Alfred Abel – Movie Musings

Lang’s crime drama is a sprawling silent mini-series, still gripping today

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Dr Mabuse), Bernhard Goetzke (State Prosecutor von Wenk), Aud Aged Nissen (Cara Carozza), Gertrude Welker (Countess Dusy Told), Alfred Abel (Count Told), Paul Richter (Edgar Hull), Robert Forster-Larringa (Spoebri), Hans Adalbert von Schlettow (Georg), Georg John (Pesch), Karl Huszar (Hawasch), Grete Berger (Fine)

In a world before television, there were only two places for long-form stories – and Fritz Lang wasn’t a novelist. His four-and-a-hour epic Dr Mabuse der Spieler is really a sort of gargantuan mini-series, a rollicking action-adventure about a conscience-free conman wiling to go to any lengths to get the things he wants. It’s pulled together as a pacey, episodic yarn – each reel is basically an individual act (or episode) and filmed with such visionary vividness that it remains compelling today. Whether you decide to settle in for the long haul or split its parts and acts over a series of nights (and why not, the film was released in two parts, months apart) it won’t fail to entertain.

It was based on Norbert Jacques novel, a publishing sensation (so much so this was rushed into production while Jacques novel was still being serialised). At its heart: Dr Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), practically the dictionary definition of an omnipotent, amoral villain. Mabuse is a practiced liar, master-of-disguise, ruthless murderer, conman and has such demonic will power he is capable of extraordinary levels of hypnotic control, whose gang of acolytes switch between terror and outright worship of him. He can manipulate the rich into handing over their money as easily as he can the collapse of businesses on the stock exchange. No one knows who this malign spider is. But State Prosecutor von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) will make it his business to know.

Lang’s film is a gorgeous mix of the sort of urban realism he mastered in M and little touches of mystical realism more reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, wrapped up in the sort of action that inspired everything from The Sting to Mission: Impossible. It’s opening section is a brilliant example of both. Essentially a twenty-minute prologue to introduce Mabuse’s nefarious genius, it sees our anti-hero masterfully execute a plot mixing heist, disguise, manipulation and brazen self-confidence to make a fortune on the stock exchange. The theft of a secret commercial contract from a train involves the sort of disguises and split-second timing (to throw the contract from a train passing over a bridge into a car passing under it) which would make Ethan Hunt’s heart race.

It’s a perfect entrée to our villainous lead, Mabuse. First introduced rifling through photos of the many expert disguises he will effortlessly assume during the film – he becomes everything from banker to magician, psychologist to hypnotist, tramp to member of high society – Mabuse has no moral code what-so-ever other than the accumulation of things. That ranges from wealth, to an obsessive desire for ownership over attractive women (and his desire for Gertrude Welker’s Countess Told eventually contributes to his undoing) to simply the having power over the wills of weaker men. Rudolf Klein-Rogge is magnetic as this monster of the dark, ruthlessly calm but equally wild-eyed, unflappable but willing to go to any lengths.

Spieler is often translated as “gambler” – but it’s German meaning is richer than that and many have commented a better translation might well be “player”. Mabuse is certainly that. He is a master actor, who can be lose himself in different roles, undetectable to others. He weaves elaborate games around his victims, where only he knows the rules (and, often, only he knows a game is even being played). Other people are pawns to moved and gambled with. He’s a monster, but one born from disillusion of the end of the First World War, part of the hedonistic self-regard of dissolute Weimar. We can see touches of this environment throughout Lang’s film, in its hedonistic gambling dens and the casual thoughtlessness of the rich. Mabuse flourishes because he is the rash an age has come out in. (Retrospectively, you can detect the shadow of Hitler in this ruthlessly power-mad monster who hides in plain sight but demands absolute control).

Mabuse is “the Great Unknown” and the natural target of methodical if uncharismatic von Wenk, played with a stolidness by Bernhard Goetzke, balancing Klein-Rogge’s larger-than-life portrayal perfectly. The duel between these two moves from gambling rooms to elaborate houses, from the streets to the jails of the city, taking in chases, bombs, shootings, kidnappings and all sorts of attempted moves and counter-moves, culminating in a shoot-out that surely inspired countless Hollywood gangster movies.

Through it all Lang directs with astonishing freshness and invention. Dr Mabuse der Speiler throws a slice of cinematic visual inventiveness into almost every scene. Lang makes extensive use of superimpositions, cross-fading, location shooting, fast-paced editing and brilliantly evocative lighting to create a world both highly realistic and also dancing to the tune of its demonic lead. Some of this has become such a part of cinematic language that it’s unlikely to draw comment from modern viewers today – we are unlikely to be wowed by night-time footage of Wenk pursing Mabuse in a car, but to viewers at the time such scenes of photorealism taken in darkness were unheard of.

There is plenty that will continue to thrill audiences. Lang’s visual portrayal of Mabuse’s hypnotic powers is superb. In his first confrontation with von Wenk (both men are disguised at the time – this really is a game of move and counter-move), Mabuse attempts to implant a hypnotic suggestion in von Wenk. Lang demonstrates with an astonishing use of lighting which slowly concentrates the light into a small pool on Mabuse’s face before his face seems to grow to fill the frame (technical effects like this were a small miracle in 1923). On a second attempt, the hypnotically suggestive words are imposed on the screen as a set of animated letters which loom over von Wenk and later seem to be almost leading him (in his car) to the clifftop Mabuse has suggested he drive off. It’s a superb way of showing the power of Mabuse, building on the intimidating cross-fade from our stock-exchange opening that briefly shows Mabuse’s face super-imposed over the clutter-filed room.

Lang mixes this imaginative dynamism with some superbly done realist scenes that help make Dr Mabuse der Spieler a gripping crime thriller. That stock-exchange opening is followed by car chases and murders – one character is dispatched in the streets after dark with a brutal suddenness. Lang creates a series of locations, all perfectly detailed but instantly recognisable, from the distinctive look of each gambling den (from art deco lined walls to a strange rotating gambling pit filled with cards and erotic dangers) to the objet d’Art packed rooms of Mabuse’s mark Count Told (a gloriously ineffective Alfred Abel – unrecognisable from the world controller he would become in Metropolis) to the white-lined jails and careful detailed offices of von Wenk’s police headquarters.

Dr Mabuse der Spieler uses these real locations to constantly remind us that, underneath the Moriarty genius of its lead, this is also a tragedy of real people caught in the web of an uncaring spider. Mabuse cares nothing for his underlings, sacrificing them as readily as pawns. None more so than Cara Carozza, beautifully played by Aud Aged Nissen, a seducer in love with Mabuse who dedicates her life to him, at the cost of her own. She makes a dark mirror for Countess Told, drawn into Mabuse’s web but drawing strength from her admiration of Cara who is, in her own way, deeply principled. Mabuse’s victims are prodded, pushed and outright shoved into punishing and often self-destructive behaviours, their lives flourishing or ending according to his whims.

As a sort of epic mini-series, Dr Mabuse der Speiler is sublime entertainment. Each act follows its own clear arc and the culmination in a brutal shoot-out throws in a nightmare of surrealist imagery at its close as a crucial character tips, under pressure, into madness and delusion. (This series of horrors, the ghosts of fallen characters arising to torment him, is a masterclass in ghostly horror). It gripped audiences then and its surprisingly brisk pace and pulpy sensibility still do now.

Lang’s sometimes flawed science fiction epic is one of the most influential films ever made

Director: Fritz Lang

Cast: Brigitte Helm (Maria/The Machine), Alfred Abel (Joh Frederson), Gustav Frölich (Freder), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Rotwang), Fritz Rasp (The Thin Man), Theodor Loos (Josaphat), Heinrich George (Grot), Erwin Biswanger (11811/Geogry)

It’s 1927 and for too long Hollywood had held sway over the movies. But there were plans in Germany to change that. The booming Weimar film community, arguably the artistic hub of World Cinema, felt they had a shot at claiming the sort of global success Hollywood had made its own. No expense would be spared to bring Fritz Lang’s science-fiction spectacular, Metropolis to the screen. It was met with such a muted reaction, that the original epic cut was sliced to ribbons, parts of the film lost for all time, and for decades it lived only in a mutilated form. But it was visionary and extraordinary enough to inspire virtually every single science fiction film that followed it.

Metropolis is a sprawling future city state, run by Joh Frederson (Alfred Abel). In it the rich live a gilded life in mighty skyscrapers, with private gardens, luxurious apartments and raucous parties. Beneath them – literally so – are the workers, living a Morlock-like life of drudgery in the factories and power stations that keep the lights burning. But all that could change: below ground Maria (Brigitte Helm) preaches hope for change, above ground Frederson’s son Freder (Gustav Frölich) falls in love with Maria and rejects his father’s way for the life of a prole. Frederson has a scheme of his own: to use a robot (Helm again) built by old friend (and one time rival for the affection of his late wife) the one-handed scientist Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) to replace Maria and sow discord among a potential worker’s rebellion. But does Rotwang and his creation have a game of their own?

Lang had a brief to create a film that would be a box-office hit in America. No stone was left unturned in creating his epic. Metropolis took a staggering 17 months to film, running almost three times over its initial budget. It’s extended shooting schedule was a godsend for many of its extras, struggling to make ends meet while the Weimar Republic thrashed through the after-effects of hyperinflation. It’s a magnificent monument to Lang’s superb visual styling, marrying shadow filled expressionism with sweeping epic magnificence.

Metropolis’ strengths all lie in its stunning, inventive and breath-taking design work. That has been so inspiring, it has permeated vast swathes of our culture. Filmic visions of imposing, neon-lit, skyscraper packed modern Babels (Frederer’s headquarters is an art-deco reimagining of Brueghel’s Tower of Babel) all find their roots here: from Burton’s Batman to Scott’s Blade Runner. Any robot in the movies can chase its lineage back to Rotwang’s man-machine, as any mad scientist ancestor is Rotwang (from Dr Strangelove to Back to the Future’s Doc Brown). It’s the film that invented steam-punk, with its piston-filled machines, staffed by boiler-suited workers (it’s inspiration for a zillion music videos is not surprising). Everywhere you look in Metropolis it might feel like you are seeing something familiar, when in fact you are witnessing its original generation.

Metropolis is a cat’s cradle of differing moods and designs, woven masterfully into a whole. Frederson controls the city from a penthouse suite, while his immediate staff and family live in swish, very 1920s apartments. This contrasts sharply with the industrial-punk of the factories, cathedrals of technological movement, full of gears, levers and men performing tasks with a robotic, convey-belt repetition under a series of clocks. There are real cathedrals, legacies of an old world, where God has been left behind by the new Gods of work and efficiency. Under the ground, the workers live in personality free tenement blocks and chiselled out caves, which echo churches. Rotwang works in a laboratory part Frankenstein’s layer, part bizarre lecture theatre, all seemingly housed in a ramshackle house that wouldn’t look out of place in a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.

A fairy tale is perhaps what Metropolis is, underneath all the astonishing technical sheen and directorial mastery. We follow a hero who exiles himself to live among the poor, eventually becoming their champion, with a damsel-in-distress he must rescue from a crazed wizard. The wizard even produces a magic imposter, who threatens to bring disaster. Metropolis’ plot often proceeds with the illogical progression of a fairy tale, with characters frequently making veering changes in allegiance or unveiling dastardly schemes that appear from nowhere or make little sense.

It’s similar in Metropolis biggest weakness: it’s simplistic plot, wrapped up in a casually naïve politically theory that attempts to find a balance between left and right, but essentially boils down to “why can’t we all just get along”. It’s loud proclamation that “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart” is so vague that it allowed the film to be embraced by the left as a proto-socialist film supporting worker’s rights and the right as a film that revealed the workers as a mob and the fate of the world best left in the hands of elites who know what they are doing.

It’s part of the simplistic view the film largely takes of character and story, which frequently feels like an after-thought behind the film’s sumptuous production values and Lang’s expressive camera work. It’s also not helped by some of the acting which, particularly in the case of Gustav Frölich’s hand-claspingly camp performance, mines the depths of silent-movie ostentatiousness. Saying that Brigitte Helm is chillingly, wickedly artificial and physically disjointed as the fake Maria (a far cry from her more simpering ‘good’ self) and Abel underplays effectively as Frederson. Klein-Rogge’s insane glare and conflicting lusts also make a strong impression.

But none so strong as Lang’s mastery of visual symbolism. Freder’s terrified vision of the ‘heart machine’ that sits at the centre of the city’s power, transformed into a terrible Moloch with workers literally fed into its gaping, firey maw. Those same workers from the film’s opening with Lang’s brilliant visual conceit of shuffling, shoulder-drooping figures lurching into a gigantic elevator that lowers them into the ground. Rotwang’s birth of the fake Maria is a masterclass in light and cross-cutting, as is the simmering eroticism of the fake Maria’s dance at an orgiastic night-club, the screen filling with the slathering faces of the man she has enchanted.

It mixes with the Gothic power Lang brings the film in its closing sequence, seemingly inspired by mystery plays with their deep-rooted sins bubbling to the surface to condemn those alive today. There are echoes back to this in Freder’s dreams of Metropolis as a modern Babylon (hammered home, once, by the lost scene of a monk preaching in the cathedral) and in Maria’s Joan of Arc like status among the working classes – a mantle taken to its logical conclusion by her metallic replacement who leads a doomed insurrection. Again, all these concepts and influences are effortlessly held together into one magnificent whole by Lang’s fluidic, beautifully paced direction.

Metropolis lives today as a monument to creative science fiction film-making – it is the most ambitious and most influential science-fiction film ever, except perhaps 2001 and (in a very different way) Star Wars. It may be politically simple and its story may veer in unplanned directions and strange cul-de-sacs, but as a piece of visionary cinema it is nearly unparalleled. Even its existence today as a reconstructed, corrupted version of itself (after hours of footage were considered lost for decades) doesn’t not dim or diminish its mastery.