El diabólico Dr. Mabuse

You don't necessarily need to have seen Lang's earlier Mabuse films to be able to love this one. Like in his silent spy film 'Spione', Lang creates everything that would go on to be a genre cliche - but they all had to be original once. Here we have the stolen prototype weapon - a gun that fires needle shaped bullets that travel through glass and leave very little trace of assassination; and then there's the villain's car, with its revolving number-plates. Lang was certainly a few quick steps ahead of the makers of the Bond films, and certainly on a level with Hitchcock, Powell et al when it came to commenting on voyeurism.

The plot's labyrinthine, of course, but it rattles along at such a pace and with such striking visuals that you hardly have time or the inclination to stop and worry - and it all comes clear at the end, with one or two fantastic revelations in addition to the few you expect.

If one part doesn't quite please as much as you like, it's the context it fails to reference properly. Made at such a crucial time in History by a man who had seen so much, one only wishes it had more commentary to make. Lang's career swung like a pendulum between social commentary and serial escapades - if only he'd been able to pull the two together for his final film.

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.

Of course this isn't the most classic or best Fritz Lang movie but it nevertheless is a more than worthy last one by him. It's not that he died shortly afterward (he lived till 1976) but he lost his eye sight and by 1964 he was already nearly blind. It feels right that he ended his directing career with a Dr. Mabuse movie. His previous 2 directed Dr. Mabuse movies, "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit" and "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse" are among his best and also best known works. He obviously had some real passion and respect for the character of Dr. Mabuse. Why else would he had made 3 movies involving the character, over the course of 4 decades. The character is of course also a real intriguing ones. He was one of the first real movie villain in the 1922 movie "Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit". A character that manipulates, influences peoples will, all for his own benefits, with the help of hypnotic and supernatural powers.

Just like 7 of the 8 Dr. Mabuse movies made, this movie is shot in atmospheric black & white. Fritz Lang made a few color movies late in his career but for this movie he went back to his beloved black & white. No doubt he did this on intentions to let this movie connect more and better to the previous 2 Dr. Mabuse movie, made before this one. After all, the last Dr. Mabuse made before this one dates back from 1933.

Even though this movie is made 27 years later, it's still a direct sequel to to "Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse". It makes lots of references to the events which occurred in that movie. However if you haven't seen the previous 2 movies, I think you'll also still have a good time watching this movie and understand the events in it.

The visual style and style of film-making is also mostly the same when compared to the 1933 movie. A style Fritz Lang was of course very experienced in, being one of the best directors of the '20's and '30's. Nevertheless the movie is still set in its 'present' day 1960. It makes this a '60's movie in '30's style, which also provides the movie with a few clumsiness's and at times makes this movie feel, sound and look way more outdated. It therefor can be argued if this was the right approach. No doubt it is also part of the reason why this movie isn't as well known and appreciated as the previous two Dr. Mabuse movies from 1933 and 1922.

The cinematography within this movie is especially great and helps to give the movie its own unique atmosphere and old fashioned feeling style.

Gert Fröbe was really excellent in this movie. He proofs himself once more to be one of the best German actors that ever lived. Ir's fun that many actor appearing in this movie also appeared in the later Dr. Mabuse sequels, often in completely different roles, including Gert Fröbe.

It's sort of too bad that the whole movie doesn't have the pace and excitement of the movie its first halve. There is more talking than real thriller or suspense moments in the second part. Still the whole mysterious atmosphere and question; 'Who is Dr. Mabuse?', remains present throughout the entire movie. The movie also ends with a real blast and gets surprisingly action filled toward its ending.

Yet another real recommendable Dr. Mabuse movie!

8/10

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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).

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.