Eine neue Verbrechenswelle schwappt über die Stadt, und alle Indizien führen scheinbar zu dem ruchlosen Dr. Mabuse, obwohl dieser seit fast einem Jahrzehnt in einer Irrenanstalt eingesperrt ... Alles lesenEine neue Verbrechenswelle schwappt über die Stadt, und alle Indizien führen scheinbar zu dem ruchlosen Dr. Mabuse, obwohl dieser seit fast einem Jahrzehnt in einer Irrenanstalt eingesperrt ist.Eine neue Verbrechenswelle schwappt über die Stadt, und alle Indizien führen scheinbar zu dem ruchlosen Dr. Mabuse, obwohl dieser seit fast einem Jahrzehnt in einer Irrenanstalt eingesperrt ist.
- Nicolai Griforiew
- (as Hadrian M. Netto)
Empfohlene Bewertungen
With only limited screen time, Rudolf Klein-Rogge is just magnificent. What a face!!! I became familiar with him as Rotwang in Metropolis and have tried to view any film in which he appears. Unhappily, his presence in this film is more felt than seen but still worth the effort. He reprises the Mabuse character from the earlier "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler" which ended with him being incarcerated in an mental hospital. This film picks up where the other left off and the scenes in the hospital with Klein-Rogge are mesmerizing.
The opening scene as a fugitive is trapped beneath the factory gives the story a kick start as the pounding of the machinery drives him (and viewers) to distraction. No dialogue is necessary.
The love story is a little weak but does not detract from the overall film. There is also a scene which fascinates.....it involves the shooting of a character at a traffic light.....fantastic.
I would recommend this films to anyone unfamiliar with Herr Lang's work. You will become a lifelong fanatic!
I see that my comments on the Mabuse films have been deleted. There was an IMDb era when any offended reader could exact revenge by successfully complaining of scores of comments. But I guess that's apt for the aura of this film, its history of being suppressed and its themes.
I find watching Lang movies to be frustrating. His most celebrated films: "Metropolis" and "M" don't resonate with me as they do with others. Even though they have effective scenes, they are effective not because they are cinematic, but because they are masterful stagecraft. After Lang went to Hollywood, claiming this to be anti-Hitler, his films turned mechanical.
It was only with this project that he hits my sweet spot, where his attentions are turned to all the elements of the cinematic art. This is whole, and innovative in every element. Others may find the many plots overloaded and in some cases turgid. But I think the density of story is essential to the elegant narrative tricks that this uses - all of them rooted in the film as film.
We have, possibly for the first time, non-linear narrative designed in a way to confuse the viewer so that we are inserted as detective, actively engaged in watching merely to make sense of what we see. The thing is envisioned as a whole with many reflections, many cycles, many connections between scenes and jumping among scenes. Images, sounds, ideas, characters contrast with and merge with each other. Its a tight fabric with so many junctions we can navigate as we wish, or as we have skills.
Yes, there are ordinary pleasures, too: amazing effects shots, one of the best chase scenes ever filmed, some very fine use of grime. But they re merely incidental to the way that this symphony is constructed and executed. This is one of the few films in my experience that gets bigger the more you learn about its provenance: the infidelities between the filmmaker and his screenwriter wife; the business with Hilter, much obfuscated by later Lang claims and the notion that he would do so. The original novel, The previous and subsequent Lang Mabuse films and their failings, indeed the breakage of his career. The many incarnations of this film on its way to us.
The way it overtly is written to influence, containing a story about writing that influences. The way it deceives on the screen, containing a story about deception behind a "screen."
The sex, as it penetrates the whole thing without ever being shown. The fact that although you can see it as having historical significance, you can still after 75 years see it as a modern, immediately effective experience from a man that for one year actually mattered. Still does.
Ted's Evaluation -- 4 of 3: Every cineliterate person should experience this.
The film draws on an exceptionally wide variety of cinematic styles. There are expressionist moments, and these are particularly striking, but they account for only two or three minutes out of a running time of 120. There are moments when one could almost be in a screwball comedy. And there are moments which come close to social realism it would be interesting to know whether the patients at the mental hospital played themselves. The dominant mode, though, is an anticipation of film noir.
I would, though, counsel against investing too much historical hindsight in this film yes, Fritz Lang did go into exile from the Nazis but it is more the shadow of Weimar than the shadow of Hitler that hovers in the background here.
Not perfect; not an absolute masterpiece: but an occasionally stunning and always stimulating film, which deserves 9 out of 10.
Shorter than the German film, it truncates the lovers subplot and plays it with colourless juveniles, omits the giant eye make up shots of Klein Rogge, which re-call Dr. Baum's art collection and, worse, attempts to up the pace by chopping off the fade out scene transitions - giving correctly, the impression that there is something missing.
The German cast is uniformly superior, with the possible exception of the jolly, frankfurter-cooking henchman, who does manage to make an impression. Jim Gerald was a comedian - effectively so in CHAPEAU de PAILEE d'ITALIE and FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS - and he lacks the monolith menace that Wernike provides. Thommy Bordelle is normally an unimposing performer and, giving it his best shot, he's still no fair swap for the the great Oscar Beregei, in the one circulating film where we get to hear Beregei's voice. The French Dr. Kramm (who is he?), in particular, is out classed by Theodore Loos (the secretary from METROPOLIS among other stand-out performances).
Well it's still Lang's Mabuse film and remains intermittently effective - Hoffmeister's vision of Lohman's entry into his see through cell is still a grabber - and it is another piece of the jig saw and another, if minor, Lang movie. So nice to get to see it after all these years.
What is especially comic-bookish about a picture like Testament of Dr Mabuse is not just its fast-paced adventure plot, but its timeless, placeless exaggeration of reality. Just like Batman's Gotham City, there are few if any references to real locations or people, and every character and organisation is a surreal caricature of a real-world counterpart. That's why Tim Burton's is the best Batman, because it properly recreates that over-the-top version of reality. This approach is also what makes pictures like this so compelling and accessible.
It's because of this approach that I feel this is a (slightly) superior picture to M. M was really the only one of Lang's German pictures that, plot-wise at least, seemed grounded in reality, and yet it is still populated those crazy character types. However , in the comic-book world of Dr Mabuse these figures fit right in. Otto Wernicke reprises his role as Inspector Karl "Fatty" Lohmann (hurrah!), and the character seems much more at home here.
This picture is not quite so tightly constructed as M, but Lang instead throws everything into creating a sense of unease. As with the first Dr Mabuse film (Der Spieler, shot by Lang in 1922), audience participation is crucial. Lang several times has Dr Baum speak his lines straight into the camera, making the character audience and the real-world audience share the same angle. In locations such as the "curtain room" he shows us all sides, so that we too feel trapped between those four walls. Since his silent days he has added a new string to his bow, in that he now uses the occasional camera movement to physically pull the audience into the film's world. Also consider the final moment in relation to this pattern of camera-as-audience shots.
The Testament of Dr Mabuse is a captivating, horror-tinged thriller, and the last great picture to be produced in Germany before things went tits up, politically. It seems to represent everything that made Weimar cinema perfect for Lang, and everything that made him a misfit in Hollywood – its surreal theatricality, its dominance of set-design over actors, its blending of genres. Like the comic book writer, Lang dealt in myths (both in and out of his films - the story of his meeting with Goebbels, for example, is almost certainly a fabrication). The Testament of Dr Mabuse is one of his greatest.
Wusstest du schon
- WissenswertesBanned by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1933 for its subversive nature and the possibility that it might "incite people to anti-social behavior and terrorism against the State".
- PatzerHofmeister supposedly scratches Mabuse's name in a window pane of his apartment with a ring, but Hofmeister is not wearing any rings when Division 2-B enter his apartment.
- Zitate
Dr. Mabuse: The ultimate purpose of crime is to establish the endless empire of crime. A state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon the tainted ideals of a world doomed to annihilation. When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.
- Alternative VersionenTurner Classic Movies broadcast a restored version put together in 2000 from segments in various film archives and distributed by Janus Films. Its length is 3,341 meters and ran 121 minutes. It had no cast or crew credits other than the director.
- VerbindungenEdited into American Cinema: Film Noir (1995)
Top-Auswahl
- How long is The Testament of Dr. Mabuse?Powered by Alexa
Details
Box Office
- Weltweiter Bruttoertrag
- 27.690 $
- Laufzeit2 Stunden 2 Minuten
- Farbe