Fritz Lang's films, in Germany and the USA

Fritz Lang (1890-1976) was born in Vienna to a Jewish mother, although he was raised as a Cath­olic. Fritz stud­ied civil engin­eering in Vien­na but soon loved café life and art, especially Egon Schiele and Gus­tav Klimt. For some years he travel­l­ed, studying art in Munich and Par­is. In 1914 he joined the Austrian army and spent a year in a Vienna army hospital writing screen­plays in bed.

In 1919 Lang directed his first movie, Half-Caste. In 1920 he work­ed for producer Erich Pommer at Decla Biscop Studio, part of the Germ­an filmmaking giant UFA. And marr­ied screenwriter Thea von Harbou.

German exp­ressionism (post WW1) was a movement char­act­erised by dark shadows, weird angles and distorted id­ent­it­ies. Hysteria and deception reflected the comp­lic­ated German society when the intellectual Weimar Rep­ublic also suff­er­ed high inflation and unemp­loyment.

Through the 1920s Lang made more ambitious films, includ­ing the al­l­egorical melo­drama Destiny (1921) and Dr Mabuse The Gambler (1922). In 1924 he first travelled to film companies in New York and Hollywood.

Lang’s first project back in Germany was the futuristic, expensive masterpiece Metropolis (1927), filmed in 1925-6 for UFA. The plot showed a repressive society with exp­loited workers, lazy rulers and emotionless robots. Lang created his vis­ually detailed films where a camera-process blended shots of miniatures with live action. 

Spies, 1928 (top image)

Gerda Maurus and Willy Fritsch

After the crime film Spies in 1928, Lang returned to science fict­ion for the silent Woman in the Moon (1929). The arrival of talkies in late 1929 produced an artistic blossoming of German film, before the collapse of the Weimar Republic in 1933. M (1931) was a German thriller, famous for its revolut­ion­ary light­ing and horrifying off­screen sound. It was Fritz Lang’s first sound film, starring a chill­ing Peter Lorre. The murderer terr­or­is­ed Berlin, but was fin­ally hunted down by Ber­l­in’s criminal under­world. It was Lang’s greatest international success.

Films from UFA, including Lang’s Metropolis and Josef von Stern­berg’s The Blue Angel (1930), att­racted Hollywood cont­r­acts. Even before 1933, Hollywood had invited several German writ­ers, dir­ectors and stars to migrate. But when Hitler became chanc­el­lor, migration became less ambitious and more survival-focused. After the Reich­stag fire, Austrian Jewish dir­ect­or Billy Wilder fled to Paris, and lived in a hotel near Hungarian-Jewish refugee Peter Lorre.

Next was The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933), a crime thril­ler sequel to Dr Mabuse: The Gambler. The sequel actually was intended as an anti-Nazi statement that equ­ated the German state and Adolph Hitler with crim­in­ality. And thus was promptly banned! Lang met Joseph Goebbels in the Ministry of Propaganda, to appeal the ban on The Testament of Dr Mabuse, but failed. Yet Goebbels had seen Lang’s other films, and offered Lang the pres­t­igious Artistic Dir­ect­orship of UFA. Lang thanked Goebbels, ran home and left Germany that night for Paris. His wife, already a member of the Nazi Party, promptly divorc­ed Lang!

Lang made one film while in France, Liliom (1934), and then acc­ept­ed David Selznick’s offer to direct a film in Hollywood for MGM. Fury (1936) starred Spencer Tracy, an unforg­iv­ing study of mob viol­ence. But it achieved only moderate box-office success.

Fury, 1936

Spencer Tracy and Sylvia Sidney

Germany had been the leading centre of the avant-garde in music, art, film and architecture. But the Nazis viewed Weimar culture with re­ac­tionary disgust. Their response stemmed part­ly from conservative aesthetic taste and partly from their deter­min­ation to use culture as a prop­a­ganda tool against the Jews.

Lang, Wilder and other anti-Nazi exiles brought German exp­ression­ism with them. Then Lang worked with indep­end­ent Americ­an prod­uc­er Wal­t­er Wanger on the grim You Only Live Once (1937). Bas­ed part­ly on the true Bon­nie & Clyde story, it starred Henry Fon­da as an ex-con­vict who was wrong­ly sent­enced to death for murd­er. He broke out of gaol and fled to Canada with his wife.

The few Hollywood films made before 1941 that supported the US ent­ering WW2 often carried German screen credits. So in Sept 1941, a U.S Senate subcommittee investigated whether Hollywood was campaigning to bring the country into WW2 by insert­ing pro-British and anti-German messages into films. An isol­at­ion­ist Senator charged Hollywood with producing 20+ pictures in the last year des­ig­ned to fill Americans with fear that Hitler would invade. Worst still, he noted, many of the studio creatives were Jewish.

Man Hunt, 1941

Walter Pidgeon and Roddy McDowall

Then Man Hunt (1941), based on a thrilling sus­pense novel. Walter Pidgeon starred in the tense drama as an Eng­lish hunter in pre-WW2 Germany who could have ass­ass­inated Hitler. Lang’s clash with producer Darryl F Zan­uck led to the director’s departure from Fox. 

Film noir (40s & 50s), the cinema of the disench­anted, grew out of Express­ionism. European directors, who’d moved to the US, utilised cynical heroes, stark lighting, frequent flashbacks and intricate plots. 

Lang collab­orated with Bertolt Brecht on the independent prod­uct­ion Hangmen Also Die! (1943), a WW2 film about assas­sinating SS leader Rein­hard Heydrich in Prague. The Woman in the Window (1944) was his most night­­­marish drama, starring Edward G Robinson as a married college prof­essor and the woman who was the model in a paint­ing! 

Wild­er’s Double Indemn­ity (1944) was called the quin­t­­essential noir, a nasty tale of a murderous affair. Lang’s next proj­ect, the grip­ping Ministry of Fear (1944), feat­ur­ed Ray Mill­and as a discharged mental patient whose life was endang­ered by double agents and bogus med­ia. Lang directed a string of unconventional noirs alone, populated not by gangsters and detectives, but by psychologically damaged middle-class losers. Lang then reassem­bled his Woman in the Window actors to play in Scarlet Street (1945) about a middle-aged amateur artist who became obsess­ed with a young woman. Otto Prem­inger, an Aust­rian Jewish dir­ector who reached the USA in 1935, followed with Laura and Fallen Angel (both 1945).

Woman in the Window, 1944

Joan Bennett

But after these triumphs, Lang’s career slumped. Cloak and Dagger (1946) and Secret Beyond the Door (1947) were not successful. The Big Heat (1953) unleashed Glenn Ford as a rogue police officer whose wife was killed by a criminal gang and corrupt city offic­ers. The critics were largely un­impressed, but Lang regarded it as his best.