excellent writeup on mabuse! i love this film :D
Great write-up Cinesthesia. Loved it (and love the film).
Thank you!
I found some quotes on the film by critics who are more authoritative than me.
“A nightmare vision of a modern world gone mad, of the effect of terror on society, a final tribute to the Expressionistic German cinema, an early example of the unique effect of film sound, and a powerful detective thriller, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse remains one of Fritz Lang’s most complex films. Restored now to its original visual and aural power, it should be enjoyed and studied, both for what it teaches us about the expressive nature of cinema—and the terrors of modern life.” —Tom Gunning
“A quite terrific suspense picture, enough to feed Hitchcock for years…This is a seminal film in noir, paranoia, and the criminal web motifs.” —David Thomson
Such beatiful images…Thanks.
Really excellent write-up. One of my favourite Lang films too, and at the end of a purple patch. It’s exhilarating as well as creepy, nervy and unsettling, Lang a master of expressing insanity and creating atmosphere; the dark nocturnal aspects linger in the mind. As well as their expressionist shadows, i i’ve noticed in several of his films his taste for simple uncluttered frontal compositions, as seen in your pics. Your mention of the cross cutting also fitted the way he draws similarities between cops and criminal underworld in M. Spies was another goodie. Like Hitch whom he influenced he had a thing for the letter M for murder. He was quite a genius.
You know, i think these Directors Cup analyses are many of the best threads on mubi.
Thank you, Kenji! I agree about the DC analysis threads…maybe we can peer pressure the other managers into starting their own. : – )
Fantastic writing. I just viewed this film a month or so ago for the first time. There is so much to grasp about its revolutionary cinematic style, it’s political and cultural context and themes, and of course its relationship with the rest of Lang’s films and his transition from Germany to Hollywood. This is really some great writing that was very insightful. It makes me want to watch this film again soon.
One of the first films to explore sound design to heighten the claustrophobia and dread. The Lohman character clearly has plenty of descendants in characters like Columbo.
Thanks! I hope everyone can participate in the voting. The match starts one Sunday, and it should be good!
Bumping it up…Three days until the match!
I agree, great write up Duncan!
I watched the film a couple of nights ago and loved it. I’ve been looking foward to it ever since the original Mabuse film. Once again, the film feel so fresh for the time it was created. Like a lot of the effects were invented and perfected here. Something about modern day effects could benefit from doing more handmade stuff and in camera affects. Something about it just seems so much more ghostly because it really feels like a ghost of something real got into the film instead of just invented from data.
The whole empire of crime is remarkeable. There are these guys who are into crime for their own personal benefit. Mabuse’s motives are so pure they are almost noble except that they are so sick. It’s very much like the Nazis which I didn’t even realize when I was watching it. It also says a whole lot about how an influential mastermind can live on if he was persuasive and mythical enough in his life that he lives on through other people that carry on his work after his death. At some point some influential people go beyond being real people and become these almost supernatural forces.
Thanks, Riss!
Your comments about the mastermind who lives on in his ideas is one of my favorite aspects about the film. I think it’s incredibly chilling that Mabuse can die, and his mouthpiece (the Professor) can be locked away, but the overall feeling is that it doesn’t matter, because his testament has already gotten out…the ball is rolling. Lang would build on this idea of Mabuse as an unkillable set of ideas in the third movie, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, which you should definitely check out.
I will look forward to seeing that one for sure!
Cinesthesia (aka Duncan)
WARNING: HERE BE SPOILERS
There’s so much that to say about The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Fritz Lang’s final film before he left Germany, and a work of suspense that somehow seems to be legendary and underrated at the same time. For starters, there’s the innovative use of sound: the way (now that movies can talk) that ticking bombs, rumbling industrial plants, and honking car horns all become signals of doom and madness. Then, of course, there is the political undertone: the parallels between Mabuse’s “Empire of Crime” and Hitler’s Third Reich, both of which rose from the tumult of Weimar Germany. (More on that in a moment). However, I’d like to begin by focusing on a different element, one that in an odd way becomes more notable for being so subconscious: the transitions.
When I think of classical Hollywood filmmaking of the 1930s, the narrative structure reminds me of a kind of “filmed theater”: in other words, a series of discrete, extended scenes, each centered on a single location. We fade up, the scene unfolds, we fade out. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, though, moves in a different sort of way, like a narrative montage where the end of one scene can lead abruptly into the beginning of the next—even if the two scenes are set in wildly different spaces. A few examples…
-Inspector Lohmann’s phone conversation with Hofmeister in the beginning of the film is the first. During the call, Hofmeister’s is attacked and begins to sing incoherently to himself, and Lohmann exclaims that the man must gone insane from fear.
-Cut to: Professor Baum in his classroom giving a speech on the subject, finishing the Inspector’s thought by saying that going mad from fear is surprisingly common.
-The traffic-light assassination ends with a close up of a newspaper falling out of the car. The camera lingers on the headline: “Ingenious Jewelry Heist.”
-Cut to: The jewels laid out on the table in a gangster’s hideout, as Mabuse’s henchmen discuss life in his organization.
-Tom, who is part of Mabuse’s organization but is hesitant to kill, is being warned by the Doctor, who ominously tells him, “You will have to prove that you know what you are being paid for…”
-Cut to: The word “MURDER” on a Wanted poster in the town square. The camera pulls back, and the new scene begins.
-Later in the film, Tom is agonizing about how to quit Mabuse’s organization. It’s no use, one of the other criminals tells him: “The Doctor is more powerful than you.”
-Cut to: Dr. Mabuse on a slab in the hospital morgue—dead, and yet as powerful as ever.
The effect of this is that Testament ricochets from scene to scene with uncommon dynamism. Part of this goes back to sound, namely Lang’s then-advanced use of sound bridges, where sound from one scene bleeds into the next. Rather than “filmed theater”, then, Lang uses narrative techniques that make Testament vividly cinematic.
This sense of cinema isn’t just the structure. Throughout the film, Lang’s grasp of sound and visuals is very precise and controlled, combining a grab-bag of filmmaking tricks, a distinct style of performances, and (in Hofmeister’s and Baum’s hallucinations) full-blown flights into Expressionism. At the end of the final chase scene, Lang puts the camera on the ground and has the car drive over it—it’s a split-second moment, but it reminded me of Man With a Movie Camera. Lang is one of early cinema’s great synthesizers, working primarily in a pop vein but integrating modernist and avant-garde techniques. His Mabuse cycle represents this fully, and as a suspense thriller, it’s remarkable how kind time has been to it. Plus, it stands as a cogent reminder that sequels don’t have to suck, and that revisiting an old character, which Lang was encouraged to do for financial reasons, can yield a new and relevant story.
Even the Tom-and-Lilli subplot (arguably the least compelling part of the film) is “of a piece” in Lang’s work. Indeed, Tom and Lilli are a type that’s common to Lang: a man and woman whose love is innocent, pure, and redemptive, but who are opposed at every step by systemic forces that seek to drive them apart. Lang had introduced this essential pairing before (you see elements of it in Destiny, Spies, and even Metropolis), and he would develop it over the next decade in America with films like You Only Live Once and the underrated You and Me, with actress Sylvia Sidney as his muse. It would be more poetic and operatic in later films, but here, placed in the context Weimar-era economic woes, it makes for a welcome thematic inclusion.
Of course, one of the most significant aspects of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is its political context. The film was finished in early 1933, but was banned by the Nazis shortly before its premiere. The Nazi Party was on the rise. The infamous burning of the Reichstag, which effectively consolidated Hitler’s power, happened around the time Lang finished shooting, and Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda was less than a month old when it banned the film. Given its context, resting on a historic fault, the film is often seen as a snapshot or even an allegory of Germany on the eve of Nazi ascension, and indeed, Lang would say that the parallels between Mabuse and the Nazis were deliberate. As he later told an interviewer, “I put into the mouth of a criminal certain slogans of the Third Reich”—specifically, that the structures of the old society had to be burned down in order for a new society to be built in its place. Interestingly, this is not official reason the film was banned; instead, the Nazi censors were concerned that the basic premise of the film—that a terrorist organization could overthrow society—was too much for German audiences to handle.
Still, tucked into the details of this mystery adventure, you can clearly see disgust and anxiety about the changes happening in Germany at the time. It’s the way Mabuse’s gang, which was only a handful of devoted cronies in the first film, has grown into a regimented and hierarchical network, with underlings taking orders from a charismatic boss they’ve never met. It’s the way Mabuse’s men say “Jawohl” and back away obediently after they get their instructions. It’s the way the doctor intimidates Tom by declaring that “failure to obey is tantamount to treason.”
The film contains some of Lang’s most memorable sequences: the wordless opening, the traffic jam assassination, and the final chase, which reportedly was a new standard for movie chases in 1933. But what lingers on, more than any particular moment, is the film’s pervasive mood of paranoia: the image of a society going about its business with no idea of what’s coming. The ending, which on first viewing struck me as anticlimactic, fits this perfectly. The world of the film is left in a kind of suspension. The doctor is dead, and the professor has taken his place in the hospital cell, but what about everyone else—the criminal network, and the burning factory? There’s a wonderfully bizarre moment before the end, where the Professor arrives back at the asylum. The night watchmen crosses the yard to open the gate, and as he passes through the shadows, he turns into a ghostly Mabuse…
The key theme, established early on, is destabilization and insanity through fear. In the end, the process isn’t alleviated at all. Though the man himself is dead, Mabuses are everywhere. It’s fitting that the film’s final moment is a statement of resignation, followed by a black screen, followed by the sound of the asylum door locking the audience in.
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is one of my favorite Lang films, one of his most enjoyable on the surface and one of his most chilling underneath. I hope that there will be a lot of good discussion, and that as many people as possible turn out for the vote, regardless of which way it goes. Thank you for watching (and for reading!) and I’ll see Królikiewicz, Ghatak, and Ramsay in Round 4!