Organised crimes… Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), BFI Weimar Cinema Season

“Expressionism! – it’s a game of make believe! But why not? Everything today is make-believe…”

270 minutes of Fritz Lang on a warm Saturday afternoon is probably the hardcore choice but, it must be done. My first time seeing this film and my hot take is that it’s starts like thunder, sags a little and storms back for the second part and an extended finale which wouldn’t be out of place in the gangster movies of the next decade. OK, maybe I sagged a little and not the film but it’s a lot to take in and the pacing wasn’t meant for single sittings.

After the first super-hero (of sorts) with Der Golem, now it was the turn of the first super-villain and Rudolf Klein-Rogge is mesmeric as Dr. Mabuse who can hypnotise at distance, project a hallucination into the minds of a theatre-full of people and disguise himself with all the alacrity of Eille Norwood’s Sherlock Holmes.  Given the bad Doctor’s ability with mass deception, it’s easy to see why this character was so tempting for those like Siegfried Kracauer, to see him as a foretaste of what was to come; but whilst this may or may not have been a particular feature of Germanic political culture, it is not a unique one.

Who shall I be today?

Mabuse is a one-man army, not just in terms of his protean qualities but also his ability to shape people and events. Klein-Rogge makes you believe in this indomitability with a fierce performance that burns through his exaggerated make up: he is genuinely scary and quite clearly capable of anything…

He had been married to Thea von Harbou but by now she was Lang’s partner and wrote the screenplay for the director’s first major success, based on Norbert Jacques’ popular novel and with the intention of creating a “portrait of the time”. Accordingly, we see Mabuse as master of a whole range of mischief from forgery, stock market manipulation – a disaster capitalist no less – murder, extortion, kidnapping, drug-dealing … you name it. All of this would have been very familiar to audiences suffering from post-war economic misery and a society bitterly divided by the “stab in the back” of 1918 and the failure of the old order.

Panic in the stock market

The opening act is audacious, as Mabuse’s gang rob an envoy taking key industrial documents to Switzerland and the threat of these being revealed causes a Bear Market in which the Doctor buys up stock. They deliver the document as intended though and the market starts to rise, allowing Mabuse to make a killing by selling. After this you wonder why he needs the money from all the other criminal activities but maybe he’s after more than just the money?

Like every supervillain, Mabuse has a colourful group of henchmen; sweaty Spoerri (Robert Forster-Larrinaga) who needs cocaine to function so nervous does his master make him, counterfeiter Hawasch (Charles Puffy), generic loose-cannon muscle Pesch (Georg John) and Fine (Grete Berger) who acts as a lookout and house cleaner. There’s also a dancer at the Folies Bergère – isn’t there always? - Cara Carozza (Aud Egede-Nissen) whose loyalty extends to love even though the object of her desire is clearly disinterested.

For his next trick, Mabuse he hypnotises a young industrialist Edgar Hull (Paul Richter) and makes him lose at cards for his own profit. This attracts the attention of state prosecutor Norbert von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke – who has a look of Michael Shannon for me at least...) who has already spotted a pattern of similar incidents.

He's been to Hull and back...

To von Wenk and the authorities in general, there is just enough evidence to suggest a "Great Unknown", and Mabuse’s disguises mean that he is only seen as a psychoanalyst; cutting edge medicine at the time and a magical mix with the practice of gambling – luck and secret knowledge of the subconscious all gathered in one unsettling package with wild eyes and way too much mascara. It’s bordering on the science fiction Lang would follow up with and says a lot for the state of Weimar society in terms of people, how they appear and how they really are. The man of many faces hides his truth and there would, of course, be a lot more of this to come.

Von Wenk persuades Hull to show him the city’s underground to track down his unknown adversary and there are glimpses of nightclubs one of which features and uncredited performance from Anita Berber dancing in a tuxedo. Mabuse has already arranged for Cara to instigate a relationship with Hull and so the cat and the mouse are confused. There is an epic showdown at one card-club in which von Wenk, in heavy disguise, manages to resist Mabuse’s mind control… but, naturally the Doctor escapes.

Gertrude Welcker giving it plenty of "weary blood".

Von Wenk meets a bored countess, Dusy Told (Gertrude Welcker) married to a boring Count, Graf Told (played with foppish glee by Alfred Abel who looks like the Kemp brother’s Uncle – too old for Spandau, but he liked the style…). There are lots of juicy quotes from the Countess about ennui, she can’t even be bothered to join in the gambling and is looking for adventure: von Wenk can offer her that and, rather unprofessionally, falls in love with her…

“We have weary blood, Mr von Wenk! We need sensations of an altogether peculiar kind, to be able to endure life!”

Now all of the pieces are in pace for the grandest of chases and, with less than half the narrative covered, there’s no way I’m tellin’ you anything copper, it’s more than me life’s worth and the Doctor… he has ways of making sure secrets are kept!

It’s well-crafted but long – which is fine! – and there’s a compelling narrative with so many knowing contemporary touches… in 1922 audiences were in need of entertainment, "weary blood" infected so many. As with every true criminal genius, this wasn’t to be the last of Dr Mabuse, who returned with Lang in 1934 and 1960 (the director's last film).

Powderpuff picaresque… The Loves of Casanova (1927), with Stephen Horne, BFI, London Film Festival 2017

The BFI’s Bryony Dixon describes The Loves of Casanova as “… an exercise in ebullience…”, whilst Lenny Borger called it a “"Europudding" – albeit with plenty of flavour… and it’s hard to disagree. You could watch this film as a kind of biopic either of the life of Giacomo Casanova or of Ivan Mozzhukhin, possibly both… but either way there’s no absence of charisma.

The film was shot partially in Venice and it was good to revisit the location so soon after I recently returned there, albeit 90 years before… (it hasn’t changed much, but then I doubt it ever does, a little lower perhaps?). Entirely because sumptuous locations just are not enough, Casanova also features a veritable “kitchen sink” delivery of mise-en-scène throughout and not least for the climactic scenes with stunning Pathecolour during Venice carnival.

The camera is right amongst the action too, hand-held in Gance style, pulling the viewer into this glorious world of masked balls, illicit liaisons and romance… with a guy who can’t say no. There’s Casanova sword-fighting a dozen men, a colourized river-rescue, massed pursuit by gondola and horse and sleigh pursuit in the snow with everyone but the lead – audience and supporting players – in shock as our hero keeps his cool home and away…

Ivan Mozzhukhin: ridicule is nothing to be scared of

Bryony said the film was an attempt to out-Hollywood, Hollywood and it certainly has a good go. A tinsel-titled Casanova is followed by exploding fireworks and then dreams of dancers in Venice as our hero is revealed in his luxurious quarters. He is woken by his two, attractive blonde “assistants” just in time for the first bailiff of the day to attempt to arrest him.

The men find a famous dancer, La Corticelli (a shockingly topless Rina De Liguoro) in Casanova’s bedroom and the host then performs “magic”, persuading Menucci to accept his book of spells in exchange for the debt. Then we meet little Djimi (Raymond Bouamerane) who is the servant of Baroness Stanhope (Olga Day), he asks a man on the street where Casanova lives and all the windows in the street are opened by women who know the answer. The mood is playful, Russian whimsy filtered through French style as young Djimi plays tag with Casanova’s two assistants and then is chased by Baron Stanhope (Dimitri Dimitriev) as he tries to deliver a message from C to B… she reads the letter and then throws the torn pieces out of the window only for her husband to catch both them and their meaning.

A bit blue: Rina De Liguoro and friends

Next to a grand banquet in which Corticelli is host and we also meet a lieutenant of the Russian Imperial Guard, Gregori Orloff (Paul Guidé) who has plans of his own… slipping round the back to watch the women dance naked as Casanova and the rest stare at the shadows their bodies cast on a screen… It is SO saucy and, when our hero picks up his favourite dancer – Corticelli of course – she is clearly naked (of course). Ooh, la, la!! Or, as they say in Liverpool, ooh, la, la, la…

But the Lieutenant is also interested and duels with Casanova but the dancer decides that they should be friends…  And that’s only the first half an hour!

Chased out of Venice on jumped up charges of sorcery, Casanova heads North and, in Austria, encounters Duc de Bayreuth (Albert Decoeur) and his party which includes a pretty-faced boy, Bellino… Casanova intervenes to stop a group of drunks abusing an old fiddle player showing that he’s a much Robin Hood as Don Juan and Bellino seems strangely impressed.

About a boy? Jenny and Ivan

During the night Casanova hears odd noises and Volkoff shows our hero imagining hazy images to go with the sounds as he leans, in sharp focus, against the door. There’s something afoot and the great lover once more springs to the rescue to find that Bellino is not at all a boy and that the Duc is trying to have his evil way with her… Thérèse (Jenny Jugo).

A dramatic rescue is cut short as sheer weight of men and horses overcomes Casanova… will he ever find her again? Here again there are some great shots from Volkoff and his team of cinematographers, Fédote Bourgasoff, Léonce-Henri Burel and Nikolai Toporkoff. With a camera pointing up as men on horseback race overhead you are reminded of the director’s work on Gance’s Napoleon.

He and Djimi are rescued by a passing stage coach containing M. Dupont who is en route to the court of Catherine II with the latest in lingerie and dresses… Casanova takes his stock and his passport – needs must and he has another court to conquer as Ivan and Alex make a dream return home.

Suzanne Bianchetti and Catherine's great, big train...

In St Petersburg we find Dr Mabuse himself, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, highly impressive as a fractious Tsar Peter III and Suzanne Bianchetti as a serene Catherine II… The queen takes rather well to her new friend and his fashions and as Orloff spots his old mucker, the two remember their pledge to remain friends just in time… and, soon, there are more important matters afoot. The Tsar is going too far, and regime change is in the air, he humiliates Catherine once too often and Casanova comes to her aid as the Empress’ forces re-align the gender balance at the top of government.

Catherine, who is pretty great, arranges a ball to celebrate and it’s here that Casanova spots Maria, Duchess de Mari (Diana Karenne) … He just can’t help himself “selecting” and it’s always “at first sight” as well… He’s a gentleman but he is more lion than human if you want to get zoological.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Paul Guidé

At the ball Empress Catherine has perhaps the longest train in movie history… the ensuing dance is a cauldron of human emotion with the director showing the faces of the main players, Casanova looking at Maria, Catherine, put out, gazing on with jealous concern, the Duke of Mari uneasy as his wife is romanced and Orloff concerned, as always, for his queen… The camera follows the movement around the huge ballroom and it’s another glorious set piece.

There’s more to come after Casanova and Maria escape from Russia and her husband and it’s back to Venice for a colourised denouement and more tough choices for our hero on the romance-front: it’s unrelenting and could easily carry on for Casanova in an endless loop of over-lapping love stories.

Diana Karenne and Ivan Mozzhukhin

Casanova is a dream of escape from responsibility and not just a tale of amorous addiction. Casanova always easily evades the officials and gallops off to love again …he always has a way out just as he'll always - nearly - get captured by his heart.

Stephen Horne had a ball with this, creating over two hours of musical variety in a four-hander with Ivan’s rhythmic mime. The plot and pacing may occasionally wander but Stephen held theme and tone driving the narrative onwards in characterful interplay with the lead’s darting eyes and feline grace.

As Bryony Dixon said, she could have picked any number of Ivan’s French films of this period – a golden streak for Mozzhukhin and Alexandre Volkoff, but this one is the most lavish and light-hearted and clearly all concerned were deadly serious about the project. It made us laugh and long for an era of powderpuff decadence.

Anthem for doomed love… Destiny (1921), Cambridge Film Festival with Stephen Horne

My first trip to the Cambridge Film Festival and a film projected in Emmanuel College; a sixteenth century venue for a film that features a sequence from around that period. Cambridge and Oxford are anomalies in the UK retaining so much of their earlier architecture in educational powerhouses that ensure that the present always gives way to the past. Fritz Lang trained as an architect and no doubt would have appreciated the additional context provided to his film by this vibrant antiquity.

I spent three years living in a college begun in 1264 – the last in a 1288 quadrangle - and you pass through without even scratching the surface: students haunt Oxbridge, flickering briefly and casting our flitting shadows against its external stone.

Tonight Death came to Cambridge and reminded us all that somethings outlast even the finest sandstone. Made in 1921 when there were over half a million war-widows in Germany, Destiny or Der müde Tod (literally The Weary Death) suggests that love is stronger than death but no less avoidable. To a nation in a devastation of mourning its gothic kindness would have touched so many: fairy-tale frankness masking a more positive than pessimistic message.

Bernhard Goetzke

Death is played rather convincingly by Bernhard Goetzke who carries his dark duties with a heavy heart and weary resolution: it’s not easy being the man in black but he wears it well and is nothing if not fair.

Lil Dagover is the Maiden who tries to reason with The Glum Reaper after the untimely demise of her love (Walter Janssen) her selfless pursuit of his life touching even his grief-drenched soul.

It is interesting that the man is in distress and not the damsel; she is relentless and willing to risk all and give all to save her love. After watching Nell Shipman do the same a few days ago from 1919, it’s interesting to see Lil Dagover also playing the swashbuckling hero.

Lil Dagover

This restoration was making its UK debut and the newly minted tints and tones were a treat, bringing out the film’s sumptuous design and cinematography. The crew worked on many other noteworthy Weimar films and it is no surprise that America and others were watching. Douglas Fairbanks allegedly bought the US rights just so he could copy elements of the Arabian sequence for The Thief of Bagdad and also delay release until after his own film. But the visual influence stretches along way… all the way to a Swedish beach in 1957 when a knight plays chess to stave off his death?

Destiny is a big step forward from Lang’s previous films, Der Spinnen, and it marks the beginning of his audacious fairy tales, spy stories and science fiction.

Meeting the strange dark man

The framing sequence in some un-dated present is relatively stripped back as the young couple travel in a horse-drawn carriage to a small town of Brothers Grimm vintage. They are joined by an intimidating dark stranger who follows them to a local inn. At the inn is a delightful collection of civic grotesquery who recall the story of a dark stranger buying land next to the cemetery and building a huge wall around it with no visible means of entry…

The couple toast the future life together but it is not long before the man is gone and the woman if in despair at the edge of the wall as wraith-like figures pass through her and the wall. She resolves to take her own life and to follow her man: love is stronger than death and she will rescue him.

The hall of candles was inspired by a Grimm’s fairy tale (thanks MD!)

She meets death inside his mausoleum and they walk amongst thousands of candles each representing a brief life that will always flicker out. Death is there for lives lived long and short – he takes a baby’s life with the same endless sorrow as an old man - he is a force of nature tasked by the almighty…

And yet, convinced of the woman’s love he is willing to give her a chance to defeat him and win back her dead man’s life.

She has three chances in three separate vignettes: set in Persia, Venice Carnaval, and lastly a magical China…. She has to prevent Death from taking her three loves in each scenario with their lives represented by a single candle flame:  if but one remains a-flicker she’ll have won but who can hope to beat Death.

A magic carpet ride

The contest thus set out I can say now more without spoiling... the end, when it comes, makes perfect sense and works on many satisfactory levels.

Stephen Horne has previously accompanied this restoration in San Francisco and Bologna and his familiarity paid dividends here with some sumptuous themes one of which lingered long after the film’s conclusion: Death’s theme. Stephen has the most varied kit of any leading silent accompanist and here featured even an Arabic call to prayer along with flute, accordion and Emmanuel’s Steinway. You need soul to make it all work and Destiny met its musical match.

The film was also accompanied by one of the Festival programmers Margaret Deriaz reading out English translation of the German title cards as the film had arrived from the Murnau-Stiftung in its native tongue.  But they have stout hearts at the CFF and Margaret read very well.

Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Lil Dagover

Destiny is a gothic pantomime performed with relish not just by Lil Dagover and Bernhard Goetzke but also a host of Weimar stars including Dr. Mabuse himself Rudolf Klein-Rogge, M’s Georg John and many more. Not the very best of Lang but a very moving signifier of what was to come and without doubt a very interesting film.

As we walked from the lecture theatre, the old walls of Cambridge were shrouded in dark and we were haunting again sure in the knowledge that love is stronger than mortar (boards).

I trust Der müde Tod is destined for home media release and with Stephen’s accompaniment too!

Bright lights, big city… Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis is probably one of the two or three silent films most people can name and for such an intensely evaluated film I feel a bit like Cordelia being challenged by her father to elevate her level of praise above that of her siblings: “…what can you say to draw a third more opulent than your sisters/fellow bloggers…” Maybe not much but I should have a go and I know King Lang isn’t fussed either way.

Robo women through the ages: Sophie May Williams gets silent on The Voice...

My teenage daughter asked to see the film, we’d just watched an episode of the BBC’s talent show, The Voice (Saturday night compromise TV...), which featured a staging drawn directly from Metropolis – proving the film’s enduring mainstream credentials almost 90 years on… Our Beth also wanted to understand more of the references to the film in Janelle Monae’s music. Both Monae’s two albums have looked back to Metropolis along with her early EP, called, erm, Metropolis: Suite 1 (The Chase)… The energetically eclectic, multi-talented Monae is obviously a woman of taste and discernment as, indeed, is my daughter.

How much she found connecting the concept albums with Fritz Lang and Thea Harbou’s story I’m not sure but The Electric Lady was certainly there for all to see with teenage Brigitte Helm’s amazing performance: she is mesmerising and gives a quite stunning physical performance as she switches from the graceful spiritualism of Maria to the body-popping kinetic madness of robo-Maria. Her energetic commitment is still genuinely shocking: she is the robot and she is infused with the nihilism of her creator laughing in the face of her own destruction.

Brigitte Helm

But the immediate dazzle of Metropolis is the city itself: a vision so powerful that you can trace its influence not just through to modern soul-punk but also through cinematic science fiction – Blade Runner even looks a little like it. Lonng before Philip K Dick Lang was telling us how badly the future can go wrong Lang was in there even if Aldous Huxley and HG Wells would already have agreed with him – although I'm not sure the latter was that impressed with the film: he called it silly… thank goodness he never saw the Giorgio Moroder version.

Lang presents a future world with amazing cohesion and style – and art deco heaven propped up by a Dadaist hell in which machines are oiled by the sweat of subterranean slaves who march in de-humanised desolation all unified in their defeat by a society that values only their number, not their individuality. Weimar Germany still lay crushed by the defeat/”betrayal” of 1918 and communist alternatives still found wide favour as did other developing ideologies that looked to redress the imbalances in German society.

Art deco heaven...

The Weimar was the first democratic government in Germany a country with no culture of democracy but of benevolent autocracy and political culture cannot be changed through process alone… if you are used to the Leader you may still look for a Leader (political scientist SE Finer is not alone in pointing out the ways in which changed systems must evolve and not just be imposed).

It’s not too much of a stretch to see Metropolis attempting to find answers to the question of how to rule and how to manage capitalist diversity… Then again it may just be a simple fable.

Greasing the wheels...

But the film also clearly portrays Modernism and by implication Americanisation, as a threat… albeit a good-looking one! Lang claimed later that his first trip to New York had inspired the film’s look and feel even though its stunning designs had already been completed by this time. Then again he could hardly have been unfamiliar with high-rise…. There are glimpses of San Francisco in The Spiders (1919-20) apart from anything else.

But again, is Metropolis any less of a fable than Die Neibelung – one looking forward the other looking back? Above all else Lang dealt in adventure and human drama and both films deliver mightily on both scores. What gives Metropolis the edge though is the scale of its forward-thinking fantasy: it was a step change in how the future was going to look and move from the airborne vehicles flying between the mile-high towers to the slow-moving traffic on crowded fly-overs.

The opening segment has the audience looking up at the sheer scale of the future city and then marvelling at how those at the top tier live, gymnastics in roof-top stadia and arboreal pleasure gardens: they appear to be free from the everyday, Earth-bound concerns.

That is until one of the playboys, Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) notices a young woman with a group of children clearly out of place in their rags. She is Maria (Brigitte Helm), a teacher who has bought her class of children to see the gardens above the ground.

Captivated, Freder, follows Maria as she returns below, he has no inkling that anyone lived under the city – having only ever seen the pristine environs of the elevated. He is the son of The Master of Metropolis, Joh Fredersen (Alfred Abel) and has no inkling that his father maintains the city in ruthless fashion…

Gustav Fröhlich and Brigitte Helm

As Freder explores the world below he finds a dispirited mass of workers regimented to the level of machines used to feed the immense foundries that bring light to the gleaming spires above.

Maria is one of those who bring hope, imploring her fellow workers to pray for their saviour: someone who will provide the heart to link the head in the clouds to the hands in the dirt. They meet in darkened caves as she preaches in front of a collection of crosses: has religion been outlawed in the future… driven underground.

Herr Rasp and Alfred Abel

But Joh Fredersen has no intention of sharing power or loosening his grip on the populace – he rules with authoritarian efficiency using a network of spies and secret policemen such as the sinister Thin Man (Fritz Rasp… has ever an actor been so perfectly type-cast by their name?). They rely on surveillance and betrayal to keep order… sadly this was to be the real future.

But order starts to break down as Freder becomes radicalised by what he sees underground and driven by his growing love for Maria returns to the underworld. Realising this, a desperate Joh Fredersen enlists the aid of Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) – the maddest of mad scientists who still mourns the love of his life Hel, the woman who died giving birth to Joh’s son Freder.

Jon and Rotwang hatch a plan

Rotwang has built a robot – Maschinenmensch - intended to give some kind of life to his beloved but which he now turns to another purpose: the corruption and destruction of the City. He will turn the worker’s hope into a catalyst for their hate whilst at the same time using her facsimile to push those over ground into a frenzy of lust and greed.

It’s going to be a long night.

I watched the BFI Blu-ray which features the Argentine footage found in 2008 which makes the story almost complete and much more understandable. The original score from Gottfried Huppertz is revived in stirring form and it’s wonderful to hear the original soundtrack for a silent film of this magnitude.

The most expensive film ever made by UFA and one to rival Hollywood’s excesses, Metropolis turned out to be a flop at the time – even 7500 extras couldn’t guarantee success… but this wasn’t entirely the fault of Lang’s vision. The American’s cut it down for being too long whilst certain, more communistic sections were excised in Germany. The Argentine film was a complete copy but two scenes featuring a monk preaching in the cathedral and the fight between Rotwang and Joh Fredersen were too badly damaged to resurrect.

What remains is now almost whole and one of the genuinely great silent films: a fable about the future from the past that says so much about the present in which it was made. By 1933 Thea von Harbou had joined a party intent on mediating from the head through the heart to the hands… She and Lang divorced and he headed off the America: the land of the free and the home of the high-rise.

The BFI Blu-ray/DVD is readily available direct or from Movie Mail and those Amazons… but you’ve probably already got it.