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.

VENUS IN FUR

Roman Polanski, 2013
Starring: Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric

Despite a controversial, sometimes tragic life, the 80-year-old Roman Polanski just won’t quit and has scoffed at the notion of retiring. His eclectic, influential directorial career has produced a number of dark, visionary classics, while even his minor efforts are interesting examples of his prowess as a writer and filmmaker. 2013 saw the release of his twentieth feature length film, La Vénus à la fourrure aka Venus in Fur, which was finally given a US theatrical release in late July and early August. As with the previous Carnage (2011), this is an adaptation of a stage play with a small cast, fixed set, and claustrophobic quarters. Much of Polanski’s best work is concerned with the effect of paranoia, sexual terror, and power games within a confined space – Knife in the Water (1962), Repulsion (1965), Cul-de-sac (1966), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Tenant (1976), Death and the Maiden (1994), The Pianist (2002), The Ghost (2010), and Carnage – and while Venus in Fur may not be among his masterpieces, it is a fascinating exploration of these themes.

Writer and director Thomas (Mathieu Amalric) has been auditioning women all day for his new play, an adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s nineteenth century novel about masochism, Venus in Furs. Just as he is about to leave for the night, a bedraggled woman pushes her way into the theater and begs for a chance to audition. Though she is late, not listed on the register, and seems rather airheaded, the strange woman pleads with Thomas until he agrees to see her audition. Curiously, she shares the same name as the play’s heroine, Wanda, and soon convinces Thomas that she has far more to offer than first meets the eye. The audition, which continues throughout the night, becomes an intense power play and reveals Thomas’s fears and desires as he is dominated by Vanda/Wanda.

Based on the recent, popular, and award-winning play of the same name by American playwright David Ives, anyone expecting an adaptation of Sacher-Masoch’s novel is going to be in for quite a surprise. Ives’ play is more inspired by Venus in Furs (1870) than actually based on it, providing an intricate critique of traditional gender roles and masculine notions of fantasy and control. Sacher-Masoch’s novel concerns the relationship between a man, Severin, and his mistress Wanda. She dominates him sexually and he becomes her slave until she eventually meets another lover and loses interest, hoping to be dominated herself. In keeping with the well-established theory that the masochistic partner is really in charge – and thus guides the fantasy – Severin is in charge at all times in the novel. In a riff on Pygmalion, he transforms Wanda into his fantasy woman, a being of near mythic proportions.

In Polanski’s film, things are thankfully more complicated and the film refreshingly critiques the male fantasist attitudes behind Venus in Furs. This is an exploration of misogyny and gender roles, as well as men’s depiction of women as fantasy creatures rather than individual beings. There is fantasy, desire, domination, and submission, but there is also the sense that Vanda has been in control of the proceedings from the beginning. She coaxes his fantasies from him and changes them, just as she changes his play. As the novel uses a book-within-a-book format, the film adaptation mirrors this with a play-within-a-film, highlighting the theatricality of sexual fantasy. There is also the sense that Polanski is making fun of the trappings of S&M, which are the admittedly predictable and purposefully cartoonish backdrop for this power play.

Vanda’s costumes — a cheap reproduction of an 18th century dress and a corset, dog collar, and lingerie — poke fun at misogyny and recycled fantasies of submission and control. While she is dressed predictably, Polanski’s wife Emmanuelle Seigner quickly and capably transcends the character with humor, wit, and a deep sensuality. She’s one of the film’s shining moments and there is also something to be said for the fact that Polanski cast a woman in her late 40s in the role, rather than adhering to the stage play’s use of a much younger woman.

The film’s humor is subtle, but ever-present, right down to the use of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as Thomas’s ring tone. Those legendary warrior maidens are explicitly linked to Thomas’s absent fiancée, who keeps calling his phone, while the closing credits roll over a gallery of famous paintings of mythic women. Perhaps the funniest moment is the excellent use of the set, which is supposed to be leftover from a musical version of Stagecoach. Vanda and Thomas manipulate and change the set through lighting; her audition first begins in a theatrical version of the Old West, but it soon changes to an intimate boudoir setting. Finally, she puts back-lighting on one of the cacti, so it that it resembles a massive, phallic statue.

This latter set piece is also connected to the film’s sense of the ominous and unpredictable. With the dark, empty theater and thunder and lightning storm moving in and out of the soundscape, there is a sense that something dreadful is about to happen. The sense of autobiography is also unsettling. Polanski is directing his wife in the starring role, while the only other actor, the excellent Mathieu Amalric, is a clear stand-in for Polanski himself. Both men are slight in stature and have handsome, if somewhat bug-eyed faces. Like Polanski, Amalric is both an actor and director. While American audiences will primarily remember him from Quantum of Solace (2008), Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and The Diving Bell and Butterfly (2007, alongside Seigner), he’s directed a handful of shorts, documentaries, and feature-length films, including On Tour (aka Tournée, 2010), where he also stars as the egotistical director of a traveling burlesque troupe. His Thomas runs the range of vulnerable, selfish, quirky, artistic, misogynistic, sympathetic, lustful, and more, essentially mirroring Polanski’s own changeable public persona.

Though this is one of his smaller films, in terms of scope and emotional resonance, it’s still a deeply personal work. Polanski raises many questions, but refuses to answer any of them. Is there a real Vanda/Wanda? Is Thomas a stand in for Polanski himself? Where are the diving lines between man and woman, fantasy and reality, performance and identity, director and actor, artist and muse, or husband and wife? Polanski’s refusal to provide a resolution reminded me of the far more visceral Repulsion, which shows an internal fantasy bubbling over into real-world action. Though tamer, Venus in Fur is more concerned with how internal fantasy shapes the performative aspects of personality, action, and waking life.

This dialogue-heavy, fairly static one-room black comedy will disappoint fans expecting a more literal adaptation of Venus in Furs or anyone hoping for a return to Polanski’s darker, earlier works. This is ultimately an intellectual, thoroughly middle-aged, bourgeois exploration of sexual fantasy. Both sex and violence are conspicuously absent, allowing for some aggressive and comedic verbal sparring that centers on the role of fantasy, desire, power, performance, and role play. A mediocre script is given a boost by excellent performances from Seigner and Amalric, confident direction from Polanski, some wonderful cinematography from Paweł Edelman, and a thoughtful, whimsical score from Alexandre Desplat. This comes recommended for fans of Polanski’s later work, such as Carnage and Death and the Maiden, but anyone afraid to sit down and read subtitles should avoid it.

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.