Film Review
After his successful two-part remake of the Indian saga
Der Tiger von Eschnapur /
Das Indische Grabmal (1959), Fritz
Lang was persuaded by German producer Artur Brauner to direct an
updated sequel to his previous Mabuse thrillers,
Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922)
and
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse
(1933). With his sight failing him, Lang was initially reluctant
to take on the project but he became more enthusiastic about it when he
saw that it would allow him to express his present-day anxieties,
notably with the fragmentation of German society following WWII, the
increase in surveillance methods and the growing threat posed by the
atom bomb. In
Das Testament
des Dr. Mabuse, Lang had likened the fanatical crime lord to
Hitler; in the next film, the ghost of Hitler is still felt, a malign
influence that continues to poison the soul of Germany.
Whilst
Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse
(a.k.a.
The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse)
is by no means as stylistically inspired as Lang's previous two Mabuse
films (both of which are now considered masterpieces of the thriller
genre), it is nonetheless a masterfully crafted film and rates as one
of the director's most entertaining and prophetic films. It is
not only chillingly prescient, predicting the 24x7 surveillance society
that we now live in, with a camera on every street and virtually in
every room, it can also be seen as a precursor of the modern
spy-thriller genre which came to dominate popular cinema from the
mid-1960s. A proto-James Bond film, it offers everything you
could hope to find in a sixties spy film, including a spectacular car
chase and a liberal smattering of trendy sci-fi elements. It even
features Gert Fröbe in a leading role, the very actor who would
later threaten the world in his most famous role in
Goldfinger
(1964). The hero (smoothly played by Peter van Eyck) is 007 in
all but name and Dawn Addams offers herself up as the template for the
Bond girl, eye-catchingly beautiful and possibly lethally
treacherous. The most visible Bond influence is 'Mabuse' himself:
Wolfgang Preiss (a.k.a. Lupo Prezzo) looks like the amalgam of just
about every Bond villain, and (thanks to a superb make-up job) is
particularly menacing as the blind clairvoyant Peter Cornelius.
Lang's main motivation for making the film was that, if it proved to be
a commercial success, this would give him considerable artistic freedom
so that he could devote himself to subjects that were of interest to
him, freedom he had not enjoyed since his departure from Germany in the
early 1930s. Whilst the film did indeed prove to be a box office
hit (resulting in a series of inferior sequels produced by Artur
Brauner in the 1960s) Lang was unable to profit from this. His
eyesight worsening, he was forced to abandon his next film, so that
Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse was
to bring down the curtain on a long and illustrious filmmaking
career. Lang's posterity was assured by the critical reappraisal
he received in later years, and he took his final bow in front of the
camera in 1963, play a slightly caricatured (or perhaps idealised)
version of himself in Jean-Luc Godard's
Le
Mépris (1963). It seems fitting, given the
trajectory of his career, that Lang's last film should be a popular
entertainment imbued with an auteur's genius and a cogent statement of
his hopes and fears for the future of mankind.
© James Travers 2013
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Fritz Lang film:
Die Spinnen (1919)
Film Synopsis
Confronted with a spate of inexplicable and unrelated murders Inspector
Kras turns to a blind informer, Peter Cornelius, who claims to have
psychic powers. Cornelius predicts that the next victim will be
Henry Travers, a millionaire industrialist whose holdings include
factories manufacturing nuclear armaments. Travers is presently
staying at the Luxor Hotel and manages to talk an attractive young
woman, Marian Menil, out of killing herself. Marian confides in
Travers that she is threatened by her club-footed husband, Hieronymus
B. Mistelzweig. Meanwhile, Kras realises that there is a
similarity between the recent crime spree and that prosecuted by the
evil Dr Mabuse in the 1930s. But Dr Mabuse died in a psychiatric
institution nearly thirty years ago - or did he? Is it possible
that the criminal mastermind is still alive, and preparing to visit a
new reign of terror on mankind...?
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.