Das Indische Grabmal (1959) - film review

Fleeing from Chandra, the Maharajah of Eschnapur, architect Harald Berger and his lover Seetha lose their way in the desert.  Death seems assured, but they are discovered by a party of passing travellers.  Recaptured by Chandra’s men, Berger is imprisoned and Seetha coerced into marrying Chandra.  Meanwhile, Chandra’s real enemy, his ambitious brother, is about to seize the throne...

Das Indische Grabmal is the dreary sequel to Der Tiger von Eschnapur, Fritz Lang’s misguided and flawed excursion into the exotic adventure genre.  Although the films were popular in Germany when they were released, they now come across as absurd and tedious, memorable only for their risibly bad action scenes that are played with virtually no conviction and an almost total lack of realism.  Whilst the pedestrian storyline is undoubtedly the film’s weakest point, you can’t help cringing at some atrocious acting and kitsch sets that look too obviously like painted polystyrene.  Only in a few sequences (notably the impressive but all too brief location scenes) do we get a glimpse of the great cineaste that Friz Lang was in earlier years.  After this spectacle of the absurd, Lang managed to partly redeem himself in his final film, the cult classic Die 1000 Augen des Dr Mabuse.

© James Travers 2007

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