Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse

This is a great little whodunit and an excellent start to the revival of Fritz Lang's great Dr. Mabuse series. It is very reminiscent of the earlier films in the twenties and thirties, particularly Le Testament Du Dr. Mabuse, from which Lang lifts and modernizes many situations.

I said don't read the credits in the title to this review because guessing who is actually the mastermind Mabuse is half of the fun...there are a lot of red herrings that don't play out until the last fifteen minutes of the movie.

This was the first movie in the new Mabuse series and I would recommend anyone delving into the world of Dr. Mabuse use this as a starting point (especially if none of the silents or early talkies are available in your area).

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse represents my first venture into the world of Dr. Mabuse. Pigeon-holing this movie into a single genre is difficult. It's one part traditional krimi, one part spy movie, and one part thriller. Combined, these elements create, at least for me, a one of a kind experience that I really can't compare with much of anything I've seen before. I refuse to give the normal plot synopsis. Any plot details or other information would ruin the many twists and surprises found in The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse. Fortunately for me, I went into the movie completely blind, knowing very little of what to expect. I would suggest not even looking over the IMDb page as vital information is presented on Mabuse's identity. The acting is good from a cast that, even if I didn't know all of the names, I recognized from years of watching WWII movies. Actors like Gert Forbe, Werner Peters, and Peter van Eyck give sold performances. Fritz Lang's direction is as competent as ever. The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse has style to burn. Considering the movie was made more than 45 years ago, it still feels remarkably fresh. The mystery of who Dr. Mabuse is and what his fiendish plan is all about are wonderfully compelling and really pull you into the movie. The jazzy score is impossible to get out of your mind and fits well within the film. In short, it's movie like this that keeps me excited about exploring "new" cinema. If all of my first time viewings could be this entertaining, I would be very happy indeed.

If The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse has one weakness, it's the slow pace of the second act. The pace grinds to a crawl as the police begin their investigation into the events taking place. While it's fairly interesting and Gert Forbe is a good enough actor, there's not enough action in this portion of the film when compared with what came before and what comes afterward. A little more pep in the middle third of the film would have made it a real winner with me. It's a minor issue I have with the film, but it's an issue nonetheless.

As I wrote previously, The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is the first Mabuse movie I've seen. After my wonderful experience with the movie, it won't be the last.

The last film that Lang directed, this was to be his triumphant return to Germany after having fled the Nazis in the late 1930's. Unfortunately, it was brutally cut and re-edited when it was released here, so it never gained the popularity and acclaim that it deserved. It's the story of an American businessman in Berlin who is drawn into a secretive world of conspiracies, spies, and murder. Everyone in this movie is lying to him, with the single exception of the police inspector, played by a pre-"Goldfinger" Gert Frobe. But it's also the movie that effectively laid down the basic rules of the modern spy thriller: the handsome and well-dressed leading man who is equally at home with a gun, a girl, or a drink in his hand, the megalomaniacal and shadowy villain with plans for world domination, the gadgetry and surveillance, the hidden lair, etc. Don't be put off by the fact that it's a foreign, black and white movie – this is an exciting story told by a master director who has been unforgivably forgotten.

This is a 16mm print which I acquired in a batch of films. It is very well dubbed in English. I assume the film is available on video. This film reminds me of the serials of the 1930's. Fritz Lang ended his career with this swansong, a return to a theme of his earlier Dr. Mabuse films. The master criminal's henchmen have never seen his face, and get their commands by radio while cruising in a van. Note the scene in the police commissioner's office. Everyone is smoking furiously and the room soon becomes filled with smoke. There is an almost identical scene to this in "M". Overall and very amusing and enjoyable film.

In terms of how directors go out with their final movie, this reminds me of Family Plot, Alfred Hitchcock's final film. There isn't any comparison between the two in terms of tone or genre, but both The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse and Family Plot are solidly good works that firmly fit within the bodies of work of both men that may not reach the heights of their best, but do demonstrate many of their best qualities nonetheless. Lang's final film is also the third film he made about the eponymous evil German doctor who has morphed over the decades from representing Weimar Germany's failings to the dangers of a rising Nazi power to something else and possibly more interesting more than a decade after the fall of the Third Reich.

I was actually thrown off in the opening minutes of this third adventure about Dr. Mabuse. It opens with a repeat of a scene that occurred in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. In both the second and third film, a man gets shot in a car from a nearby car, leaving the car alone in the middle of the road as traffic goes around it. For a minute, I wondered if this was going to end up being some kind of remake instead of a continuing adventure, but instead we get a decidedly modern take on a film series' history. What's happening is not some sort of retconning of the previous films where Dr. Mabuse either never existed pre-Nazi or never died, but that everything in the previously released films did happen. What's going on is that some force is recreating famous crimes done by Dr. Mabuse, and we learn very early that the criminals doing it think they're working for Dr. Mabuse himself (though they don't know the history).

The man who died was a journalist, and it gets Inspector Kras (Gert Frobe) looking into the Luxor Hotel, especially after it's noted the long line of curious incidents leading to death are connected to it, the death of the journalist just being the most recent. At the hotel is currently staying a wealthy American, Henry Travers (Peter van Eyck) who is in the country to help secure rights materials necessary to build nuclear power plants in America. When a woman, Marion (Dawn Addams), tries to jump from the building just outside his window, he and her become intertwined with Henry trying to find a way to save her from the despair of her abusive husband.

Meanwhile, Kras goes to the enigmatic psychic, Cornelius (Lupo Prezzo), to find any kind of help he can, and Cornelius knows a lot that he shouldn't know. Things that happen in other places, in the future, and he seems to be a real psychic, though completely blind.

Now, the way that this film feels so firmly in Lang's body of work is the secret behind it all. The plot synopsis on the IMDB actually gives it away, so I'll just dig in right now. As I've previously said, the two preceding Dr. Mabuse films used the eponymous villain as a vision into Germany at the time. There's a great moment where the insurance salesman Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig (Werner Peters) tells of the history of the Luxor Hotel, how it was "born" in 1944, under Nazi rule, and never freed from it. It's borderline haunted house stuff. It also points to the subtext of the film: the idea of Nazism haunting contemporary Western Germany. The things that the Nazis built still stand. The men who worked in the party were still around (largely, there were war crime trials). The ideology still existed at least on paper. Can Germany ever truly be free of it?

Also, the Luxor was built as a diplomatic hotel, so it was actually built with a host of spy equipment throughout. The way this is introduced is the sort of thing that Brian DePalma would later do, with a single shot of a television screen that pulls back to reveal the equipment controlling it. It's creepy.

The actual story of the film plays out in a way that almost feels directionless for a time, and that's purely because we don't know what the whole plot is. We do get it straightened out in the final fifteen minutes or so, though. I think this will play better on rewatches because of that. Also, the twist about who is Dr. Mabuse is not that hard to guess. I also don't think that the love story that develops between Travers and Marion is all that involving. It feels a bit tacked on, like the sort of subplot inserted to increase interest in the female quadrant of the movie going public in Germany at the time.

So, what is this movie? First and foremost, it's a thriller about a series of crimes and a police investigator trying to navigate the morass of information available to find the culprit, having to push through current evidence and ancient history in the form of tales of a dead genius along the way. It's also contemporary Germany dealing with the legacy of its own history that ended a decade and a half before. Those two parts are rather expertly intertwined in a dramatic procedural package that reminds me of a mixture of Dr. Mabuse and M. And then there's some love story stuff that fits but doesn't work as well. Like the rest of the Dr. Mabuse films that Lang made, I feel like it's a couple of choices away from greatness. As it stands, those choices remain, and it's still solidly good.

As Fritz Lang's final film, it feels very appropriate as a reflection of what he was trying to do with his work as a whole.