SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Overrated and overhyped

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Lang is indisputably one of the greatest of the German Expressionist directors and with films like Dr. Mabuse and Metropolis (1927) under his belt I think it is fair to say that he was one of the greatest directors to have ever worked. This, his grand tale of gangsters, mind control, deceit, and deception, is one piece in the long list of proof for this claim.Dr. Mabuse tells the strange tale of the titular crime-lord (Rudolph Klein-Rogge) as he swindles the rich through the use of mysterious powers of mind control, manipulates the stock market, and ruthlessly murders all those who stand in his way, all the while being relentlessly hounded by the virtuous State Prosecutor Von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke). The intrigue runs deep, the mysteries run deeper, and the whole story is riveting from beginning to end.This short synopsis, however, is one of the shallowest looks at the film that one could imagine. There is so much more to Dr. Mabuse than a simple crime story: it is a masterful critique of the overwhelming decadence of the upper classes of Berlin, it is a biting sneer in the face of ruthless capitalism, it is an interesting look into the power men hold over each other, but most importantly it is a great work of art.I will not waste too much time talking about Lang's masterful use of lighting and shadows, his grand shot compositions, or his inventive use of cinematic effects as these are all things that are so readily apparent in his Weimar films that it would be needless to rant about them here. What I will talk about, however, is what a sheer delight it is to be able to have access to a film such as this in the modern day. I mean, such a regular turnover of films through the cinema and DVD markets with such huge leaps and bounds being made how film is presented and what one can do with visual effects might lead some to lose sight of the rich history of narrative cinema, but with groups like the F.W Murnau Stiftung painstakingly tracking down prints of the classics of early cinema, restoring them, and making them readily available to the public one cannot lose too much heart. We, the cinema lovers of the world, have the ability (or the privilege) to experience the films in which so much of the early hard work was done, and that, too me, is one of the finest things that can happen.So, my suggestion to you all is to track down of copy of Dr. Mabuse and set yourself aside the four to five hours it takes to watch it (different versions of the film run for differing lengths of time) and really immerse yourself in its art. It is well worth the time and the intellectual effort, with the joys that come from viewing a film as well executed as this reminding cine-philes what their love of the craft is all about.

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (aka Dr Mabuse, der Spieler)This is a two-part film by Fritz Lang. The first part is called "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, An Image of the Times," and the second is "Inferno, People of the Times." Together, the movie is over three and a half hours long. It is based on a novel written by Norbert Jacques, and the script for Lang's film was written by his wife Thea von Harbou (who had been married to one the film's stars, Rudolf Klein-Rogge). The film is difficult but interesting for a number of reasons.The gist of the plot is that Dr. Mabuse (played by Klein-Rogge) is the arch-fiend of all society, an evil genius who can rule the world by the force of his will. He has a gang of henchmen that he controls in various ways: violence, hypnotism, corruption, money. Mabuse is wealthy from various schemes: stock market fraud, counterfeiting, and gambling. Mabuse affects a series of disguises when he gambles. He wins by overpowering the minds of the fellows at his table and making them lose even when they have winning hands. As an arch- fiend, Dr. Mabuse is the god-father of all the James Bond movie villains. The will of Dr. Mabuse is an irresistible force.Our hero is State Attorney von Wenk, played with admirable restraint by Bernhard Goetzke. I'd put Goetzke in the same league as Sam Shepard in terms of looks and acting. Even though it's a silent movie we can tell von Wenk is laconic - there are lengthy scenes of him clenching his jaw as he ponders whatever he's pondering, the camera lingering on his handsome face. Von Wenk is made aware of numerous complaints of card-sharking at clubs and casinos, but it's always a different man (we know, of course, that it's Mabuse in disguise); von Wenk goes out to various gambling halls to ferret out his prey. And the game is afoot.Mabuse and von Wenk meet, both in disguise, and fail to recognize each other. One of the fascinating parts of the movie is that von Wenk has heard of Mabuse as a psychiatrist and actually recommends to one of Mabuse's dupes that the dupe see Dr. Mabuse for treatment; naturally, it ends badly. The bulk of the first part of the movie sets us up to see Mabuse as the arch-fiend with his hordes of dupes doing his bidding whether they know it or not, whether they want to or not. Mabuse runs by his watch, and the beginning shows him constantly checking it and taking his servants to task for not being timely. His stock market manipulations require timing, and he carries them off with aplomb as all around him panic. He's silent throughout the chaotic scenes except for two statements: "I'm buying," then "I'm selling."The film is set in 1922, when the Weimar Republic was at the height of inflation and the depths of morality. Lang gives us "An Image of the Times." Mabuse's speculations and criminal schemes fit into the milieu of the times in Germany. Mabuse has no morals, no scruples; his goal to to get whatever he wants when he wants it. From his point of view, there is only will. Mabuse has the will, and he will have his way.In the second part, we see the havoc wrought on the people Mabuse has, well, abused. Suicides, protracted prison terms, deaths, all at the will of Mabuse. The inferno is in the mind, and Mabuse burns people up, then discards them as the trash they are.I don't recommend this film for beginners in the experience of silent movies. It is very long, and the pacing is leisurely. Lang sets up long portraits of his actors and shows them moodily staring for long seconds. The script is not realistic, and the characters are not naturalistic. The acting sidles toward the stylized arm-thrown-across-the-brow to show anguish, but because nothing is natural in the movie, this style works here without being laughably histrionic. The sets verge toward German Expressionism, but maintain a certain reality that makes the apartments and rooms more believable as actual homes than, for example, the sets in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" is a long series of long portraits of characters and settings. Lang establishes his characters by showing them in inaction.The movie can be seen as a portrayal of the corruption of the Weimar Republic. The years immediately preceding 1922 were fraught with violence in the streets as extremists battled each other for control of cities and states within the republic. The government had started printing money to repay huge debts, but there were no goods to sell to other countries to earn the marks. This led to hyperinflation; one of Mabuse's counterfeiting schemes was to print only US dollars, because other currencies devalued before he could dispose of the counterfeits.But this was also an era of unparalleled creativity, of which "Dr. Mabuse" is a prime example. The cabaret scene in Germany in the Twenties was unrivaled in its sexuality (the various treatments of "Cabaret" bear this out) but also unrivaled in its success as entertainment. The Bauhaus school of architecture and Expressionism in theatre, art, and cinema, are just two of the Weimar Republic's contributions to culture.Be that as it may, instead of the triumph of the will expected by Dr. Mabuse, we find him at the end insane. His attraction to Countess Told is worse the fatal -- Mabuse's will is impotent in the face of her refusal of him. Perhaps "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" foretells the rise of Hitler and his minions and dupes. Or perhaps the decadence and collapse of the Weimar Republic spawned arch villains willy nilly. Who can tell?

It is interesting to discover or rediscover Fritz Lang. He was well known for one film, Metropolis, and then for a few American films, films he shot in the USA. But the full set of Dr Mabuse's films is fascinating in a way because it provides a rare vision on the German cinema from the early 1920s to 1960. The eye looking at the world from a German point of view that spans over Hitler, Nazism and the Second World War is Fritz Lang's. We know him for his highly symbolical Metropolis in which the meaning is built by visual and numerical symbols. In this Dr Mabuse it is different. There are quite a lot of symbols but inherited from the silent cinema of the old days, symbols that are there only to make clear a situation that had been depicted previously with pictures and no words, or a page of intertitles. Fritz Lang still uses that technique in his 1960 film, which is a long time overdue for a silent cinema technique. But that is a style, nothing but a way of speaking, not a meaning. The meaning is absolutely bizarre. Dr Mabuse is a highly criminal person but his objective is not to commit crimes in order to get richer or whatever. It is to control the world through his criminal activity. The world is seen as basically negative, leading to chaos and overexploitation, leading to anarchistic crime and nothing else because the only objective of this modern world is to make a profit by all means available. Dr Mabuse is a master mind of his time and for him crime is the only way to destroy that capitalistic world that he never calls capitalistic or Kapitalismus and to replace it with pure chaos that should be able to bring a regeneration, a rejuvenating epiphany, a re-founding experience. We find in his mind what we could find in some of the most important criminal minds in this world, like Carlos in France, or Charles Manson in the USA, or those sects that practice mass suicide in order to liberate the suicidees and to warn the world about the coming apocalypse. It is the mind and thinking of those who practice war as a revolutionary activity with a fundamentalist vision of their religions or politics and the world that is supposed to reflect that religion. They do not want to build a different society and when they are in power they are constantly aiming at antagonizing their own population and the world because they cannot exist if they do not feel some opposition that they can negate, bring down, crush, like in Iran, or in Germany with Hitler, though later on it was not much different under the Communists in East Germany. These visions need opposition to exist and they provoke that opposition by aiming at taking the control of the world with violence and imposing their control with more violence. That's Dr Mabuse, the main brain of a criminal decomposition and re-composition of society on an absolutely antagonistic vision of life. But that vision is very common. Just as common as this phrase "a half full glass is nothing but a half empty glass". Add antagonism to that dual vision and then you have a struggle to the death between the half empty glass that wants to be full and the half full glass that wants to be empty (or full?), one half only wanting to take what the other half has and impose his half to the other half to make the world one by the elimination of the other side of the coin. That dual antagonistic vision is the popular and shrivelled up approach of the communist catechism of Stalin, inherited from Marx's French son in law Paul Lafargue, or of course in all dictatorship that reduces life to a little red book, to one hundred quotations from the master thinker of the revolution. That's the world you feel in these films. Fritz Lang embodies this ideology of the mentally poor in that criminal character of his: kill, rob, steal, counterfeit. Even if you die when doing so, the world will change and remember. The master criminal has to die in his activity in order to regenerate the world. What Fritz Lang introduced in his double main feature of the early 1920s and in his Testament, is that the master brain of this vision internalizes this paranoid and psychotic vision of the world into himself and has to become psychotic himself and it is in his psychosis that he finds the energy to conquer the world again. In the third film, Dr Mabuse has been dead for a long time and is reincarnated by someone who finds his inspiration in the doctor. That is a far-fetched cinematographic and fictional antic that is necessary as a reference but brings nothing to the vision itself. A few years later that ideology was to conquer our imagination in many ways. First the Berlin Wall became the symbol of that vision the way it was carried and conveyed to the world by the East-German communists. Then we have to think of the various revolutionary movements like Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, Die Rote Armee Fraktion, to take some German examples. But think of the French Mesrine and the Italian revolutionary urban guerrilla warfare movements and you will have a fair picture of this psychotic criminal mind copied and pasted into the political field. The Maoist Red Guard and Cultural Revolution movement was quite typical of this approach. All that was going to come in 1960 and we must admit Fritz Lang was seeing ahead of his time, just as he had seen Hitler in his Testament of Dr Mabuse: a political leader based on hypnosis and mesmerizing people into blindly following a band of criminals.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

This film, like many of Fritz Lang's best efforts, mixes pulp fiction, realism, fantasy and social comment, in this case to adapt to the screen Jacques Norbert's serial novel about a diabolical mastermind (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who can destabilize the national economy by manipulation of the stock market, operate an underground counterfeiting ring manned by blind slaves, hypnotize card players into losing all of their money to him and even engineer a mass hallucination. He changes his identity for every caper via costumes, wigs, prosthetics and fake facial hair. He has in his employ an army of henchmen from slum denizens and cutthroats to a celebrated follies dancer whom he uses as a lure for wealthy victims. And for what? His purpose in life is to "play the game" and undermine his opponent's will. At one point he states that there is no such thing as love, only lust and the will to power (or, as some interpretations go, the will to possess what one desires). When state prosecutor Von Wenk (the sturdy Bernhard Goetzke) launches an investigation into this one-man crime wave his pursuit covers the social spectrum from the dives and gutters of the underworld to the palaces of the nobility.The film is beautifully designed and photographed and organized into scenes and acts. Each scene is a story unto itself. This structuring helps provide a centering or equilibrium for the viewer amidst the cascade of events and characters.Among Mabuse's victims: A bored countess (Gertrud Welcker) who frequents the illegal gambling houses to observe the reactions to wins and losses on the faces of the players so that she can vicariously experience passion. She longs for an adventure the likes of which she can never experience at home with her wimpy husband who spends his time tinkering with antique art objects. Little does she know that she is about to be plunged into the adventure of her life.Another young beauty, this one a prominent cabaret performer (Aud Egede Nissen), has fallen under the spell of Dr. Mabuse, lives in an apartment adjacent to his hotel suite and serves as bait for unsuspecting victims like the wealthy young Edgar Hull (the not-so-young Paul Richter), who is milked of his fortune by Mabuse.No one can defy Mabuse. He seems to be everywhere and know everything, so that if you dare betray him you are as good as dead. This terror ensures his gang's devotion. The similarities to Hitler (or any totalitarian leader with secret police tentacles reaching far and wide) are obvious and this film has been cited often as a foreshadowing of the Hitler era. Part 2 is even subtitled "a story for our time." The notion of conspiratorial forces operating behind the scenes was on the German mind when this film was made.There are many startling parallels between MABUSE and the 1920 classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, an interesting fact considering the legend that Lang was involved in the conceptual stage of CALIGARI. Both stories feature a spooky doctor with hypnotic powers who spreads evil through the land. In both films the identity of the central evil character changes: Dr. Mabuse assumes many disguises; Dr. Caligari remains himself until he appears as a psychiatrist at the end. The sign on Mabuse's door reads "Psychoanalyse." Caligari's somnambulist predicts a man will die within hours; Mabuse hypnotizes a man into driving himself over the bank of a canal. The villains even visually resemble each other in both films: Mabuse often wears white fright wigs and high hats reminiscent of Werner Krauss's look in Caligari. MABUSE operates on a wider canvas than CALIGARI. Whereas Caligari's only instrument is his somnambulist slave, Mabuse operates an extensive network of henchmen. At the climax of both stories a word ("Caligari"/"Melior") is animatedly superimposed over the screen action to intensify the impact. The whole of CALIGARI is designed expressionistically; expressionistic sets are used minimally and subtly in Mabuse but the subject of expressionism is briefly discussed in one scene wherein Mabuse describes it as "another game" or words to that effect. The expressionism in CALIGARI is all-encompassing; in MABUSE it is under control, part of a larger design. In both films there are scenes in prison cells. In both films a beautiful young woman who has fainted is carried off and then liberated. In the Kino edition of MABUSE there is one apparent technical glitch: a car chase near the end starts at night and suddenly flips to daylight with no sense of transition. If this was Lang's idea of "day for night" shooting, he overshot the mark hugely.On display here is Lang's penchant for mixing exotic pulp, unadorned realism, and pure fantasy. In MABUSE it is the doctor's magical hypnotic powers that stretch and finally break credulity, woven as they are into an otherwise naturalistic crime melodrama. This mixture of the fantastical and the ordinary occurs in all of Lang's 1920's work, right through WOMAN IN THE MOON (1929). Only with M (1931) does he begin to abandon fantasy and concentrate on social issues, whereupon he steered clear of pulp and exotica until late in life when he returned to the genre in the late 1950s with his India trilogy. But by that time film audiences had long outgrown the conventions of the 1920's. And so ended Lang's career. But the sheer scope and expert execution of this film under the conditions that prevailed in Germany in 1921-22, supervised by a man barely 30 years old, is quite an achievement and should be seen.