Vier um die Frau (1921) - film review

In search of an expensive present for his wife Florence, wealthy stockbroker Harry Yquem visits a shady jewel market frequented by crooks and other undesirables.  Here, he sees a man whom he recognises from a photograph in his wife’s possession.  Suspecting that the man, William Krafft, is his wife’s lover, Yquem follows him to the hotel where he is staying.  He writes a letter in his wife’s handwriting inviting Krafft to his house so that he can confront him and extract a confession.  What Yquem does not know is that Krafft has a twin brother, Werner, who has just returned to town  with the intention of renewing an old love affair with Florence.  Another man, Meunier, knows the truth of Florence’s past indiscretions and intends to exploit this for his own gain...

Fritz Lang’s second collaboration with screenwriter (and wife-to-be) Thea von Harbou is this frenetically paced thriller-melodrama.  With its narrative complexity, moody cinematography and razor-sharp editing. Vier um die Frau (a.k.a. Four Around a Woman) presages Lang’s later crime masterpieces  Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), Spione (1928) and M (1930) but is an impressive work in its own right.

Far more sophisticated than Lang’s previous film, Das Wandernde Bild (1920), Vier um die Frau is a scurrilous piece of social satire, in which uncomfortable parallels are drawn between Germany’s upper classes and the unsavoury figures of the underworld, blackmailers, forgers and jewel thieves.  Indeed, the demarcation between these two strata of German society appears hardly to exist at all, a point of view which many of Lang’s compatriots would have shared.

The lightning pace of this film and the torturous plot place great demands on the spectator’s concentration, and you probably have to watch it a second time just to make sense of it.  However, no one can fail to be impressed by the quality of Fritz Lang’s mise-en-scène, which squeezes every last scintilla of dramatic tension and irony from Thea von Harbou’s labyrinthine screenplay. 

An important milestone in Lang’s career, Vier um die Frau was believed to have been lost until a poor quality print was unearthed in 1986 from Cinemateca de Sâo Paulo in Brazil.  Now that the film has been beautifully restored, devotees of early German cinema can appreciate one of Lang’s lesser known achievements, a film that offers tantalising glimpses of his subsequent masterworks.

© James Travers 2010

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