Fritz Lang’s classic (1933) was banned by the Nazis. The Director took to later claim that he had seen at the time, ahead of Hitler’s terror regime. But the thing is.
At first glance, the events speak for themselves. The already at that time a very famous German film Director Fritz Lang (“Metropolis”, “Nibelungen”, “M – eine Stadt sucht einen mörder”) is rotating in 1932, a Film about a mad criminal who seeks to rule the world, the people exploited and terrorized. He calls his Film “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” and continues his two-part film “Dr Mabuse, the gambler”, came out in 1922 in the cinema.
The Nazis banned “Dr. Mabuse” before the premiere
The Film is banned in the weeks during the seizure of power by the national socialists in Germany, and of these, immediately before the planned premiere. Although propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, was an admirer of Fritz Lang’s previous films, is his verdict is clear: “the Film Dr. Mabuse by Fritz Lang seen. Practical guide to crime. Is prohibited.”
Here are the crime meets in the Film: the Nazis, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was not “” acceptable
As before, several copies were placed on the borders of the country, celebrates “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” first Premiere in Budapest, then he is to be seen in France and in other European countries. In the US, the Film is only ten years later, to the performance, Lang, meanwhile, was working in Hollywood. The Germans have to wait even longer. Only six years after the end of the war, you can see a movie of your most famous Director in his own country, of course, in a slightly shortened Version with a new soundtrack provided by the “Dr. Mabuse” is something “pleasing” to appear.
“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” was not long in the original version
Like so many well-known and lesser-known films in the history of cinema from the early days of the medium, “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” has a thrilling reconstruction phase. The German version of 1951 and was supplemented in the 1990s by a lack of Material, copies from home and abroad were compared. The spectators of the great Fritz Lang retrospective of the Berlin film festival in 2001, were the first to see this restored version.
Also from the aufgebahrten corpse of Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is still a risk of
In turn, years later, in 2014, was edited the Film with the help of digital possibilities for a new and carefully restored, so that he is now coming in about the original from Fritz Lang conceived Film-related. This version is available recently on DVD and Blu-ray, equipped with a lot of Background Material and texts from the time of the creation: A model Edition, which allows today’s cinema viewers to consider one of the great masterpieces of German film history. The Film has weathered the decades well, and works today as other famous works of the Director.
Fritz Lang the figure of his silent film classics on the handle
“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” from the silent films (Dr. Mabuse, the player) of 1922, known now by delusions driven criminal Dr. Mabuse in a psychiatric institution, where he is confused, apparently, mentally and with tangled hair on his prison bed sits and uninterrupted strings of Letters, and a mysterious character and will.
The crime Commissioner Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) is Mabuse on the track
A second level of Action a leads to the crime Commissioner, Lohmann, is on the trail of a mysterious crime and everyday life crime, such as murder, theft and robbery do not belong. Lohmann come plans to ears, the devastating attacks on chemical plants describe, and which would apparently have been the death of many Thousands of people. What does that have to do with the other? There is a connection between Mabuse and the criminal is gangs out, he will also be conducting you are probably out of the institution?
The figure Mabuses was interpreted as Hitler’s Deputy
“The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” is after the movie in Germany after the Second world war was widely discussed and interpreted. Some saw in him the attempt of Fritz Lang’s, the what should follow in the Germany of national socialism, the film anticipate The figure of Dr. Mabuse was interpreted as a personification of the ruler without Conscience, than of the ruthless criminal and the politician.
Images of madness – the scenes from the psychiatric hospital scare today
Fritz Lang even this interpretation-fired in the American exile. The Director had now processed is rotated in the Anti-Nazi Film, “Man Hunt”, in an assassination attempt on Hitler, and together with Bertold the assassination attempt on Reinhard Heydrich Brecht in “Hangman so!” on film.
“This Film should show as a parable of Hitler’s terror methods. The slogans and articles of faith of the third Reich were brought to criminals in the mouth,” wrote Lang on the occasion of the U.S. Premiere of “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse”.
The Director described the dark sides of the human Psyche
So he, as Fritz Lang, had hoped that the “Lessons, behind which the will to the destruction of the mask to tear down all the hid, what is a people’s value and expensive,…but then everything collapsed, sought to find in the last despair of his salvation into the ‘New order’.”
Sure is that the film’s Director, with films such as “Dr. Mabuse” drove his employment with the dark side of the human Psyche at the beginning of the 1930s, and probably also some of the historical processes figure and in his films processed. However, it is obvious that the Length of the connection of the “Mabuse” was Hitler in retrospect, closer than she was to the emergence of time.
Testament delivery: At the end of the Power of the crime of Mabuse (r.) to the Director of the institution
The film critic Norbert Grob, one of the best connoisseurs of the work of the Director, who presented a few years ago a comprehensive, Fritz-Lang-biography, wrote already in 1981 in “The times”: “In retrospect, 1943, in another country, where he made other films, claimed Long, the ‘Testament’ is intended as an ‘allegory’ to show Hitler’s terror measures. (…) Occasionally, however, what is beautiful, talk the films in a language other than the intentions and declarations of their authors.”
In the movie it is so Coarse, rather, “the fascination, which emanates from the absolute will to Power, the fascination of the one who declared that the state was he, so he reject any recognition of state violence and of the difficulties to be addressed.”
This is exactly what makes the Film still worth seeing. Not only because he is formally brilliant, but especially because it highlights the generally valid human power structures, which are also in the year 2019 visible everywhere: in a very concrete and real in many social and political Nations of the earth. In addition, the enormous influence on today’s film is Lang’s visibly. Whether successful series such as “Babylon Berlin” or the Blockbuster cinema series such as “James Bond” and “Mission Impossible” – whose creators are likely to all the with Fritz Lang in the teaching to be gone.
Fritz Lang’s Film “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” is the provider of “Atlas” in an Edition with Info-Material on DVD and Blu-rayvor.