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It’s the most impressive ‘new’ movie we’ve seen this year: Robert Siodmak’s 1957 political thriller fictionalizes a true mass murder case in 1943 Berlin — one that a high-ranking Nazi wants to justify the extermination of ‘undesirables’ for the furtherance of Aryan white supremacy. The snapshot of home-front Berlin is fascinating, and also the depiction of a complacent public, going along with official lies nobody fully believes. Produced on a big scale, the unjustly obscure show stars Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Peter Carsten, Karl Lange, Werner Peters and Annemarie Düringer. The illuminating audio commentary is by Imogen Sara Smith.

The Devil Strikes at Night

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1957 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 97 min. / Nachts wenn der Teufel kam / Street Date , 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Claus Holm, Mario Adorf, Hannes Messemer, Peter Carsten, Karl Lange, Werner Peters, Annemarie Düringer, Monika John, Rose Schäfer, Ernst Fritz Fürbringer, Walter Janssen.

Cinematography:...

Lang’s mysterious silent melodrama from 1921 is a parable about love and death that captivates with its ambition, enigma and sophistication

The only response to this 1921 silent movie by Fritz Lang, now restored and rereleased, is a kind of amazement – at its ambition, its enigma, its combination of innocence and sophistication. As so often with early cinema and silent cinema, you see the kinship with fable and fairy story, but also find yourself suspecting that it is somehow silent cinema that is truly aware of the medium’s possibilities; these seem to elude the more evolved, yet earthbound realist cinema that comes later.

Destiny is a parable fantasy: a young woman (Lil Dagover) is horrified when her fiance (Walter Janssen) is led away by the implacable figure of Death (Bernhard Goetzke) who has recently bought a plot of land that he has turned into a walled garden for his captured souls.

Fritz Lang’s Destiny (1921) with Music by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra screens November 5th at 7:30 at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave,) as part of this year’s this year’s St. Fritz Lang’s Destiny Louis International Film Festival. Ticket information can be found Here.

There’s nothing better than seeing a silent film with live music and you’ll have the opportunity Saturday November 5th at 7:30 at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium. There’s a new restoration of Fritz Lang’s Destiny (Der müde Tod 1921) a dizzying blend of German Romanticism, Orientalism, and Expressionism and Cinema St. Louis will be screening it at this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. The film will be accompanied live by The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra, who will debuting their new original score for the film.

Destiny marked a bold step for Fritz Lang,...

The schedule for the 25th Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (Sliff) has been announced and once again film goers will be offered the best in cutting edge features and shorts from around the globe. The festival takes place November 3-13, 2016.

Sliff kicks off on November 3 with the opening-night selection St. Louis Brews, the latest home-brewed documentary by local filmmaker Bill Streeter, director of Brick By Chance And Fortune: A St. Louis Story (read my interview with Bill Here)

According to Sliff, the festival will feature more than 125 filmmaking guests, including honorees: Actress Karen Allen (Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Animal House), director Charles Burnett (Killer Of Sheep, To Sleep With Anger), winner of the Cinema St. Louis Lifetime Achievement Award; and director Steve James (Hoop Dreams).

Full information on Sliff films, including synopses, dates/time, and links for purchase of advance tickets is available on the Cinema St.

Few filmmakers have had a decade-long run quite like director Fritz Lang did from 1921-1931. Featuring films like Metropolis, Spies and lest we forget arguably his greatest film, 1931’s M, Lang’s run throughout the ‘20s and into the ‘30s is a collection of films that any director would kill to have listed on his iMDB credits page.

And one of the films that started this series is maybe the director’s most underrated masterpiece, 1921’s silent epic Destiny. One of the “weirder” entries in the filmography of Fritz Lang, this neo-surrealist horror/drama tells the story of a woman as she encounters the physical manifestation of death, a black cloaked-man (Bernhard Goetzke), after he steals away her main squeeze (Walter Janssen). Attempting to get him back at all costs, Death offers the woman three chances to save her lover, tasking the woman (played by Lil Dagover) with saving the...

Death doesn't take a holiday in this, the granddaddy of movies about the woeful duties of the Grim Reaper. Fritz Lang's heavy-duty Expressionist fable is as German as they get -- a morbid folk tale with an emotionally powerful finish. Destiny Blu-ray Kino Classics 1921 / B&W / 1:33 flat / 98 min. / Street Date August 30, 2016 / Der müde Tod / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Lil Dagover, Walter Janssen, Bernhard Goetzke, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Georg John. Cinematography Bruno Mondi, Erich Nitzschmann, Herrmann Saalfrank, Bruno Timm, Fritz Arno Wagner Film Editor Fritz Lang Written by Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou Produced by Erich Pommer Directed by Fritz Lang

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari takes the prize for the most influential work of early German Expressionism, but coming in a close second is the film in which Fritz Lang first got his act (completely) together, 1921's Destiny (Der müde Tod). A wholly cinematic...

Women suffrage movie 'Mothers of Men': Dorothy Davenport becomes a judge and later State Governor in socially conscious thriller about U.S. women's voting rights. Women suffrage movie 'Mothers of Men': Will women's right to vote lead to the destruction of The American Family? Directed by and featuring the now all but forgotten Willis Robards, Mothers of Men – about women suffrage and political power – was a fast-paced, 64-minute buried treasure screened at the 2016 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, held June 2–5. I thoroughly enjoyed being taken back in time by this 1917 socially conscious drama that dares to ask the question: “What will happen to the nation if all women have the right to vote?” One newspaper editor insists that women suffrage would mean the destruction of The Family. Women, after all, just did not have the capacity for making objective decisions due to their emotional composition. It...

It can be said with little hesitation, and without even looking at the slate of what’s to come, that the restoration of a Fritz Lang film will be among any year’s finest cinematic offerings. The Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation deserves real credit, then, for bringing us a new version of his 1921 epic Destiny, here presented in a recolored edition that reflects Lang’s original intentions and with a new score by Cornelius Schwehr.

After premiering at this year’s Berlinale, the movie will begin running next month, courtesy of Kino. Ahead of that is a preview featuring a pull-quote from none other than Luis Buñuel — and if it’s good enough for him, who are you to pass this up?

See the preview below:

Synopsis:

A young woman (Lil Dagover) confronts the personification of Death (Bernhard Goetzke), in an effort to save the life of her fiance (Walter Janssen...

'The Devil Strikes at Night,' with Mario Adorf as World War II era serial killer Bruno Lüdke 'The Devil Strikes at Night' movie review: Serial killing vs. mass murder in unsubtle but intriguing World War II political drama After more than a decade in Hollywood, German director Robert Siodmak (Academy Award nominated for the 1946 film noir The Killers) resumed his European career in the mid-1950s. In 1957, he directed The Devil Strikes at Night / Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam, an intriguing, well-crafted crime drama about the pursuit of a serial killer – and its political consequences – during the last months of the mass-murderous Nazi regime. Inspired by real events, The Devil Strikes at Night begins as war-scarred Hamburg is deeply shaken by the horrific murder of a waitress. Through the Homicide Bureau, inspector Axel Kersten (Claus Holm) begins an investigation that leads him to a mentally disabled laborer,...