El tigre de Bengala

Fritz Lang's two part Indian Epic made up of the films The Tiger of Bengal and The Tomb of Love is, to put it lightly, a cinematic enigma. While Lang is no stranger to both pulp fiction and long films, he oddly fails at both in this two-part travesty.

Watching a film like Lang's Metropolis or his five hour epic of Die Nibelungen is a magical experience. The films flow at such a brilliant pace, drawing in the viewer and creating a world of high drama and excitement amidst some of the most lavish and beautiful sets of the silent era. Yet, somehow, this magic is lost in his Indian Epic, as the nearly three and a half hours that comprise both films drags for what seems like an eternity. While the first film, The Tiger of Bengal, starts off like a pleasing, pulpy adventure story, it soon peters off nearly halfway through, setting the pace for what will be the rest of the first and the entire second film.

Production was evidently a very expensive and impressive one, complete with jewel-studded clothing, immense and desolate dungeons, and large and grandiose palaces, stocked with every little intricate detailed imagined; yet, these impressive settings are hardly utilized in to making this the film(s) it could have been, for they remain nothing more than eye-candy in what is ultimately a theatrical play of the most dire sort. Stilted, bland dialogue and scenes that drag and repeat play out almost cyclically: Where is the princess? She's over there. Where is the foreigner? He's over there. What should we do? We should do this... and so on, ad nauseam, until nearly three and a half hours of a film still unrealized is completed.

Even in some of Lang's previous minor failings he never achieved such a monotony as this. In his canceled pulp-adventure project, The Spiders, Lang was able to pull off an exhilarating tale of adventure in a foreign land for the first film, which would be canceled shortly after just the second Admittedly, the second and last entry of The Spiders almost seems to set a precedent for what would go wrong with both The Tiger of Bengal and The Tomb of Love: hardly anything happens.

I simply just don't understand what Lang went in to this project imagining. After reading this was a remake of the Indian Epic that he originally produced earlier on in his career I was so excited to finally sit and view what I imagined would be a wonderful adventure. I assumed it was one of his last, final great works; a tale of intrigue and adventure and lavish sets, and a film I could rely on for years to come to go back to and relieve the magic all again. Such a disappointment on so many levels, both as an adventure film, and arguably one of Lang's worst.

Although it's rarely remembered as fondly as Metropolis or M, or even the numerous B-movies he made in the US, this picture represents an exceptional return to form for director Fritz Lang. At last, after years of slumming it with little pictures in Hollywood's big pond, The Tiger of Eschnapur reunites him with the pure and unbridled sense of adventure and the grandiose splendour which characterises his earliest pictures.

Lang was famously not a fan of widescreen with which his latest American pictures were shot, and here we see just how well he could use the old fullscreen format. Depth is such an important aspect in his shots, with vast empty spaces conveyed through a downward angle that shows the floor or the ground stretching out before us, such as that shot of the deserted village during the "hour of the tiger". Much of the movement is in depth rather than across the screen, with business at the sides of the frame to create a tunnel effect. Lang, a former architecture student must have also been delighted at all the breathtaking Indian buildings and atmospheric studio recreations he gets to play with here. As usual with Lang, his characters appear trapped within the spaces they inhabit, with claustrophobic shot compositions and now even colour schemes that make people seem one with the background. There's a great and rather comical shot where the Maharajah is leaning against a pillar, in which the shape and style of his outfit mean he looks like a pillar himself. The fact that most of these rooms are real 360-degree spaces rather than backless sets also gives Lang a real advantage. Notice how in Debra Paget's lavish quarters in the gold birdcage scene, even the windows look out onto a high wall. Lang creates an impression of a palace of endless passages and no exits. It's this slightly nightmarish vision which really drives the adventure along.

With the exception of Debra Paget, who had a handful of prominent Hollywood roles over the previous decade, the cast is mainly made up of Europeans who will be unfamiliar to most in an English-speaking audience. Lead man Paul Hubschmid is not a very interesting actor, but at least he underplays his performance – far preferable to awkward hamming. Ms Paget herself is not really exceptional either, but she does prove herself to be a superlative and hypnotic dancer. The real standout acting-wise however is Walter Reyer, who portrays the Maharajah as calmly authoritative, with just a hint of madness.

One final point – fans of the Indiana Jones movies may find themselves recognising a few sights and scenes that remind them of stuff from The Temple of Doom. While a lot of Temple of Doom's plot comes from an older Hollywood movie called Gunga Din (1939), Fritz Lang's Indian diptych seem to have given Spielberg's picture much of its spirit. This is a comic book vision at India, barely realistic, but filled with a sense of both fun and genuine menace. Forget about Lang's reputation as a dark and cynical purveyor of film noir. Although he never got the recognition he deserved at the time, with his childlike sense of adventure and breathtaking imagery, when given his creative freedom he could be the Steven Spielberg of his era.

The story is dull, but the sets are beautiful and visually appealing. Staring hilariously tacky but cute puppet of a tiger. The main entertainment value is admiring Debra Paget's costumes and her horrible lip-sync.

Fritz Lang was done with Hollywood, and he took an offer from the German film producer Artur Brauner to make a film with German money in India based on a script Lang and his ex-wife Thea von Harbou had written for the 1920 silent version of the same story (she died in 1954, a few years before this adaptation began production). Lang didn't often use color photography, but it seems inevitable that he would use it here, much like the embrace of colors in other India-set tales by people like David Lean, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and even Steven Spielberg. It's also a complete throwback to the kinds of movies that Lang was making early in his German career (he was originally supposed to direct the silent version of the story before the task went to Joe May), eschewing any kind of serious take on justice, destiny, or man's relationship with technology in favor of straight adventure. In that regard, it's one of the better examples from Lang's filmography, even if it's really just the first half of a story.

The Maharaja of Eschnapur, Chandra (Walter Reyer), has called two people to his palace. The first is the German architect Harold Berger (Paul Hubschmid), brought to build hospitals along with his brother-in-law, bringing a certain Western influence to the Indian city, inspired by the Maharaja's time in Europe after the death of his wife. The other is the dancer Seetha (Debra Paget), brought from a southern province to dance for the goddess (the goddess is never named), a thin pretext for Chandra to see if he wants to marry her. They end up going to Eschnapur together, and Harold saves Seetha from the eponymous tiger, kindling love between the two. The overall conflict between our three main characters is obvious from early on.

Another way that this feels like a callback to Lang's earliest movies is that this is the first film of his since Woman in the Moon where there are significant, ornate sets, the kind that had reached their zenith with Metropolis. The centerpiece of that in this film is the underground temple, a large open space with a huge statue of the goddess looming over it. It's here where Seetha does her dance with Chandra watching, lusting over every motion, a place where outsiders are forbidden. At the same time, Berger is following a series of underground Mongol tunnels underneath the palace and discovers a secret entrance into the temple. It's all an effort to draw them together in a shared sense of danger since she is the only one to see him. At the same time, there's a good bit of palace intrigue around Chandra's older brother Ramigani (Rene Deltgen) that doesn't do a whole lot in this film but feels like it's going to end up playing a more important role in the sequel.

There's no denying the love between Harold and Seetha, especially when Harold proves to her that her father was European (her blue eyes are a big giveaway). Seetha feels like a bird in a cage, and there's an inevitable effort to get her out. There are fun adventure elements like Harold being fed to tigers but managing to win his way out, creeping through underground tunnels, and a chase through the Indian countryside. Being a Fritz Lang film, it's all cleanly and well-filmed.

One of the weirder things about the film is that every speaking part is German (except Paget who is American) and all of the background characters are actually Indian. The exteriors were filmed in India, so actual Indians are often seen which clash pretty obviously with the more Teutonic speaking parts that obviously look like white people in brown face. I don't have a moral objection to it, but it does mess with the verisimilitude of the film. It's just kind of jarring to see all the way through.

Lang was later dismissive of the film, equating it to sugar, but I don't see anything wrong with that. Yes, Lang had been aiming for more "serious" fare ever since M in 1931, but there's nothing wrong with simpler entertainments. He does that well here, painting a colorful portrait of India while giving us a likeable lead in Berger, a pretty lead in Seetha, and a complex enough set of emotional motives to pit people against each other convincingly. It was also, apparently, one of the inspirations for the creation of Indiana Jones (Berger wears a tuxedo that looks exactly like the one Harrison Ford wore in The Temple of Doom, probably not coincidentally the India set adventure).

This is obviously Lang not making the kinds of movies he wanted to make, only the ones he could. It's also the kind of adventure that he probably should have started making in Hollywood when he first showed up in the 30s, securing a potential reputation for financial success before pushing his more serious films in an industry he didn't know. He was good at making these movies, though, and that's really not something he should have run from for so long.

"Der Tiger von Eschnapur" is a film about a German architect who is brought to India to work for the Maharajah of Enschnapur (a fictitious kingdom). Along the way, he exercises very poor judgment and falls in love with a half-caste (Debra Paget) and they both risk their lives if they act upon this love. And so, naturally, they do and the film ends with their fleeing for their lives. Exactly what happens next, you'll need to see in the second film in this series--"The Indian Tomb".

I enjoyed "Der Tiger von Eschnapur". It was the sort of film that was like a throwback to the 1940s--to the films of Universal Studios. In many ways, it was a bit like "The Cobra Woman", "Thief of Bagdad" or a movie serial--full of action, romance and escapism. On the other hand, it certainly was not a great piece of art--more like a B-movie with a slightly higher budget and a nice locale. Plus, Miss Paget had one of the sexiest dance numbers I can recall having seen apart from Rita Hayworth's in "Gilda". However, to put it bluntly, it was a decent film but not good enough to enable the director, Fritz Lang, to be able to mount a comeback to his former greatness. But with small bad touches (one-dimensional characters and some bad special effects--such as the obviously stuffed tiger during the big climactic scene and the wooden-looking severed head), it certainly isn't a great work of art--more just Saturday matinée escapism and nothing more. But, frankly, sometimes that is all you need to have a bit of fun.