fritz lang

He is considered one of the greats of expressionism and American black cinema. Of Jewish and Catholic origin like his father, he studied Architecture and was a painter. Screenwriter and director under the aegis of Erich Pommer , he made his directorial debut in 1919 and emigrated to the United States because of Nazism.

His architectural training and pictorial sense contributed to his integration into the expressionist movement, of which he was one of its most important creators in the field of cinema, along with FW Murnau , Robert Wiene , Paul Wegener …, although more stylized and perhaps purer. than their peers. In his early days he made films in the category of The Three Lights – also known as The Tired Death – (1921), Doctor Mabuse (1922), the Wagnerian epic The Nibelungs (1923-24), his monumental Metropolis(1926), although the latter two have romantic and futuristic elements. Before Hitler’s rise to power forced him to leave Germany, he would produce two new masterpieces with political implications: M, the Vampire of Düsseldorf (1931) and his parable The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.(1933), with which he tried out the sound rising technique. “M was not an anti-Nazi film as some claim, but a film against the death penalty”, as he told me personally in 1970. “As for my second Mabuse, I did intend to make a film against Nazism, because I put in the mouth of criminals the words of Hitler: total destruction and the new world that he wanted to build. So much so that I had to run out of the country, after being summoned by the Führer”. Fleeing Germany, Lang is separated from his wife and co-writer, Thea von Harbou , who would become one of the biggest propagandists for the Nazi regime.

Like other colleagues of his, he headed to the Mecca of Cinema to continue his brilliant career. After an adaptation in France ( Liliom , 1934), Hollywood opened its doors to him in 1936 and he practically remained there until his death. In those long years he made no less than 22 films, within various genres: war, police and “black” cinema, his favorite genre, focused on criminal and judicial issues: The woman in the painting , Perversity , Blue Gardenia , While New York sleeps …; as well as the westerns -the revenge of Frank James , Spirit of conquest and Concealer are highly valued today, which would contribute to the “intimate” renewal. Films that, without reaching the genius of his best German works, would also consolidate Lang as a master of American cinema.

Fritz Lang’s talent found its way easily in Hollywood, although the style of the American production system was very different from what he had known in Germany. “I did not find difficulties; on the contrary, I was able to impose myself immediately. Doors were opened for me. The truth is that in Europe there were practically no producers. However, in the United States the production regime is so embedded in the capitalist system that it is inhumane. Yes, the producers are inhumane; they are not people ”, he also told me in 1970.

In Lang’s work some constants can be clearly seen: man’s real or fictitious guilt complex, the relentless siege of the social environment, the pursuit of destiny, fatality, the instinct for revenge, the desire for justice… Constants that It even developed in its American phase, with psychological and action films. Hence, perhaps Lang’s work can be described as deterministic, where man is not really free and the will is chained by a decisive factor, internal or external. Faced with this personal observation, Lang replied in the same interview: “I don’t know if he is deterministic or not my position; For me the important thing is not the end, but the fight to reach it. What man needs is to fight. Even if the system oppresses you, what you have to do is fight to get to the end.

Despite this latent pessimism, the Viennese director tried to make the public react with his films: “I have not tried to make a film without further ado -he concluded on that occasion-, but rather to express my conception of the world. I have never made films to make money, although I have made a lot, but for the viewer. Each film influences the public and, in turn, the public influences the film itself. When the cycle is closed is when the work is complete. I have never tried to change things, society. For that, I would have devoted myself to politics and not to cinema. I have only tried to show realities so that those who contemplate them make personal decisions.

Its expressive symbolism, translated by the movement of the plastic structures, and its great sense of space are famous. And, on an aesthetic-narrative level, the so-called “Langian change”, through which a situation is transformed into something totally opposite to the gesture or desire that caused it, without cheating or abandoning logic, once again giving way to chance. , that inexorable Fate, according to Fritz Lang, or giving a new impetus to action. At the same time that its putting into images is erasing the arbitrary and remains in the essential.

Retired to Los Angeles and dedicated to teaching courses at North American Universities, he would travel to Germany in 1959 to make films. In India he shot a co-production inspired by one of his youth scripts: The Tiger of Esnapur and The Indian Tomb , according to the story of Joe May , with whom he had collaborated at the beginning of it. The following year, he would return to his mythical character with The Murders of Dr. Mabuse (1960); while Jean-Luc Godard would pay homage to him in Contempt and Claude Chabrol would dedicate an unusual Dr. M to him in 1989. Currently, the work of Fritz Lang continues to be studied by fans and specialists.