Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933)

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse is a German horror film first released in 1933, directed by Fritz Lang.  The film stars Otto Wernicke, Oscar Beregi Sr., Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gustav Diessl and Wera Liessem.  It has also been released under the title: The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


Disgraced cop Hofmeister tries to redeem himself by uncovering a counterfeiting operation.  Before he can pass his findings on to Inspector Lohmann, he is cornered by his enemies and driven mad.  Lohmann’s investigation leads him to a lunatic asylum which is housing Dr Mabuse, a once notorious criminal mastermind.  For the past ten years, Mabuse has made no attempt to communicate but has recently started writing copious notes calling for a criminal reign of terror.  Then he dies, suddenly.  But the spate of crimes continues unabated.  It is as if Mabuse’s influence lives on.  And indeed it does, for his soul has entered the body of Professor Baum, the respectable head of the asylum.  It is Baum who now directs Mabuse’s minions in their criminal exploits.  Can nothing stop the murderous schemes of the evil Mabuse...?

After his groundbreaking crime-thriller M , German director Fritz Lang went on to explore the possibilities offered by this new genre more fully in Das Testament des Dr Mabuse .  The film brings together the realism of M , with a close interest in police methods of investigation, and the expressionist fantasy style of Lang’s earlier films.  This is an effective suspense thriller, very reminiscent of Hitchcock’s pre-war English films, but it also has the character of classic horror films such as Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920).   The film is a sequel to Lang’s 1922 silent classic Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (aka Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler), with Rudolf Klein-Rogge once more playing the role of the sinister master of crime, Dr Mabuse.

What is perhaps most striking about Das Testament des Dr Mabuse is its scale and sophistication.  Not only does it qualify as a masterpiece on artistic grounds (some of its imagery is the stuff of film legend), but it is by far and away the most ambitious dramatic thriller of its time, thanks to some extraordinary action sequences (which includes one of cinema’s most imaginative car chases).   Lang uses sound almost as effectively as he uses image to tell his story and create an unsettling mood of paranoia and anticipation.  This is most evident in the spine-chilling opening which reveals what resembles a workshop in Hell, a scene that leads into a harrowing chase sequence.

The film then suddenly switches to something far more mundane as Inspector Lohmann (last seen in M) begins his investigation and the plot is gradually developed.   To hold our interest, Lang puts in a subplot involving one of Mabuse’s henchmen and his girlfriend – a simple yet effective way of bringing some humanity into what would otherwise have been a pretty emotionally arid affair.  Just when we think it’s all going to be standard thriller, things take a darker, more sinister turn, and the supernatural elements which were suggested in the earlier part of the film resurface.  In true expressionist fashion, Lang subverts normality and transforms a conventional thriller into a bizarre fantasy nightmare.  It’s a world where anything can happen and the happy outcome is far from assured.

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse is significant in that it is the last occasion when Fritz Lang would use the expressionist style so overtly.  (His subsequent black and white films are far closer to American film noir than German expressionism, although the latter is clearly a progression of the former.)  Whilst his approach here is far less stylised than in earlier German expressionist films, Lang’s use of high contrast photography, confined shadowy interiors and some spectacular uses of superposition is extraordinarily effective.  Not only do these emphasise the unnatural threat posed by the film’s villain but they also highlight the vulnerability and heroism of those who decide to take a stand against him.

This was the last film that Fritz Lang made in Germany before opting for voluntary exile (first in France, then in the United States) to avoid having to work as an instrument of the Nazi regime.  It’s possible to read into Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse various anti-Nazi messages – there are some very easily parallels between Mabuse and Hitler, and Mabuse’s ambitions for a world in which all men are robbed of individual thought has an unmistakable Nietzschesque ring to it.  It’s hardly surprising that the film was immediately banned in Germany and very nearly destroyed.

An inferior French version of the film was made by Lang at the same time as the German version, with a cast of French actors.  Another version of the film was distributed in America in the 1950s, cut from the available German print and titled The Crimes of Dr. Mabuse.  Having existed in many years in a shortened form, the film was restored in 2000 to almost its original runtime by the German Film Institute, allowing us to appreciate what is easily one of Fritz Lang’s greatest films.

© James Travers 2006

           

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Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse is a rare combination of detective story and science-fiction, where the fantastic world is created by a super-human logical mind, who, even though dead, can still dominate people.  Old devices and new ones operate in Fritz Lang’s films.  The pathos of melodramatic silent cinema continues to invade this, his second sound film, especially in the love scenes. Lang’s lasting fascination for technology (fundamental to Metropolis), is shown here already at the beginning: the noise of a machine in the clandestine counterfeiting money lab that shakes the objects in an adjacent room.  A rope hanging on the wall seems to announce the story of crime and punishment, where the police inspector will rationally pursue a criminal who is not really of this world.  The chase at the end of the movie could be an antecedent for fatal car sequences in subsequent pictures: at the end of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, for instance, or Chabrol’s The Butcher.  A car detained because the driver is shot anticipates a similar ending in Polanski’s Chinatown.   Lang was a director admired more by his professional colleagues than his spectators, due, among other things, to his thorough composition of each scene, and the management of details that at first sight could be interpreted as merely ornamental, but afterwards are revealed to be important instruments of the action, like the handle of the door of Dr. Baum’s study, which has another function besides the obvious one of opening or closing the door.   Fritz Lang has examined and recreated the world with the perceptive but bounded monocle of his art.

Adam Gai (Israel) 

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