Il testamento del dottor Mabuse

This classic thriller is an allegory of the nazis early rise to power in Germany and their future intentions. Censored by the Nazis government and not seen in its full form until many years later. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse(1933) deals with the themes of free will, genius, madness, and power. The Dr. Mabuse character foreshadows the great James Bond villains of Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Ernest Blofeld. Would be the final film that director Fritz Lang would do in Germany for many years until 1960 for his final film, The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse.

The film reads like a trainer for all the thrillers that came thereafter: The staring face reminiscent of 'Alien', the scary opening scene, which deserves to be better known, the tough but lovable cop, the haunted (literally) master criminal, the asylum, the heroine with an excuse to get her dress all wet and clingy, the Mae West look-alike, the spooky special effects, the explosions and the fires (real ones not your computer generated rubbish), the shoot out, the chase through the woods, the car chase, the high tech gadgets (using 78 vinyl!). There's even what looks like a placement add (Mercedes, during the car chase). Yes, all the thriller clichés are there but way back in 1933 they weren't clichés. Unfortunately some rather wooden acting by the heroine, Wera Liessem, who seems to be stuck in silent film mode, mars the film.

As for the political overtones, I'm not sure if these were deliberate. Lang's stories about himself were as fantastical as his films, especially the one about being offered the head of the Reich films.

This film's a thriller, a detective story, a ghost story; it has romantic and comic sub-plots, a striking array of sets, some of the first convincing special effects ever used, echoes of other films; and it is not hard to find in it political relevance to today. It's a lot to cram into two hours, and one has to work to follow every twist of the plot, but it is both a rewarding and entertaining experience.

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.

Compared to most films in Hollywood in the 1930s, Fritz Lang's mystery thriller The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is years ahead of the game in terms of plot and camera techniques. There are some shots in this movie that would not be seen until Orson Welles' famous Citizen Kane, which forever changed the cinema. However, I think it's safe to say that Lang was doing the same thing in Germany at the time when Nazi rule was in the wake. In this complex and filling story, a veteran criminal with a brilliant mind has been in an insane asylum for ten years yet is writing memoirs that seem to predict crimes happening outside. The Inspector Lohmann attempts to solve this case, not knowing how strange and convoluted it really is. Despite the complexity of it, this film is rather easy to follow and boasts some great performances and use of sound. Considering this was only Lang's second film using sound, it is a wonder he did what he could with it. The movie opens with a noisy print shop and a man hiding behind a huge trunk. The loud and obnoxious noise of the printer continues all throughout the scene and shows what sound can really do to a film. All in all, Lang shows his pioneering ability to use the resources available in ways no one had thought of at the time. There are hints of German Expressionism here, but mostly just a well-told and engaging detective story that certainly will not age any time soon.

Of all storytelling mediums, the one that perhaps has most in common with cinema is the comic book. Both tell stories primarily through pictures, both have a similar concept of the frame, and both become clumsy and uninteresting if they rely too much on words. But few films immersed themselves so completely in a comic book-style world as the German pictures of Fritz Lang.

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.