the rst in the Dr. Mabuse trilogy, the ve-hour Die
Nibelungen (1924), the famous 1927 lm Metropolis, the
science ction lm Woman in the Moon (1929), and the
1931 classic, M, his rst "talking" picture.

Life and career

Early life

Lang was born in Vienna as the second son of Anton

Lang (18601940),[3] an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline Paula Lang ne
Schlesinger (18641920). Fritz Lang was baptized on
December 28, 1890, at the Schottenkirche in Vienna.[4]
Langs parents were of Moravian descent and practicing
Roman Catholics. His parents (his mother was a Jewish
born converted Roman Catholic) took their religion seriously and were dedicated to raising Fritz as a Catholic.
Lang frequently had Catholic-inuenced themes in his
lms.[5][6] Late in life, he described himself as born
Catholic.[7]

After nishing school, Lang briey attended the

Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil
engineering and eventually switched to art. In 1910 he Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou in their Berlin at, 1923 or
left Vienna to see the world, traveling throughout Europe 1924
and Africa and later Asia and the Pacic area. In 1913,
Considered by many lm scholars to be his masterpiece,
he studied painting in Paris, France.
At the outbreak of World War I, Lang returned to Vienna M is a disturbing story of a child murderer (Peter Lorre in
and volunteered for military service in the Austrian his rst starring role) who is hunted down and brought to
army and fought in Russia and Romania, where he was rough justice by Berlins criminal underworld. M remains
wounded three times. While recovering from his injuries a powerful work; it was remade in 1951 by Joseph Losey,
and shell shock in 1916, he wrote some scenarios and but this version had little impact on audiences, and has
ideas for lms. He was discharged from the army with the become harder to see than the original lm.
rank of lieutenant in 1918 and did some acting in the Viennese theater circuit for a short time before being hired
as a writer at Decla, Erich Pommer's Berlin-based production company.

During the climactic nal scene in M, Lang allegedly

threw Peter Lorre down a ight of stairs in order to
give more authenticity to Lorres battered look. Lang,
who was known for being hard to work with, epitomized
1

LIFE AND CAREER

the stereotype of the tyrannical German lm director, a Langs American lms were often compared unfavorably
type embodied also by Erich von Stroheim and Otto Pre- to his earlier works by contemporary critics, but the reminger. His wearing a monocle added to the stereotype. strained Expressionism of these lms is now seen as inIn the lms of his German period, Lang produced a co- tegral to the emergence and evolution of American genre
herent oeuvre that established the characteristics later at- cinema, lm noir in particular.
tributed to lm noir, with its recurring themes of psycho- One of his most famous lms noir is the police drama
The Big Heat (1953), noted for its uncompromising brulogical conict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity.
At the end of 1932, Lang started lming The Testament tality, especially for a scene in which Lee Marvin throws
of Dr. Mabuse. Adolf Hitler came to power in January scalding coee on Gloria Grahame's face. As Langs vi1933, and by March 30, the new regime banned it as an sual style simplied, in part due to the constraints of the
incitement to public disorder. Testament is sometimes Hollywood studio system, his worldview became increasdeemed an anti-Nazi lm as Lang had put phrases used ingly pessimistic, culminating in the cold, geometric style
of his last American lms, While the City Sleeps (1956)
by the Nazis into the mouth of the title character.
and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).
Lang was worried about the advent of the Nazi regime,
partly because of his Jewish heritage,[8] whereas his wife
and screen writer Thea von Harbou had started to sympathize with the Nazis in the early 1930s and joined the
NSDAP in 1932. They soon divorced. Langs fears
would be realized following his departure from Austria,
as under the Nuremberg Laws he would be identied as
a Jew even though his mother was a converted Roman
Catholic, and he was raised as such.

1.3

Emigration

Shortly afterwards, Lang left Germany. According to

Lang, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called Lang
to his oces to inform him that The Testament of Dr
Mabuse was being banned but that he was nevertheless
so impressed by Langs abilities as a lmmaker (especially Metropolis), he was oering Lang a position as the
head of German lm studio UFA. Lang had stated that
it was during this meeting that he had decided to leave
for Paris but that the banks had closed by the time the
meeting was over. Lang has stated that he ed that very
evening.[9][10][11]
Lang left Germany in 1934 and moved to Paris[12] after his marriage to Thea von Harbou, who stayed behind, Fritz Lang (1969)
ended in 1933.[13]
In Paris, Lang lmed a version of Ferenc Molnr's Liliom, Finding it dicult to nd congenial production condistarring Charles Boyer. This was Langs only lm in tions and backers in Hollywood, particularly as his health
French (not counting the French version of Testament). declined with age, Lang contemplated retirement. The
German producer Artur Brauner had expressed interest in
He then went to the United States.[12]
remaking The Indian Tomb (a story that Lang had developed in the 1920s which had ultimately been directed by
Joe May),.[14] So Lang returned to Germany,[15] to make
1.4 Hollywood career (19361957)
his Indian Epic (consisting of The Tiger of EschnaIn Hollywood, Lang signed rst with MGM Studios. His pur and The Indian Tomb). Following the production,
rst American lm was the crime drama Fury, which Brauner was preparing for a remake of The Testament of
starred Spencer Tracy as a man who is wrongly accused of Dr. Mabuse when Lang approached him with the idea of
a crime and nearly killed when a lynch mob sets re to the adding a new original lm to the series. The result was
jail where he is awaiting trial. Lang became a naturalized The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), whose succitizen of the United States in 1939. He made twenty- cess led to a series of new Mabuse lms, which were prothree features in his 20-year American career, working in duced by Brauner (including the remake of The Testament
a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood, of Dr. Mabuse), though Lang did not direct any of the seand occasionally producing his lms as an independent. quels. The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse can be viewed

3
as the marriage between the directors early experiences 3 References
with expressionist techniques in Germany with the spartan style already visible in his late American work. Lang Notes
was approaching blindness during the production,[16] and
it was his nal project as director. In 1963, he appeared
[1] Obituary Variety, August 4, 1976, page 63.
as himself in Jean-Luc Godard's lm Contempt.
[2] Fritz Lang: Master of Darkness. British Film Institute.
Retrieved January 22, 2009.

1.5

Death and legacy

While his career had ended without fanfare, his American and later German works were championed by the
critics of the Cahiers du cinma, such as Franois Truffaut and Jacques Rivette. Truaut wrote that Lang, especially in his American career, was greatly underappreciated by cinema historians and critics who deny him
any genius when he 'signs spy movies ... war movies ... or
simple thrillers.[17] Filmmakers that were inuenced by
his work include Jacques Rivette and William Friedkin.

[3] Architekturzentrum Wien. Architektenlexikon.at. Retrieved March 6, 2010.

[4] Vienna, Schottenpfarre, baptismal register Tom. 1890,
fol. 83.
[5] Patrick Mcgilligan (1998). Fritz Lang: The Nature of the
Beast. St. Martins Press. p. 477. ISBN 9780312194543.
In the nal years of his life, Lang had written, in German,
a 20- to 30-page short story called The Wandering Jew.
It was a kind of fable about a Wandering Jew, according to Pierre Rissient. After Langs death, Rissient asked
Latte [Fritz Langs third wife] if he might arrange for its
publication. No, she replied, because Fritz would want
to be known as an atheist.
[6] Tom Gunning, British Film Institute (2000). The lms
of Fritz Lang: allegories of vision and modernity. British
Film Institute. p. 7. ISBN 9780851707426. Lang, however, immediately cautions Prokosh, 'Jerry, don't forget,
the gods have not created men, man has created the gods.'
[7] Lang, Fritz. Fritz Lang: Interviews. p. 163.
[8] The religion of director Fritz Lang. Retrieved January
22, 2009.
[9] Michel Ciment: Fritz Lang, Le meurtre et la loi, Ed. Gallimard, Collection Dcouvertes, 04/11/2003. The author
thinks that this meeting, in fact, never happened.
[10] Havis, Allan (2008), Cult Films: Taboo and Transgression, University Press of America, Inc., page 10
[11] Thomson, David (2012) The Big Screen: the story of
the movies New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN
9780374191894 pages 64-65 Langs version suspect
[12] David Kalat, DVD Commentary for The Testament of Dr.
Mabuse. New York City, United States: The Criterion
Collection (2004)

Grave of Fritz Lang, at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills

Lang died in 1976 and was interred in the Forest Lawn

Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.[18]

Filmography

Main article: Fritz Lang lmography

[13] Hughes, Howard (2014). Outer Limits: The Filmgoers

Guide to the Great Science-ction Films. NY: I.B.Tauris.
p. 1. ISBN 1780761651. Retrieved 22 January 2015.
[14] Plass, Ulrich (Winter 2009). Dialectic of Regression:
Theador W Adorno and Fritz Lang. Telos 149: 131.
[15] Gold, H. L. (1959-12). Of All Things. Galaxy. p. 6.
Retrieved 15 June 2014. Check date values in: |date=
(help)
[16] Robert Bloch. In Memoriam: Fritz Lang in Blochs Out
of My Head. Cambridge MA: NESFA Press, 1986, 171
80

[17] Dixon, Wheeler Winston (1993). Early Film Criticism of

Francois Truaut. Indiana University Press. pp. 4142.
ISBN 0253113431.
[18] Krebs, Albin (August 3, 1976). Fritz Lang, Film Director Noted for 'M,' Dead at 85. New York Times. Retrieved January 22, 2009. Friz Lang, the Viennese-born
lm director best known for M, a terrifying study of a
child killer, and for other tales of suspense, died yesterday
in Los Angeles at the age of 85. He had been ill for some
time, and had been inactive professionally for a decade.

Further reading
Michaux, Agns. 'Je les chasserai jusqu'au bout du
monde jusqu' ce qu'ils en crvent; Paris: Editions
1, 1997; ISBN 2-86391-933-4
Friedrich, Otto. City of Nets: A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s; New York: Harper & Row,
1986; ISBN 0-06-015626-0 (See e.g. pp. 4546
for anecdotes revealing Langs arrogance.)
McGilligan, Patrick. Fritz Lang: The Nature of the
Beast; New York: St. Martins Press, 1997; ISBN
0-312-13247-6
Schnauber, Cornelius. Fritz Lang in Hollywood;
Wien: Europaverlag, c1986; ISBN 3-203-50953-9
(in German)
Youngkin, Stephen (2005). The Lost One: A Life of
Peter Lorre. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 08131-2360-7. Contains interviews with Lang and
a discussion of the making of the lm M

External links
Fritz Lang at the Internet Movie Database
Fritz Lang Bibliography (via UC Berkeley Media
Resources Center)
Senses of Cinema Biographie
Fritz Lang at lmportal.de
Photos of Fritz Lang and cast of Hangmen Also Die
by Ned Scott

EXTERNAL LINKS

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