Dr. Mabuse, o Jogador

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Part one of Fritz Lang's epic two part series as Dr. Mabuse making a potion that will allow him to rob people at the card table but soon one of his former victims and the State Attorney are hot on his trail. Needless to say, this thing is masterfully directed by Lang who builds the perfect underworld and allows a really beautiful and exciting film to take place. The cinematography is also brilliant and the performances are nice as well. There's a bit of a dry spot towards the end but the climax is perfectly executed to make way for part two.

Dr. Mabuse: King of Crime (1922)

*** (out of 4)

Part two of Lang's epic has Dr. Mabuse slowly coming unraveled. I found the first part of the film to be more entertaining overall but the ending to this part can't be topped as it shows Lang in an early stage doing something that would later be seen in M. The ending inside the tunnel and the follow up of Mabuse being "haunted" contains terrific atmosphere and manages to be quite creepy as well. However, the first part of this film really drags in spots mainly because the camera is taken off Mabuse and centers on the other characters, none of which are as interesting as Mabuse. With the two films running nearly four-hours, Lang manages to make a very impressive epic, although some of this could have used some editing.

1922 – Germany was in political turmoil and spiralling into a hyperinflation crisis. Meanwhile in cinema the German Expressionist movement was coming of age with the release of FW Murnau's Nosferatu and this, the first in Fritz Lang's series of epics Dr Mabuse, der Spieler. While perhaps not as classically expressionist as Murnau or Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang arguably put his finger on the mood of times better than any other. With Mabuse, his unique style develops to convey a picture of the chaos of the era.

The opening sequences of Dr Mabuse are evidence of screenwriter Thea von Harbou's growing strength as a storyteller and Lang's economy of expression. The first shot – a close-up of Mabuse's hand, holding cards showing his various disguises – presents and defines the title character. A frantic, rapidly cut action scene then hooks the viewer, whilst introducing us to Mabuse's network of minions. After that, we see Mabuse's elaborate scam at the stock market. In one particularly striking image, the crowd of traders panic and jostle, whilst Mabuse stands calmly on a pedestal above them – a perfect metaphor for his position of power amidst social chaos.

At one point in his youth Lang trained as an architect, and this fact is central to his style as a director. There are hints of this in his earliest films, but in Mabuse the architectural touch is fully matured. Throughout, the set design and décor is almost more important than the actors. Whereas other expressionists would evoke mood most frequently through use of light and shadow, Lang does it primarily through use of space. He composes shots in straight lines and geometric patterns, occasionally seeming to form eyes or faces. Often characters are dwarfed by the sheer cavernous size of the rooms they are in. Also look at how many scenes take place on a stage or lecture hall, and how Lang contrasts opposing shots of speaker (or performer) and audience – a metaphor for master and masses. He even has Mabuse sitting at his desk facing the camera, as if to make the real-life viewers his audience – a touch Lang used a fair bit throughout his work.

A frequent complaint about Dr Mabuse is its gargantuan length and I have to admit it does drag in places. Lang's following silent features, although also very long were extremely tight in structure and worked like a classical symphony in the way different parts complemented each other. Dr Mabuse is not quite up to that standard yet. While some of the individual acts are well-balanced little dramas in themselves, as a whole it is a little uneven. Mabuse also suffers from wordy title cards and a lack of convincing action sequences – again, problems that Lang would have solved by the time of Metropolis. It's worth remembering though that on its original release parts one and two were shown on consecutive nights, and it's much easier to digest this way. I wouldn't recommend any first-time viewer try to tackle the whole thing in one sitting.

Holding the whole thing together is a mesmerising performance from Rudolph Klein-Rogge in the title role. While acting in Hollywood was becoming increasingly naturalistic at this time, Germany was a little way behind and performances still tended to be a bit too theatrical and exaggerated. Lang however softens the impact of melodramatic acting by never letting the characters get too realistic in the first place. Cinema was like a comic-book for Lang, in his urban thrillers as much as in his exotic adventures, and this approach saves Dr Mabuse from becoming too strained and ridiculous.

Although it's not as polished as any of his later silents, Dr Mabuse was perhaps Lang's most influential film. The idea of revealing the identity and methods of the villain to the audience was no doubt a forerunner of Hitchcock's mode of building suspense. A young Sergei Eisenstein was given the task of cutting a shortened version of Mabuse for the Russian public, and the way Lang imbues each shot with meaning may have contributed to the concept of intellectual montage. This is not to mention the impact of the Mabuse character on generations of cinematic villains to come. Dr Mabuse, der Spieler is a far from perfect film, and can be tough to watch although it's not as dull as some would claim, and it's certainly a key film in several strands of cinematic development.

Highlights:

• Dr. Mabuse. He's a prototype for so many villains in film history, and as master manipulator who preys on people's fears and exercises mind control over them, is evil in an insidious way. He also bullies his minions and disposes of people after they're no longer useful to him, a true loner with no empathy for humanity. Rudolf Klein-Rogge's look and performance are mesmerizing, no pun intended.

• Fantastic sets with lots of Expressionist touches and art, particularly at the Count's house. Director Fritz Lang combines these with big architectural spaces and excellent mise en scène.

• The sequence at the beginning, with a highly coordinated robbery of a trade agreement from a train, looks straight out of a modern action movie. This transitions to Mabuse manipulating the stock market as he stands over agitated traders, both of which are memorable scenes.

• Lots of other little touches. The noxious gas in the taxi, released at the pull of a lever. The "Chinese glasses", whose reflections are used to confuse and befuddle. The eerie group of blind men helping to count counterfeit money. The tunnel escape. All cool stuff.

• The countess (Gertrude Welcker). Looking for something more out of life, and in her languid eyes you can just see the sentiment behind lines like "I need in life a strong breath of extraordinary thrills and adventures; but, I fear such things have become extinct."

• "Take some cocaine, you wimp!" I chuckled over this line, and coming as it did late in the movie (see below lowlight), imagined it being a directive aimed at flagging audience members.

• Captures the zeitgeist of the times - the chaos of the early Weimar Republic, its economic hardships, and those who antagonized and inflamed people to control them. Mabuse references Nietzsche's will to power, and clearly sees himself as an Übermensch, ideas that also appealed to the emerging Nazi party. "I feel like a state within a state with which I have always been at war!" he bellows, seeming to channel the frustrations of the nationalists.

Lowlights:

• Far, far too long. Probably about two hours too long for the story. The average film length in 1922 was roughly 70 minutes, and at 270 minutes - four and a half hours - this film is nearly four times that. When you combine that with a pace that is often slow and methodical - about average for the period - whew, you're in for a haul, regardless of whether you break your viewing up or damn the consequences and strap yourself in (preferably with a lot of strong black coffee).

• Verbose intertitles. Perhaps a microcosm of the film's bigger issue, the younger Lang didn't seem to understand the value of concision.

I love Lang and what he was going for here, but would recommend the second film in the trilogy, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) over this one. Tellingly, that one clocks in at just over two hours. It also has a more engaging detective and love story. I feel bad dinging the review score a bit given how pioneering the film was and all of its positives, but I have to be true to my enjoyment level too.

This film, like many of Fritz Lang's best efforts, mixes pulp fiction, realism, fantasy and social comment, in this case to adapt to the screen Jacques Norbert's serial novel about a diabolical mastermind (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who can destabilize the national economy by manipulation of the stock market, operate an underground counterfeiting ring manned by blind slaves, hypnotize card players into losing all of their money to him and even engineer a mass hallucination. He changes his identity for every caper via costumes, wigs, prosthetics and fake facial hair. He has in his employ an army of henchmen from slum denizens and cutthroats to a celebrated follies dancer whom he uses as a lure for wealthy victims. And for what? His purpose in life is to "play the game" and undermine his opponent's will. At one point he states that there is no such thing as love, only lust and the will to power (or, as some interpretations go, the will to possess what one desires). When state prosecutor Von Wenk (the sturdy Bernhard Goetzke) launches an investigation into this one-man crime wave his pursuit covers the social spectrum from the dives and gutters of the underworld to the palaces of the nobility.

The film is beautifully designed and photographed and organized into scenes and acts. Each scene is a story unto itself. This structuring helps provide a centering or equilibrium for the viewer amidst the cascade of events and characters.

Among Mabuse's victims: A bored countess (Gertrud Welcker) who frequents the illegal gambling houses to observe the reactions to wins and losses on the faces of the players so that she can vicariously experience passion. She longs for an adventure the likes of which she can never experience at home with her wimpy husband who spends his time tinkering with antique art objects. Little does she know that she is about to be plunged into the adventure of her life.

Another young beauty, this one a prominent cabaret performer (Aud Egede Nissen), has fallen under the spell of Dr. Mabuse, lives in an apartment adjacent to his hotel suite and serves as bait for unsuspecting victims like the wealthy young Edgar Hull (the not-so-young Paul Richter), who is milked of his fortune by Mabuse.

No one can defy Mabuse. He seems to be everywhere and know everything, so that if you dare betray him you are as good as dead. This terror ensures his gang's devotion. The similarities to Hitler (or any totalitarian leader with secret police tentacles reaching far and wide) are obvious and this film has been cited often as a foreshadowing of the Hitler era. Part 2 is even subtitled "a story for our time." The notion of conspiratorial forces operating behind the scenes was on the German mind when this film was made.

There are many startling parallels between MABUSE and the 1920 classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, an interesting fact considering the legend that Lang was involved in the conceptual stage of CALIGARI. Both stories feature a spooky doctor with hypnotic powers who spreads evil through the land. In both films the identity of the central evil character changes: Dr. Mabuse assumes many disguises; Dr. Caligari remains himself until he appears as a psychiatrist at the end. The sign on Mabuse's door reads "Psychoanalyse." Caligari's somnambulist predicts a man will die within hours; Mabuse hypnotizes a man into driving himself over the bank of a canal. The villains even visually resemble each other in both films: Mabuse often wears white fright wigs and high hats reminiscent of Werner Krauss's look in Caligari. MABUSE operates on a wider canvas than CALIGARI. Whereas Caligari's only instrument is his somnambulist slave, Mabuse operates an extensive network of henchmen. At the climax of both stories a word ("Caligari"/"Melior") is animatedly superimposed over the screen action to intensify the impact. The whole of CALIGARI is designed expressionistically; expressionistic sets are used minimally and subtly in Mabuse but the subject of expressionism is briefly discussed in one scene wherein Mabuse describes it as "another game" or words to that effect. The expressionism in CALIGARI is all-encompassing; in MABUSE it is under control, part of a larger design. In both films there are scenes in prison cells. In both films a beautiful young woman who has fainted is carried off and then liberated.

In the Kino edition of MABUSE there is one apparent technical glitch: a car chase near the end starts at night and suddenly flips to daylight with no sense of transition. If this was Lang's idea of "day for night" shooting, he overshot the mark hugely.

On display here is Lang's penchant for mixing exotic pulp, unadorned realism, and pure fantasy. In MABUSE it is the doctor's magical hypnotic powers that stretch and finally break credulity, woven as they are into an otherwise naturalistic crime melodrama. This mixture of the fantastical and the ordinary occurs in all of Lang's 1920's work, right through WOMAN IN THE MOON (1929). Only with M (1931) does he begin to abandon fantasy and concentrate on social issues, whereupon he steered clear of pulp and exotica until late in life when he returned to the genre in the late 1950s with his India trilogy. But by that time film audiences had long outgrown the conventions of the 1920's. And so ended Lang's career.

But the sheer scope and expert execution of this film under the conditions that prevailed in Germany in 1921-22, supervised by a man barely 30 years old, is quite an achievement and should be seen.

...from director Fritz Lang, adapted by Thea von Harbou from the book by Norbert Jacques. Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) runs a criminal empire with tentacles in many areas: he manipulates events to predict the stock market, causing panics that he can profit from; he runs clandestine gambling casinos, and uses his powers of hypnosis and mind-control to cheat and win; and he oversees a highly lucrative counterfeiting operation. He operates under a variety of disguises and personas, with only a small inner circle even aware of his existence. His machinations eventually come to the notice of state prosecutor von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) who sets about to bring the arch-fiend to justice.

This four and a half hour colossus is split into two parts, and while it is long, it doesn't overstay its welcome. The first 20 minutes, detailing Mabuse's intricate method of causing mayhem at the stock exchange, is extremely well done. Klein-Rogge is magnificent in the title role, transformed into multiple characterizations as the elusive Mabuse obscures his movements through masquerades. Director Lang also employs a number of novel cinematic tricks to convey Mabuse's power, such as his hypnotic suggestions appearing as glowing words that torment his targets. While the film is clearly an indictment on Weimar-era German dissipation and decadence, the character of Mabuse is a bit thornier: Lang claims that he's meant to represent the type of amoral thirst for power that was given rise in the period, and which would lead to Hitler's ascension; others have pointed out the anti-Semitic nature of Mabuse. Whatever the case, Lang's film is a masterpiece of early cinematic crime fiction, and one whose inspiration continues to this day.