Der müde Tod

I don't know why, but one of my favorite film genres is German Expressionism. Like American film noir, it creates a dark vision of human existence from which a flowering of truth unfolds. And this truth is not what the protagonist wants to hear and comes at a great price. I love this stuff.

I recently had the opportunity to view "Der Müde Tod" theatrically, and it was pure heaven. Billed as Fritz Lang's first big hit, it's easy to see why. Filled with lavish spectacle and special effects, the film still maintains it's human level. And such a story: a young newlywed husband is taken by Death on his honeymoon. As in a fairytale, the bride is able to confront Death and beg for you her husbands return. Death will grant her this if she can once cheat him of one who is about to die. She is given three chances to pull off this trick, which transport her to Persia, Venice and China. Death, her husband and herself are characters in each of these fanciful locales. All this leads back to a gripping finale in Germany where it all began.

As far as silent movies go, this is one of the best.

Wonderfully haunting in its images, this early Lang film has recently been reissued on DVD under the title Destiny. A title I have heard about for years, it is a pleasure to see it in a finely restored format that does justice to its beauty. The film is made up of four stories, a framing sequence and three historical vignettes, related by the central theme of a woman trying to defy Death to save her lover. While the plots are simple, the telling is astonishing in vision and execution and each of the four stories has a distinctive, entertaining tone -- the brooding expressionistic framing piece, a tale of Arabian adventure, a Renaissance romance, and a comic Chinese fantasy. I found the Chinese segment especially entertaining and some of the images -- such as the old magician transformed into a cactus -- are incredibly surreal and surprising 80 years after they were filmed. Interesting as the film that made Lang famous and very entertaining in its own right, I would recommend this film to anyone who likes cinema of the imagination.

Directed by Fritz Lang, best known for his masterpiece "M", "Der Mude Tod" stands as probably his best early work. A silent classic, it tells the story of a young couple in a small German village and their encounter with the personification of death in a form of mysterious stranger that appears in a tavern and sits to their table indicating that the time is up for the young husband. After the death of her beloved the young woman is so desperate that she finally manages to enter the kingdom of dead and stand face to face with personification of Death himself (a major influence on Ingmar Bergman's Death figure in the Seventh Seal later) and ask him to give her beloved back to her. The Death finally yields to her persistence and agrees to deliver back the life of her husband, but only if she manages to find any person that would give up his life in exchange. She desperatly tries to convince various people to give up, beginning from a very old man and coming as far as Asylum for mentally ill but all in vain, for how bad the life of poor guys is, they are still very much reluctant to give it up, but it's only the beginning, the center of the film being three different stories of lost love, told by Death to the young woman, similar to her own, but set in three different exotic locations such as: China, Venice and Turkey.

A really amazing silent film, very romantic story but at the same time a moral tale with philosophical message in it. A must see. 10/10

I really was impressed by Fritz Lang's "Destiny". It seemed like the pictorialization of a timeless German fable rather than a figment of Lang's imagination. The story of a young woman in medieval times whose beloved fiancée is taken by death while they travel through a small village, it is timelessly haunting even now. It must have really hit people hard in 1921 Germany, three years after the death and destruction of WWI. The framing story is set around three mini-stories set in ancient Persia, Renaissance Venice and China. These stories are well done and diverting, but also a bit distracting from the poignant main story which was what I really responded to. Lang seemed totally assured and powerful as a filmmaker even in 1921. Lil Dagover was affecting as the heroine and Bernhard Goetzke gave a powerful and moving performance as Death. He was also great in Joe May's "The Indian Tomb" released in 1921 also. I highly recommend "Destiny" or "Der Mude Tod" to anyone at all interested in silent film or the career of Fritz Lang.

The excellent atmosphere and absorbing story make Fritz Lang's "Der Müde Tod" (or "Destiny") one of the little-known gems of the early 1920s. In most other movies, the top-quality special visual effects would be the strongest part of the film, but here they are really just a valuable addition to a story that already had a lot to offer.

The atmosphere and the story also fit together very well, with the foreboding, Gothic tone and the expressionistic settings complementing an involved story of life, death, fear, and love. The plot is creative and quite interesting in itself, and it also suggests some important themes in the decisions that the characters face.

Lil Dagover gets what might be her best role, as she gets the opportunity to do quite a few different things with her character. Bernhard Goetzke excels in his forbidding role. Between the two of them, they get most of the best moments, with Lang's wonderfully conceived settings and camera tricks giving them plenty to work with.

Because it has so much going for it, this is a movie that works well both as entertainment and as a statement about humanity.