BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (1956)

Fritz Lang, 1956

Starring: Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer, Arthur Franz

Tom Garrett, a writer, enters into a bargain with a newspaper publisher, Austin Spencer, who is also his future father-in-law. They decide that the subject of Tom’s next book will be the injustices of the death penalty and they frame Tom for the recent murder of a nightclub dancer, meticulously keeping track of their forged evidence. Tom is soon arrested, indicted, and the case goes to trial. Spencer was to reveal the ruse after Tom was found guilty and sentenced to death, but unfortunately Spencer dies suddenly in a car crash and takes the evidence with him. Though Tom reveals the scheme and protests his innocence, no one believes him except his estranged fiancée, Susan, who was not made a party to their scheme. While Tom is on death row, days away from his execution, Susan and a lawyer friend try desperately to find evidence that will exonerate Tom, which includes digging into the victim’s torrid past.

Fritz Lang’s last film in America was this bleak film about a journalist’s efforts to expose corruption in the justice system. Very little about this film is stylish and gone are the expressionist noir sensibilities of Scarlet Street or Secret Beyond the Door. Instead, Lang’s final two films for Hollywood, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and While the City Sleeps, are tawdry, lurid, bland, and utterly cynical. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is almost pulpy – before our eyes, Tom (Dana Andrews reuniting with Lang after While the City Sleeps) transforms from an upstanding, middle-class writer on the eve of his engagement to a rather stuffy, blonde debutant heiress into a bottom-feeding letch and murderer.

SPOILER ALERT. While Lang’s twist ending does feel preposterous, it makes more sense upon multiple viewings of the film. After Susan finds the evidence to exonerate Tom and grant his pardon, he accidentally reveals to her that he knew and thus murdered the dancer. A distraught Susan is unsure whether to go ahead with his pardon or not, but follows the advice of her lawyer ex-boyfriend and Tom is executed. The first time you watch Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, this ending comes as an absurd surprise. It’s impossible for me to find genuine fault with a Fritz Lang film, so I think this ending was created with three possibilities in mind. For starters, it could be a cruel joke perpetrated against stubborn, overly moral audiences by an angry Lang, who was shunted to the side by the studio system and McCarthyism. (In this case, Susan is a stand-in for the audience.)

A second, similar explanation is that Lang finally got revenge for all the years that Hollywood studios refused his intended ending during the script approval process, or made him cut and re-film them during production. Lang successfully does target the justice system (they enthusiastically convict an “innocent” man), but he also points a finger at the media and mob justice. Tom, as with most of Lang’s protagonists, first appears likable, but his corruptible, guilty core is revealed. Tom seems to be fundamentally changed by his brush with murder and the nightclub underworld. The revelation of his guilt begins to make sense, at least in a symbolic way. If you go back and watch the film again with this perspective, certain plot holes are more glaring, while others slide into place.

The film’s biggest flaw is probably the script, which is full of implausibility. Though Tom and Austin are criticizing and attempting to fix the justice system, they seemingly give no thought to bringing the actual murderer to justice. The evidence planting they do is preposterous and should have been uncovered almost immediately, particularly Tom’s lighter left at the crime scene, which was found after the body was recovered. Unless, of course, you take the angle that the police and politicians are simply desperate to find a culprit (and I am writing in a post-OJ Simpson world).

While Dana Andrews gives a solid performance (apparently his alcoholism was at its height during this time and was a serious source of consternation for Lang on set). Joan Fontaine (Rebecca) has never been one of my favorite actresses, but here she is simply tiresome. You can’t really blame her for walking out on Tom after a picture of him romancing nightclub dancers shows up in the paper, but she’s stiff, uptight, whiny, and insufferably moral.

My only other complaint is that the sense of style has been stripped away, leaving behind a gray, lifeless exterior, though perhaps this was intentional. The scenes of Tom’s trial being screened on television are a fascinating touch, which Lang also used to different degrees in While the City Sleeps. He also expertly fades certain scenes into newspaper headlines, making this as much about media as justice. Despite its flaws, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt comes recommended and is available remastered on DVD. Any film of Lang’s is certainly worth watching.

WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS

Fritz Lang, 1956

Starring: Dana Andrews, George Sanders, Rhonda Fleming, John Drew Barrymore, Ida Lupino, Vincent Price

Based on The Bloody Spur, journalist Charles Einstein’s novel about real-life Lipstick Killer William Heirens, Lang revisits some of the themes he first introduced in M (1931), another film about a serial killer that was inspired by real events. Media mogul Amos Kyne dies of natural causes while he is in the middle of trying to find a successor. The company passes to his spoiled son Walter, who immediately stirs up competition among the division heads to see who will help run the company as executive director. It is between the newspaper’s editor, the wire service chief, and head photographer, all of whom are plotting, backstabbing, and forming allegiances. 

The editor’s main ally is famous reporter Edward Mobley, who is more interested in a current string of crimes committed by the “Lipstick Killer.” This murderer breaks into women’s homes, strangles them to death, and leaves messages in their lipstick. Realizing the importance of the story, Walter Kynes decrees that whichever man is the first to identify the Lipstick Killer will become head of the company. Mobley, who has recently become engaged to a secretary at the paper, Nancy, decides to use her for bait after mocking the killer live on air.

This is unlike many of Lang’s other films in the sense that it lacks the usual sense of dramatic visual style and cinematic innovation. The elaborate sets and chiaroscuro lighting are replaced by some very basic, workmanlike, almost television show-style sets. In some ways the film feels tired -- as Mobley’s character often expresses -- and this is probably due to the fact that While the City Sleeps was one of Lang’s final films for Hollywood and he left America soon after. He was a difficult director to work with and notoriously hated the American studio system. I can’t help but feel that the political events occurring in the newsroom are both a commentary on Lang’s hatred for the Hollywood system and the related issues surrounding McCarthyism. 

The film also extends some of the themes he introduced in the Dr. Mabuse series. While those addressed issues of fascism and surveillance, While the City Sleeps takes a cold, hard look at the American media industry -- newspapers, television, radio, and photography -- and presents it as a cynical business driven by men purely interested in profit and sensationalism. This is in a loose, film noir, media-focused trilogy alongside The Blue Dahlia and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, though While the City Sleeps is certainly the most accomplished.

As with M, it has very few characters that could be described as decent or likable people. Most of the main characters are self-motivated back stabbers, less interested in the welfare of the killer’s victims and more concerned with getting a promotion, breaking a story, and making money. They show the same regard for their romantic relationships and infidelity is a constant theme. The murderer is often paralleled with the men in the newsroom and their callous use of women, namely, and most uncomfortably, Mobley’s manipulative and almost predatory relationship with his young and innocent fiancée.

Lang made the seminal M, perhaps the first film about a serial killer, and some of it is echoed here during the subway chase scene towards the film’s conclusion. As far as other important serial killer movies go, While the City Sleeps predates Hitchcock’s Psycho by several years and also features a killer with mommy issues. Lang deals with the subject completely differently than Hitchcock and ambiguously introduces the killer’s mother. While this destroys some of the mystery, this also removes some of the blame from his mother and makes the Lipstick Killer seem more bent by society in general than by upbringing alone, unlike the isolated Norman Bates.

Dana Andrews (Laura) gives one of his most likable and animated performances as Mobley, delivering quick dialogue and stirring the pot even though he professes not to care about the newspaper’s succession issues. While Andrews carries the film, there are a number of excellent supporting performances. The always wonderful George Sanders (The Lodger, The Picture of Dorian Gray) is excellent as the callous, manipulative Mark Loving, but isn’t given enough screen time. Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach, It’s a Wonderful Life) is Mobley’s partner in crime and James Craig (The Devil and Daniel Webster), is the lazy, no good photographer sleeping with the boss’s wife. 

Vincent Price is very good in here in a more complex role than usual. While Walter Kyne begins as a spoiled, lazy playboy, a similar character to Price’s role in Laura, he quickly transforms into something more ruthless and driven. Though around this period America began to associate him with horror films and villainous roles, here he is simply a bored socialite attempting to rise above his privileged, though dull life. John Drew Barrymore (Thunderbirds) also puts in a brief, but compelling performance as the Lipstick Killer. 

The few women in the film nearly steal it away from Andrews, particularly the underrated Ida Lupino (They Drive By Night, High Sierra) as the pleasantly conniving Mildred Donner. She is the only female character to go toe-to-toe with the men and has frank conversations about sex that seem more modern than the a ‘50s film would normally allow. The very sexy Rhonda Fleming (Spellbound, Out of the Past, The Spiral Staircase) brings elements of fun and humor to the film as Kyne’s unfaithful wife Dorothy. Sally Forrest (The Strange Door) as the virginal Nancy sadly pales in comparison to Lupino and Fleming, but benefits from a well-written character.

While the City Sleeps may not be one of Lang’s classic films, but comes highly recommended and deserves to be seen for its pessimistic look at post-war America and the emerging modern media industry. Though there is no definitive edition (Criterion, what gives?), While the City Sleeps was released on DVD as part of RKO’s Archive Collection along with his other final American film, the similarly themed Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). 

HUMAN DESIRE

Fritz Lang, 1954
Starring: Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford

Carl Buckley is fired from his job with a railway station and his lovely, younger wife intervenes with an influential businessman, someone she has known since childhood. When Buckley figures out that she also had an affair with the man, he becomes homicidally jealous and beats and threatens to kill Vicki, his wife, unless she participates in the man's murder. They follow him on board a train, where Vicki acts as a guard and Carl murders him. During the night, a train engineer, Jeff, meets Vicki and she partially seduces him to distract him. Later, at the trial, he pretends he saw no one. They begin an affair, where Vicki admits that her husband is jealous and violent. Soon, she tries to convince Jeff that the only solution is for him to kill Carl one lonely, dark night at the train yard...

Human Desire's main issue is perhaps the fact that it's trapped between the legacy of two superior films. This is Fritz Lang's follow up to The Big Heat (1953), an earlier film noir that also starred Gloria Grahame and Glenn Ford. It remains one of the best in the noir canon. Human Desire is also a loose remake of Jean Renoir's excellent French poetic-realist film, La bête humaine (1938), itself an adaptation of Emile Zola's novel of the same name. Human Desire has perhaps had too much to live up to being compared to these cinematic giants. Though it is not the equal of either of these films, it is still an excellent film and the fact that it's so little known is a shame.

As in The Big Heat and the later In a Lonely Place, Grahame's character, Vicki, is fantastically complex. She's not just a by-the-books femme fatale, but rather is a tragic, desperate figure, trapped between a man of murderous jealousy who beats and manipulates her, and another man who pretends kindness and love, but has a clandestine sexual affair with her and then abandons her to her fate. She also tells Jeff a story that when she was a teenager, Owens (the man murdered by her husband), raped her and they carried on an affair against her will for many years. She married her husband to escape this. She is a lonely woman without financial or emotional refuge and is begging to be loved and cared for. She is also a selfish liar and a manipulator, content to use her powerful sexuality to her own ends, but she's also broken and vulnerable. Vicki's feelings for Jeff also seem genuine. Grahame gives an excellent, nuanced performance, one that makes the film worth watching multiple times. Ford's reaction to her – flat and static that it may be – is what makes the film truly sordid. He abandons her for the suburban goody-two-shoes, for marriage and the dull trappings of domesticity.

Suburban life is offset by the presence of trains, which are a powerful presence within the film, a place of industry, sex, and death. Both Jeff and Carl are train conductors, the murdered man is an important client of the railroad, his murder takes place on the train, as does Vicki's seduction of Carl. Though Ford's Jeff – a Korean War vet – is the train's conductor, he is powerless over the events. As with The Big Heat, there's a neutered quality to his masculinity and he is simply moved through the film by the actions of the other characters – like a car across the tracks. Part of his personality is desperate and disillusioned, a common post-war theme in noir, but his lack of action is revolting and pathetic. Broderick Crawford's Carl Buckley is an interesting parallel to this. In many instances, he is also weak and aimless. He is fired from his job and needs his wife to seduce an old friend in order to get it back. But unlike Jeff, he is fueled only by his insane sexual jealousy and this – rather than personal ambition or greed – moves him to commit murder.

Though this isn't one of Lang's richest and most compelling films, it's fast-paced and suspenseful. There's some wonderful expressionistic cinematography from Burnett Guffey (The Reckless Moment) and Grahame is always worth watching. If you like Lang, Grahame, or the more suburban-themed film noir, this is a must-see. Lang's treatment of female characters is fascinating throughout his American noir run and his female leads are some of the best in film noir. Human Desire comes highly recommended, though it is not available on region 1 DVD. With a little searching, however, you can find it online.

THE BLUE GARDENIA

Fritz Lang, 1953

Starring: Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Raymond Burr, Ann Sothern

On her birthday, Norah Larkin receives a letter from her fiancé, is a soldier in the Korean War. He coldly explains that he has met and become engaged to a Japanese nurse. In despair, Norah agrees to go out on a blind date when a man calls the apartment, though he believes he is speaking to Norah’s roommate, Crystal. The man is an unwholesome advertising artist and, even though Nora is the wrong woman, he buys her dinner, gets her very drunk, and takes her back to his apartment. He attempts to sexually assault her while she’s sleeping, but she knocks him out with a fire poker and flees. The next morning, he’s found dead and Norah has no memory of what has happened. Her two roommates notice a change in her personality – she becomes angry, emotional, and paranoid – due to her belief that she must have committed the murder. A newspaper journalist writes an open letter to the murderer, begging her to come forward, and eventually Crystal begins to suspect the truth.

The Blue Gardenia is the beginning of director Fritz Lang’s loose trilogy with While the City Sleeps (1956) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). All three films are noir efforts concerned with the evils of the media, the newspaper industry in particular. Though there are some pretty flimsy mystery devices here (Norah disguises her voice over the telephone with a lace handkerchief… really?), this is Lang’s first direct criticism of the American media, communication devices, and mass media in general. This pervades the film: Norah and her two roommates are telephone operators, Raymond Burr plays an ad/calendar artist, a newspaper columnist tries to solve the crime, one of the roommates loves mass printed mystery paperbacks, and there are a number of important telephone calls, while letter writing sets both of the film’s major events in motion. The cruel letter from Norah’s fiancé encourages her to go out on a blind date and get drunk, while the reporter’s “Letter to an Unknown Killer” brings him and Norah together. There’s also a wonderful scene where women call in to the newspaper to falsely admit they are the killer and Lang cuts to each of the desperate, lonely women in turn. The critical clue to the identity of the real murderer is related to the purchase of a record at a local music store.

This is a particularly nasty look at life in ‘50s California, though there are a few delightfully comedic moments – one where Raymond Burr’s (the murdered artist) housekeeper admits that she cleaned up the crime scene and another where one of the roommates gets an exciting call from a man that first seems romantic but turns out to be the guy at the drugstore telling her that the latest crime novel is in. Raymond Burr is wonderful and charismatic as the slime ball Harry and it’s a shame he wasn’t given more screen time. There lengthy scene between he and Norah (Anne Baxter) in “The Blue Gardenia” nightclub is one of the best moments of the film. Keep your eyes and ears out for Nat King Cole, who sings a love song, also named “The Blue Gardenia.”

There’s some nice chemistry and camaraderie between the three female leads, Anne Baxter, comedian Ann Sothern, and Jeff Donnell (yes, this is a woman; she also appeared in In a Lonely Place). Unfortunately, the three similarly aged blondes look nearly identical to each other and it was a bit difficult to tell them apart for the first 30 or so minutes of the film. Ann Sothern clearly gives the strongest performance here and she often steals the film from Baxter. Speaking of the latter, I have to wonder why she was cast. Baxter has been in some excellent films (I Confess, The Magnificent Ambersons), but the role really should have gone to one of Hitchcock’s more nervous, sex-starved blondes. Unlike Hitchcock’s beloved “wrong man” (an innocent person blamed for a crime and targeted by the real criminals), Norah’s character fits in with Lang’s stock protagonist. This figure is usually male, is never innocent, and is the subject of crippling guilt and intense paranoia. Lang’s protagonists in M, Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, Ministry of Fear, Hangmen Also Die, You Only Live Once, House by the River, Rancho Notorious, Human Desire, Cloak and Dagger, and others are all guilty of a crime, usually murder, while the protagonists of Man Hunt and Secret Beyond the Door contemplate and almost carry out this crime. Baxter is far too weak to give this role the weight it deserves, which is a real shame.

Though this is inferior to Lang’s Human Desire, The Big Heat, or While the City Sleeps, it’s still a worthwhile noir. It’s a likely play on Alan Ladd noir vehicle The Blue Dahlia, about soldiers returned home from the war. Ladd’s character finds that his wife is guilty of infidelity and overnight she winds up murdered. In addition to Ladd, the chief suspect is a soldier who suffers from blackouts and – after the wife invites him up to her bedroom – he has a few drinks and can’t recall his guilt or innocence the next day. Keep your eye out for George Reeves (Superman) as he is sort of lost as the police captain, but puts in a nice appearance regardless. Richard Conte (The Big Combo) is a believable mix of suave, earnest, and sleazy as the unscrupulous reporter turned love interest.

Nicholas Musuraca handles the cinematography here, so of course the film is worth watching. The mediocre script (from a story by Vera Caspary) and presumably enforced casting of Anne Baxter take The Blue Gardenia down a few notches, but it’s still a worthy noir and is essential viewing for any fans of that genre or of Lang himself. The film is available on DVD, but where is my Fritz Lang-noir Blu-ray box set?

SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR

Fritz Lang, 1947

Starring: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbara O’Neill

Celia, a beautiful young heiress, has decided that it’s time to settle down and has resolved to marry her family’s dependable, if boring attorney. But on a last fling to Mexico, she meets Mark Lamphere, a dashing, romantic architect. They have a brief, whirlwind romance before marrying. Unfortunately, the trouble begins on their honeymoon, when Mark seems to be frustrated by Celia’s locked bedroom door and takes off in the middle of the night, allegedly on a business meeting to sell his architectural magazine. Celia soon moves to his mansion in New England, where she is horrified to learn that he was married before and his wife died mysteriously, he has a very strange teenage son, a controlling sister, and an odd secretary who covers her face with a scarf after it was disfigured in a fire; he also has serious financial problems. During a welcoming party, Mark shows their friends his hobby – designed rooms in the house that restage the setting of famous murders. Repulsed, Celia also learns that there is one locked room that Mark keeps a secret and won’t allow anyone in. As his behavior becomes increasingly cold and disturbed she comes to fear that he killed the first Mrs. Lamphere and is planning to kill her, too.

A blend of “Bluebeard,” Rebecca, Spellbound, and Jane Eyre, Secret Beyond the Door is quite an odd film. It would be easy to write it off as silly and absurd, with weak script elements, and frustrating Freudian plot devices. But despite these flaws, there is something truly magical and eerie about the film and it deserves to be rescued from obscurity. Though this falls in with the women’s psychological thrillers that were popular during the time – Rebecca, Suspicion, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, The Spiral Staircase, Possessed, and others – this is somewhat of a different spin on the same theme. Celia is not one of the token fragile, needy, and vulnerable women of these other films. The film acknowledges that she has flaws of her own, but also the strength, the perseverance, and possibly insanity to pursue Mark, despite his potential psychosis.

This was Joan Bennett’s fourth film with Fritz Lang – after Man Hunt, The Woman in the Window, and Scarlet Street – and this is her last. She is also at her most beautiful and mysterious here and it’s easy to see a link between Celia and her character in Dark Shadows many years later. Celia is a more complex character than some of her Gothic predecessors. She is essentially an independent, spoiled heiress and socialite bored with her life of pleasure and looking to settle down. One of her introductory scenes involves a deadly knife fight in a Mexican market. Instead of running in terror, Celia is clearly invigorated, if not outright aroused by the scene, despite the fact that a stray knife lands inches from her.

This was Michael Redgrave’s first American film and it comes hot on the heels of his British horror effort, Dead of Night, where he chews the scenery with equal amounts of gusto as he does in Secret Beyond the Door. Redgrave's Mark is also central to the film’s messiness. Though he has a few thoroughly charming moments (I’m not sure why I find him so charismatic, but it’s the same case in The Lady Vanishes), it’s difficult to understand why Celia would want to stay with him (OK, maybe not that difficult). He is controlling, moody, possessive, and secretive, and exhibits plenty of awful behavior before his loving side is revealed. He seems to be in the same mold as Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester or Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff, but is not quite fully realized and comes across as a weak character.  The film claims that much of Mark’s troubles emerged from women controlling his life – his mother, his sister, his first wife, and his secretary – but, perhaps paradoxically, he is shown as not being able to care for himself. He let his wife die, he is financially in trouble, and is unable to control or care for his own son. There is certainly a sense of suspended adolescence with both he and Celia and seems to be one of the driving forces that attracts them to each other.

The other element is, of course, sex. Like some of Lang’s other films with Bennett, much of this film is spent in or near beds and the bedroom. The hidden bedroom also provides a richer symbolic subtext, one tied in to Mark’s murder-themed rooms, the titular secret room (the room his first wife died in), and the burning of the house at the film’s conclusion. Due to the involvement of the Production Code, sex is implied, but modern audiences may miss this. It is at least relatively clear that Mark and Celia’s powerful attraction is a blend of sex and violence, affection and neurosis. This relationship between sex and death could have been more developed in the film’s conclusion, though it likely never would have gotten past the censors.

SPOILERS. The film ends with two revelations. The first is that the secretary was not deformed in a fire, but has manipulated her way into staying in the house because she’s in love with Mark. She attempts to burn the house down when she thinks Celia is alone, planning to get rid of her competition. There was a fire when Mark’s son was a child, where she saved the boy’s life, and it is implied she was the cause for this as well. The second revelation is that Mark is a killer in his mind, though not in life. His first wife essentially died of a broken heart, because he did not return her love, but he has always been plagued by thoughts of murder. The film’s conclusion implies that Celia breaking into the secret room, the burning of the house, and other events have somehow cured him of this.

This really is a marvelous film, perhaps only ruined by some clumsy attempts at psychology and the characters’ unfortunate habit of attempting to explain away the film’s rich use of symbolism. And it is rich, thanks Lang’s return to German expressionism as blended with the Gothic. There is some absolutely lovely cinematography from Stanley Cortez that prefigured his similar work on Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. The woodland set – where Celia runs when she thinks Mark is going to murder here – is breathtaking, eerie, and nightmarish, and a perfect emphasis on the fairy-tale source of the material. But the house is where the film really shines with lighting sources often reduced to candlelight, reflections in ornate mirrors, or the beam of a single flashlight. The camera absolutely worships Bennett, who is framed by long, dark hallways, foreboding corridors, and that staple of noir – the winding staircase.

Speaking of noir, there is the wonderful use of almost whispered voice-over throughout the film. At first, Celia narrates, but then descends into stream of conscious dialogue and psychological speculation on the events at hand. There’s a great noir-like scene (similar to The Stranger on the Third Floor) where Mark has a dream sequence imagining his own trial for killing Celia. Finally, there’s a Dali-like opening credits reminiscent of Spellbound (1945) and a wonderful score from Miklós Rózsa, who won an Academy Award for his work on Hitchcock’s Spellbound.

There’s a barebones Blu-ray from Olive Films, though thankfully they’ve rescued and restored this obscurity. Once again, I would love to see a special edition Fritz Lang Blu-ray box set full of his American noir works, packed to the gills with special features. Secret Beyond the Door is a very strange film, but comes highly recommended. Giallo fans might enjoy it, though it lacks graphic bloodshed and actually contains no murders at all, just the ever present threat of death.

SCARLET STREET

Fritz Lang, 1945

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea

A retail cashier, Christopher Cross, intervenes one night when a beautiful woman is being attacked. She introduces herself as Kitty, and though Cross is married, begins to fall for her. She believes he is a wealthy artist, though he is only an amateur painter who makes little money and is constantly brow-beaten by his wife. Her boyfriend, Johnny, encourages her to pursue Chris, in the hope they can get some money out of him. To please her, Chris begins stealing money and puts Kitty up in a penthouse apartment, which doubles as his painting studio. Johnny steals some paintings and begins selling them under Kitty’s name. When they become successful, Chris isn’t angry and is delighted to learn that people like his paintings after all. Unfortunately, he thinks that he will soon be able to marry Kitty, not realizing that she is just using him and is desperately in love with Johnny…

Based on Georges de La Fouchardière’s novel La Chienne and Jean Renoir’s film adaptation of the same name from 1931, this is a nastier companion piece to Lang’s previous film noir, fantasy-driven The Woman in the Window. Stars Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea more or less reprise their roles — the gullible, middle-class dope, the beautiful but duplicitous femme fatale, and the manipulative criminal and con artist — except more exaggerated, meaner, and more unlikable. This incredibly bleak film is full of unlikable characters and revolves around a web of deceit, betrayal, and murder. Lang uses film noir to examine the dividing lines between art, performance, illusion, and reality. Nearly every character believes the others are something he or she is not and no one depicts themselves honestly. Kitty lies to Chris and pretends she loves him; Johnny lies to Kitty and pretends he loves her; Chris pretends to be a great artist and a wealthy man; and so on. Worse, each character seems to take a delight in this deception.

Every romantic relationship portrayed on screen is abusive; Chris’s wife constantly verbally berates him, Johnny physically abuses Kitty, and even Chris’s upstanding boss is having an affair and cheating on his wife. Chris’s desperation — and later his explosive rage — is sickening. While he’s a sympathetic character early on, it’s revealed that he only married his wife to stave off loneliness. He has never seen her — or any other woman — naked, implying that he’s a virgin. He steals from her and from his boss. He hates his wife, is fully prepare to have an affair with Kitty, lies, steals increasing amounts of money, and is ultimately driven to murder. He also commits perjury so that Johnny will be tried, found guilty, and executed. Perhaps the worst part is that Cross is not driven to insanity by his guilt; he’s driven insane because he was never able to possess Kitty and Johnny was. 

Chris is enthusiastically surrounded by domineering women who promise or imply sex, but never deliver. His marriage has never been consummated and it seems that his wife browbeat him into marriage. Her chief pleasures involve complaining about Chris, listening to radio programs, mourning her dead husband, and complaining about Chris. Her husband’s unexpected return from death is implausible and is the film’s most frustrating moment, as this could have led towards a different sort of conclusion, but goes nowhere. It serves two plot purposes: the first is that the heroic, police detective husband is revealed not be so heroic after all. He “drowned” robbing a woman who had committed suicide and was on the run due to embezzlement. The second reason is that it allows Chris to legally pursue Kitty and push the issue of marriage.

A sense of repulsive sexuality flows through the film, culminating in a scene where Kitty demands that Chris paint her toenails. Lang makes the most of Joan Bennett’s spectacular legs, which are depicted frequently throughout the film. Johnny even nicknames her “lazy legs.” Her legs become a symbol of her wanton sexually, her promiscuity, laziness, and refusal to subscribe to a middle-class lifestyle. Kitty seems to be a prostitute, though this is implied, not directly stated because of the Production Code. Johnny certainly acts more like a pimp, and beats and abuses her, as well as takes her money and possessions.

The film was banned in several places after its release, due to its flagrant sexuality, grim plot, and unpleasant characters. It’s one of Lang’s best noir efforts and comes highly recommended. There’s a remastered DVD, though hopefully — I’m starting to sound like a broken record — someone will release a Blu-ray box set of Lang’s American films noir.

MINISTRY OF FEAR

Fritz Lang, 1944

Starring: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Carl Esmond

During the London Blitz, Stephen Neale is released from a mental asylum. On his way back to London, he stop at a small carnival near the train station, visits with a strange fortune teller, and wins a cake based on her suggestions. Before his departure, people at the carnival try to persuade him to give the cake to another man, but he ignores them. He shares his train compartment with a blind man, who is later reveals not to be blind and steals the cake during an air raid. The man is killed, but Neale escapes and arrives in London. He begins investigating the carnival group, a charity called the Mothers of Free Nations, and meets its organizers, Willi and Carla, siblings and Austrian refugees. It seems the Mothers of Free Nations are not quite what they seem and Neale is soon ensnared in a web of murder, mystery, and blackmail.

Based on Graham Greene’s novel of wartime intrigue, mystery, and guilt, Lang and Greene were both allegedly disappointed with the film, but it’s one of Lang’s best American works and certainly one of his most underrated. This may seem like a standard war-time thriller upon first viewing and initially feels a bit like a rip-off of Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, Saboteur, or Foreign Correspondent, but it contains many of the surreal, nightmarish aspects of film noir and has an ever present sense of foreboding. A man – and not an innocent man – is lost in a labyrinthine city and surrounded by a claustrophobic, unnamable sense of dread. Though the threat is ultimately from an underground Nazi network, none of the obvious trappings are present, making the villainy far more ambiguous and menacing. This is certainly more like Lang’s Weimar masterpieces of surveillance, manipulation, and paranoia, such as M, Dr. Mabuse, or The Spies.

The murky nature of morality in Ministry of Fear is such that everyone is suspect and seems to be part of the conspiracy. Even Neale himself is not innocent. Like a more sinister Cary Grant, Ray Milland (The Lost Weekend, Dial M for Murder) is classy and stylish, but there is something dark moving beneath the surface of Neale’s unassuming, charming exterior. It doesn’t help that in the beginning of the film, he’s released from an asylum for undisclosed reasons into a war-torn world. Is he imagining everything that’s happening to him? It is later revealed that he was serving time after assisting in his wife’s suicide by poisoning, which effectively makes him a murderer. Apparently in the novel, there is the implication that both Neale and Carla are guilty – Neale as a murderer and Carla as a spy. Though this is an undercurrent of the film, in the book Neale (there called Rowe) actually poisons his wife, rather than assisting her suicide. In the film, Carla cold-bloodedly shoots her brother at point-blank range after learning that he’s the head of the underground Nazi organization. She does not do this in the book; rather he commits suicide after being cornered.

As with many of Lang’s early films, logic is inverted and perverted in Ministry of Fear. While Hitchcock’s similarly-themed war thrillers from the same period are relatively straight-forward, if visually artful tales of suspense and paranoia, Lang injects moments of the uneasy and the absurd into Ministry of Fear that don’t really have an equal in the thrillers of the day, but are more akin to film noir. Evidence is baked into a cake and sewn in an elegant suit of clothes; an unseen murder occurs during a séance; two women claim to be the same person – a matronly psychic and a blonde femme fatale with a gun in her purse; a briefcase full of books hides a bomb; and a menacing, though wholesome-looking tailor wields scissors the size of a sword while sweating over his own guilt. This is certainly the least propagandistic of all the wartime thrillers and the brief happy ending where Neale and Carla plan their wedding doesn’t provide an ounce of comfort that the world has been made right again.

In addition to strong direction and some wonderful cinematography from Henry Sharp (Duck Soup), Milland’s sympathetic performance is bolstered by solid appearances from Marjorie Reynolds (Holiday Inn, The Time of Their Lives), Carl Esmond (Sergeant York), Dan Duryea (Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street), and Alan Napier (Batman TV series). Though the script occasionally falters and changes tone a few times, Ministry of Fear comes highly recommended. The film has a lovely, recent Blu-ray release from Criterion, though not many special features are included. I’m still holding out hope for a Blu-ray Lang box set.

HANGMEN ALSO DIE!

Fritz Lang, 1943

Starring: Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan

After the murder of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi Protector of Czechoslovakia known as “The Hangman of Prague,” his assassin, a surgeon named Dr. Svoboda, goes on the run and is forced to turn to a young woman, Mascha, for help. Mascha and her family are strangers to Svoboda, but take him in anyway. She and her highly political, history professor father quickly figure out that Svoboda must be the assassin, but are determined to protect him. The Nazis harass Mascha’s family when they learn that she had a mysterious guest spend the night, and also take 400 hostages into custody – including Mascha’s father – who they will execute one by one until the assassin is found. Svoboda, a sworn healer, is devastated at the news and plans to turn himself in and commit suicide, though the Resistance leaders discourage him. Mascha, meanwhile, must decide whether or not to confess his identity to the Gestapo in the hopes of sparing her father’s life.

Based on the May of 1942 real-life assassination of Heydrich, truly one of the Nazi Party’s most repulsive figures and one of the architects of the Holocaust, Lang and story writer Bertolt Brecht (this was his only Hollywood assignment) were not privy to the actual details of the assassination – they weren’t released until a few years later – and thus crafted their own story of fascism, mob justice, and impossible choices. Part war-film and part film noir, Hangmen Also Die bears much in common with Lang’s Weimar-era classic M (1931) and Man Hunt (1941). Where M is concerned with a community’s violent attempts to pursue a child killer, Man Hunt was Lang’s first WWII-era thriller and concerns a British big game hunter who decides to stalk Hitler for sport. In many ways, Hangmen Also Die carries the themes of both M and Man Hunt to their natural ends. The mob of families and underworld criminals has convicted the child murderer, but they are interrupted by the police. The community of resistance fighters frames a double-crosser and the film ends with his death, where he lies prostrate and beginning for mercy before the doors of a church, shot for sport by Nazis. In Man Hunt, the British hunter is never given the chance to kill Hitler and spends the rest of the film trying to evade Nazi capture and trying to convince them that it was only for sport, he never meant to assassinate their Führer. In Hangmen Also Die, there is no hesitation and no denial.

This is one of my favorite Lang films from the period, and there seems to be one excellent scene after another despite the lengthy running time that falls well over two hours. There is some incredible atmosphere filled with Lang’s trademark moments of German expressionism. All of the scenes have a creative touch – the Gestapo inspector and Mascha’s accidentally jilted fiancée don’t simply go out and have a drink; they get drunk and hire prostitutes. A Nazi commander determined to get to the bottom of things spends a scene agonizing over a pimple on his cheek. There are numerous characters, seemingly all of them with speaking roles, including some well-fleshed out Nazi characters that are far more than just stock villains. And though Hans Heinrich von Twardowski is only in the film for a few minutes as Reinhard Heydrich, he’s incredibly memorable, sinister, leering, charismatic, and weirdly sexual.

Though the direction is solid, credit must also go to Lang’s collaborators. There’s award-winning music from composer Hanns Eisler and breathtaking cinematography from James Wong Howe. The script from celebrated German playwright (and notorious Communist) Bertolt Brecht is a notably leftist work and includes some additional material from screenwriter John Wexley, who was eventually given sole credit. Brecht was notoriously difficult to work with, as was Lang, and the two soon clashed, causing Brecht’s withdrawal from the project before its completion. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hangmen Also Die was later named as Communist propaganda by the US government. Both Brecht and Hanns Eisler relocated to East Germany, while Wexley was blacklisted by HUAC.

Finally, there are some solid performances and the cast as a whole is not outweighed by any one particular actor. Brian Donlevy as the surgeon-turned-assassin is much better here than he was in The Glass Key, but he is definitely an actor with a limited range. He shares a number of excellent scenes with Anna Lee (The Sound of Music) as Mascha, including one where they must hide a wounded man and pretend to be in flagrante delicto when the Gestapo knocks down the door. Walter Brennan (Rio Bravo, To Have and Have Not) is memorable as Mascha’s father, though the only one who comes close to stealing the film is Alexander Granach. Granach’s excellent Gestapo Inspector Alois Gruber is somewhat of a twist on Lang’s typically dependable, blue collar policeman. Granach (along with Twardowski) was one of many forced to flee Nazi Germany and had worked alongside Peter Lorre and Brecht in the Weimar theater, as well as in German expressionist cinema.

Originally known as “437” or “Never Surrender” (the title of a moving poem written within the film), Hangmen Also Die is an incredibly grim film that portrays not just Nazis as villains, but mobs of regular citizens and opportunistic capitalists as equally immoral and deadly. There is also a cut scene towards the end of the film, which apparently involves the execution of all the remaining hostages above a mass grave. Even without this, the ending is downbeat and Czaka (solidly played by Gene Lockhart), the double-crossing brew-master, becomes a sympathetic character when the band of Resistance members conspires to frame him for Heydrich’s murder. At first, their scheme is comic. They trick Czaka into admitting he speaks German (a key to his guilt) by telling a German-language joke about Hitler; he reveals himself by laughing loudly. But his death on the church steps is far from laughable, and packed the sickening punch that Lang obviously intended.

The assassination of Heydrich, known as Operation Anthropoid and carried out by Czech freedom fights assisted by the British military, was the subject of two similar films from the same year: Hitler’s Madmen (1943) and The Silent Village (1943). None of these three movies managed to capture the true horror – in retaliation, the Nazis completely destroy the village of Lidice, not the first or last time they would take such an action during the war. Don’t click on that link unless you want immutable proof that, really, your bad day is not all that bad.

Hangmen Also Die comes highly recommended and is certainly one of Lang’s lesser seen films. It is currently out of print, though hopefully it will follow in Ministry of Fear’s footsteps and be given a classy upgrade and the Blu-ray treatment from Criterion.

MAN HUNT (1941)

Fritz Lang, 1941

Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders

In 1939, Captain Alan Thorndike, a famous big game hunter, is stalking Adolf Hitler through the forest in Germany. He pulls out his rifle and shoots, though the gun is unloaded. Discovered by a guard, he is taken into the custody of Nazi Major Quive-Smith. Despite the fact that Thorndike is British, Quive-Smith has heard of him and holds him in high regard, and even claims to view him a colleague. Thorndike tries to explain that he was merely stalking Hitler for sport and did not intend to kill him. The unbelieving Quive-Smith tries to force him to sign a confession blaming the activity on the British government. Thorndike refuses and is beaten, tortured, and thrown off a cliff. Due to a happy accident, he survives and escapes back to England, but Nazis continue to pursue him with increasingly violent means…

Based on Geoffrey Household’s novel Rogue Male from 1939, Man Hunt is one of Fritz Lang’s most underrated films and remains an excellent example of his work from this period. Alongside Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), Man Hunt was one of the first openly anti-Nazi films, something that gave the Hays Office hours of anxiety, as they sought a policy of tolerance and looking the other way until the U.S. officially entered the war after Pearl Harbor. Lang subtly makes mention of this in Man Hunt, focusing on the fact that the British also sought a period of a placation with the Nazis up until they were attacked by the Wehrmacht and Hitler ordered the beginning of the long, destructive London Blitz.

Man Hunt is easily one of the best propaganda films of the war alongside Hitchcock’s similarly early, suspense-themed, and London-set Foreign Correspondent (1940). Both films also star George Sanders, though Lang portrays Nazis with a much blacker mark than does Hitchcock; in Foreign Correspondent, they are an ever-present, yet vague menace and could be exchanged with any underground network of criminals and spies. They certainly seem much more like gangsters than do Lang’s Nazis. There is the implication that the Nazis of Man Hunt delight in sadism, even the reserved, polished, well-mannered, and well-educated Quive-Smith.

The film does succumb to a few clichés and a few clumsy moments of propaganda. Thorndike is depicted as an air-headed, clueless aristocrat early on, though Lang fortunately delved more deeply into his character. There’s also the uncomfortable notion – as exemplified in Jerry – that if you kidnap a woman and treat her badly, she’s probably going to fall in love with you. This plot device was used a few years earlier in The 39 Steps, among other films from the period, though Lang again puts his twist on it and Joan Bennett fortunately creates a dynamic, sympathetic character.

Bennett is excellent as always throughout the film, though her cockney accent is difficult to believe. Hilariously, Lang only paid lip service to the Production Code’s insistence that Jerry should be a seamstress instead of a prostitute – there’s a sewing machine in the corner of the room – but she is very clearly a lower class lady of the night. She’s murdered by the Nazis hunting Thorndike, though not simply because she’s a lowly female character, but to show the true nature of Nazi brutally. Though they torture, attempt to kill, and stalk Thorndine, Lang assures us that this isn’t a one-off behavior. Her death is not depicted on screen, thanks to the Production Code, but it’s implied that she is tortured and then also thrown to her death.

Though Walter Pidgeon is excellent as Thorndike, he’s overshadowed either by Joan Bennett or by George Sanders as the evil yet seductive Quive-Smith. I really could watch George Sanders watching paint dry and not get bored – he’s an indispensable staple of ‘30s and ‘40s cinema and it’s crazy that modern film audiences seem to have forgotten him. Genre film fans will rejoice, as Sanders is joined by a youngish John Carradine as an anonymous Nazi on Thorndike’s tail, and by a very young Roddy McDowall as a plucky young cabin boy who helps Thorndike hide from the Nazis. There are solid performances across the board and nary a scene is wasted. Lang also makes the most of his setting, giving it a distinctly German Expressionist flavor. An idyllic, almost fairytale-like Germany full of forests and mountains is contrasted with a claustrophobic London comprised of menacing alleyways, the kind of bridges you would want to commit suicide from, and an alarming sense of classism that appears most of all in Jerry’s characters.

Man Hunt is available on DVD, but I’m still waiting for a Blu-ray box set of Lang’s wartime thrillers. Come on, Criterion or Kino, or even BFI. The film comes highly recommend and is a truly dark, despair work that promotes American intervention in the war on one hand, and shows the violent nature of all men’s hearts on the other.

Fritz Lang (1890-1976)

One of cinema’s greatest directors in indisputably Fritz Lang. Born in Vienna during the fin-de-siècle as Friedrich Christian Anton Lang, he helped create the crime genre, serial killer film, German Expressionism, the fantasy epic, the science fiction epic, made some of the most important anti-fascist films of the ‘30s and ‘40s, and helped shape the film noir cycle of the ‘40s and ‘50s. He allegedly travelled the world, studied painting in Paris, and served in WWI in Russia and Romania before beginning a career in cinema. Soon after the war, he found a job at Germany’s most prestigious studio, Ufa, and began writing and directing films – many alongside his wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou. Lang was forced to flee Nazi Germany due to his outspoken nature and Jewish heritage (there is some controversy surrounding exactly how much time it took him to leave) and made one film in France before beginning a lengthy Hollywood career. He ran the gamut from silent cinema to early talkies, westerns, war films, crime cinema and film noir, science fiction, fantasy, adventure epics, psychological melodrama, and more. He went on to influence filmmakers of his own time – as diverse as Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel – while helping to set the course for an entire century of cinema.

German Silent Films

Lang’s work can be roughly divided up into four periods: his German silent films (1919 to 1929), his European sound films (1931 to 1934), his American war, western, and crime films (1936 to 1950), and his denouement (1959 to 1960). Of his German silent films, Halbblut (1919) and Der Herr der Liebe (1919) are lost, while Harakiri (1919) and Das wandernde Bild aka The Wandering Shadow (1920) are fairly mediocre tales of troubled women. Vier um die Frau aka Four Around a Woman (1921) continues this theme, as a husband becomes obsessed with the idea that his wife is cheating on him and begins spying on her. These themes of espionage and paranoia would become a constant throughout his work, while the plot of two-part adventure-thriller The Spiders (1919) revolves around the idea of an underworld criminal gang. Lang would use this repeatedly throughout his German films.

The popularity of The Spiders gave him confidence and Lang soon transitioned to silent epics and made some of the first masterpieces of his career. In Destiny (1921), a fatalistic, three-part film about a woman’s attempts to beat death and reclaim her lost lover. She moves through historical and geographical locations, learning important (if somewhat heavy-handed) lessons about love and mortality.

Lang’s first true classic – and the very first crime epic of cinema – is Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922), a visionary film about paranoia, surveillance, and evil. Dr. Mabuse is a mastermind who uses hypnosis and surveillance to control the criminal underworld, while a stubborn policeman attempts to track him down. This is a unique glimpse of Europe between the two world wars and also serves as a portent of the rise of Nazi Germany and things to come. Mabuse is perhaps cinema’s first master villain and provides an unsettling introduction to his real-life totalitarian counterparts, such as Hitler, Franco, and Stalin.

This was followed up with one of the first filmic fantasy epics, Die Nibelungen (1924). Like The Spiders, this is a two part tale of adventure, but it is also a more mature presentation of fantasy and myth and remains one of the only filmic adaptations of Germanic mythology. Lang’s use of dizzying special effects and enormous sets – inspired by D.W. Griffith – would rise to even greater heights in his next film, Metropolis (1927). He followed the first crime epic and the first fantasy epic with the first science fiction epic and – by that point – his first major masterpiece and one of the most influential films of ‘20s cinema. A futuristic society has transformed the working class into tormented slaves. An upper class young man and beautiful activist team up and attempt to put things right. The visionary look of the film has been hugely influential – it was also the most expensive silent film of the time.

His last two silent films remained in the crime and sci-fi genres. Falling somewhere between The Spiders and Dr. Mabuse is Lang’s next film, Spies (1928), another look at an underworld criminal conspiracy with some excellent set pieces. Woman in the Moon (1929) is a dazzling, if somewhat slow look at space travel and exploration. Though these are two of his more underrated films, understandably ignored beside Mabuse and Metropolis, they both have plenty to offer.

European Sound Films

Arguably Lang’s biggest masterpiece was his first foray into sound filmmaking – M (1931). One of the first cinematic examinations of a serial killer, M continues to examine the themes of Dr. Mabuse, The Spiders, and Spies in the sense that order is largely dispersed by an underground criminal network and by mob justice in a kangaroo court. This look at hysteria and paranoia is one of the finest works of cinema and is also an evolving glimpse into pre-WWII German society. The reasons for police raids, media frenzy, and government surveillance are the horrible child killings of Hans Beckert (played brilliantly by Peter Lorre), though the police are ineffectual and the citizens are forced to team up with criminals to protect their children. This is ultimately a film about the importance of individual agency and the danger of succumbing to mass hysteria, a theme Lang would return to many times throughout his career.

Lang also created a sequel to Dr. Mabuse – The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1922) – which continues to address many of the issues raised in M. Though Dr. Mabuse has been in a mental hospital for many years (linking him somewhat to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and dies, his crime ring grows stronger. Mabuse appears to possess his cronies, and his ghostly, supernatural evil becomes a pervasive tool of surveillance and manipulation. This was his most overt comment on Nazism, which was quickly noticed by the Nazi Party, who banned the film. Goebbels allegedly offered the role of head Nazi filmmaker to Lang despite this, though he soon fled the country.

He made one film in France before leaving for the US, the ineffectual Liliom (1934). Based on a play, this fantastical, light-hearted effort concerns a carnival worker who dies, but is brought back to life. It doesn’t fit in with Lang’s work of the period and would soon be overshadowed by his US films. However, it was one of Lang’s favorite films and deserves a watch for its surreal elements – including an appearance by surreal writer and poet Antonin Artaud in a side role.

American Films: Crime and Film Noir

Lang made more than 20 films during his time in America, though these can be split into three genres – crime cinema or film noir, westerns, and war films. More than any other genre, Lang made crime films and his early works were often about a series of events that transformed a decent, average person into a bitter criminal. 1936’s Fury, starring Spencer Tracy, is similar to M in the sense that it concerns mob justice. A wrongly convicted man is nearly killed in a lynch mob and is determined to get justice – by framing the mob. In You Only Live Once (1937), a love affair between a criminal and a lawyer’s secretary makes both of their lives spiral out of control into a web of violence.

You and Me (1938) also concerns criminals; a store owner hires convicts, hoping to aid in their rehabilitation. A love affair develops between the two, but when the man discovers his fiancée has been lying to him, he plans to return to his old ways and rob the store. Bizarrely, this film has a few musical numbers from the great Kurt Weill, which is perhaps more confusing in a Hollywood film than it would have been in a German work. Though he is uncredited, Lang co-directed Moontide (1942) alongside noir queen Ida Lupino, French superstar Jean Gabin, and Claude Rains. A boatman believes he accidentally committed a murder while intoxicated, but rescues a woman trying to kill herself. A romance develops, but his possessive friend is determined to get rid of her.

Two of Lang’s most famous films noir star Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson. In The Woman in the Window (1944), a criminology professor becomes accidentally involved with a beautiful woman and kills her violent paramour in self-defense. Their attempts to hide the body and destroy the clues are clumsy and they become targeted by a greedy blackmailer, while the police are moving closer to the truth in the meantime. In Scarlet Street (1945), Bennett and Robinson reprise similar roles. Robinson plays a down-on-his-luck painter in an unhappy marriage, who meets a femme fatale. Believing him to be wealthy and a famous artist, she follows her abusive boyfriend’s advice and soon wraps him around her finger and convinces him to buy her an apartment. When she sells his paintings under her name, she initiates a spiral of madness, obsession, and murder.

Lang united with Joan Bennett for Secret Beyond the Door (1947), a noir retelling of Bluebeard also inspired by Hitchcock’s Rebecca. In the similarly psychological House by the River (1950), a crazed writer kills his maid when she rejects his sexual advances. The murder inspires him and he soon frames his disfigured, but much kinder brother. In Clash by Night (1952), a woman returns home to a small village after years of bitter disappointment in New York, but she has trouble settling down. In The Blue Gardenia (1953), a woman fears she may have killed a man in self-defense while drunk, and in one of the finest and most violent noir efforts ever made, The Big Heat (1953), a rough cop gets vengeance on a crime syndicate.

Human Desire (1954), his second effort with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame and one of the first films made about returning Korean War vets, concerns a soldier who has an affair with his friend’s wife that leads to violence and murder. While the City Sleeps (1956) focuses on media corruption and the struggle for power at a local newspaper, all while an anonymous serial killer stalks the streets of New York.  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) looks at corruption in the legal system, when a writer frames himself for murder in order to expose corruption at the District Attorney’s office.

Many of Lang’s noir and crime efforts deal with inherent corruption – whether it is in the media, legal system, or in mob justice – and with the machinery of society that turns decent people into criminals and murderers. His films are some of the most scathing of the period and represent a critique of fascism, the hypocrisy of American democracy, McCarthyism, and frank depictions of an almost cynical sexuality. Despite his reputation for being difficult and tyrannical, he worked with many of the best actors of the period, often in multiple films: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy, Ida Lupino, Jean Gabin, Joan Bennett, Edward G. Robinson, Michael Redgrave, Robert Ryan, Barbara Stanwyck, Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Dana Andrews, George Sanders, and others.

American Films: War Movies and Westerns

Lang didn’t make a lot of Westerns or adventure films while in the US. His first, The Return of Frank James (1940), is unsurprisingly a tale of vengeance. The brother of Jesse James leaves the anonymity of farm life to exact revenge on his brother’s killers, though some Pinkerton detectives and a female reporter are on his trail. In Western Union (1941), a retired outlaw has to face off against his outlaw brother and a band of Indians in this somewhat light-hearted shoot ‘em up flick. The best of these is Rancho Notorious (1952), which stars Lang’s countrywoman Marlene Dietrich. A rancher seeks revenge for the death of his wife and follows her murderers to a strange ranch that doubles as a criminal hideout. There’s also the somewhat related Moonfleet (1955), a 19^th-century tale of adventure and swashbuckling. I suspect that this is the least regarded of Lang’s later films, though it seems a shame to take what is otherwise a colorful, engaging romp out of context.

He made far more war-themed films in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Like the early war-time works of Hitchcock Man Hunt (1941), Lang’s first anti-Nazi film has a British setting and sensibility. A famous big game hunter stalks Hitler and is in turn stalked across the UK by a high ranking Nazi and his cronies. A beautiful young prostitute is the only person who can help him, though she doesn’t realize how dangerous the situation is. Confirm or Deny (1941), which Lang co-directed but remains uncredited for, also had a British setting: a journalist and a teletype operator fall in love during the London Blitz while struggling for survival.

Hangmen Also Die! (1943) is the first of his films loosely based on a real WWII event – the Czech assassination of Gestapo head Reinhardt Heydrich. Co-written by Bertolt Brecht, this film focuses on the assassin’s escape and attempts to hide, while Nazis round up hundreds of hostages, preparing to kill them all. Ministry of Fear (1944), another British-Hitchcockian toned film and based on a Graham Greene novel, concerns a man who is released from a mental asylum after accidentally killing his wife (he fails to prevent her suicide). On his way back to freedom, he gets caught up in a ring of Nazi conspirators and falls in love with an escaped member of the resistance. Cloak and Dagger (1946) is somewhat of a reworking of Carol Reed’s Night Train to Munich (1940). An intelligence agent is sent to rescue a scientist and hopefully prevent the development of German atomic weapons. American Guerilla in the Philippines (1950) is perhaps the least of these war films and concerns a soldier stranded in Asia who keeps an eye on Japanese activities.

Denouement:

The end of Lang’s career is oddly a throwback to its start. He made two European films at the end of the ‘50s known as The Indian Epic – The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959) and The Indian Tomb (1959) – a final throwback to his early two-part epics. These colorful adventure films with a hefty dose of romance are actually a remake of a script Lang and then-wife Harbou wrote in the ‘20s, though the project was given to director Joe May. These West German-Italian-French coproduction are like a blend of comic book, soap opera, epic fantasy, and high camp, shot in eye-ball blasting Technicolor with plenty of Lang’s fantastic, huge sets.

His last film – he retired out of necessity due to impending blindness – was a final follow up for that beloved arch-criminal, Dr. Mabuse. The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) is oddly set in a former Nazi hotel and ties together much of his later career with his early work, as well as the American themes that obsessed him – surveillance, revenge, mob justice, media corruption, and hypocrisy – making this a fitting final piece of the puzzle. Coincidentally, Mabuse had become a somewhat popular European series with unconnected efforts from other directors.

To learn more about Lang, obviously watch his films – and check out Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963), an homage to the great German director where he appears as himself. Also recommended are a number of excellent books: Patrick McGilligan’s biography, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast, Peter Bogdonavich’s Fritz Lang in America (from a series of interviews), Lotte Eisner’s Fritz Lang and The Haunted Screen, and Siegfried Kracauer’s classic, From Caligari to Hitler.