GRGR(22) - Dr. Mabuse

[David Morris]

----------
(500.21)  They instruct him in fine points such as not vomiting into the 
wind, Frau Gnahb having expressed the hope that no one would get any vomit 
on her ship with the kind of glacial smile Dr. Mabuse used to get, 
especially on a good day.
----------
from:
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~b2506017/sf/6f.htm

Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr Mabuse, the Gambler)
Year: 1922
Production: Ullstein / UCO Film / Decla Bioscop /UFA

Director: Fritz Lang

Starring: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Aud Egede Nissen, Gertrude Welcker, Alfred 
Abel, Lil Dagover, Paul Richter

Screenwriter: Thea Von Harbou

Based loosely on Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1923) by Norbert Jacques

In two parts, 95 minutes and 100 minutes; B/W

---------

A far more accurate premonition of conditions in 1984 than George Orwell's 
novel, Lang's film was originally received as a realistic portrayal of the 
situation in a corrupt, inflation-ridden Germany. The Spartakist rising in 
1919 had been defeated with the brutal murders of Rosa Lexemburg and Karl 
Liebknecht, and political as well as entrepreneurial gangsterism ruled 
virtually unchallenged. According to Lang, the film was first shown with a 
prologue: a dynamic montage of scenes of the socialist rising and the 
murderous right-wing backlash, organized under state control, which 
eventually triumphed. This would suggest that the world depicted in the bulk 
of the film is a consequence of the Spartakist's defeat. With the 
elimination ofthis introductory sequence from all the surviving prints, the 
Mabuse film now stands as a dystopia: a total breakdown of law and order, 
ruthlessly exploited by an evil genius combining in himself all human 
knowledge, psychological and scientific, not so much for profit as for the 
sheer pleasure of wielding absolute power.

Loosely based on the novel by Jacques, serialized in the Berliner 
Illustrierte, and on newspaper items of the day, the figure of Mabuse has 
become one of the few film characters to have achieved the status of a 
cultural concept, as well known in his day as James Bond is today. Sequels 
were still being made more than 40 years later.

Part 1 of Dr Mabuse, der Spieler , subtitled Ein Bild der Zeit (An Image of 
our Time), tells of how Mabuse (Klein-Rogge, also the mad scientist in 
Lang's Metropolis [1926]) amasses a fortune manipulating the stock market, 
ruining a weak count Told (Abel, the industrialist in Metropolis), 
mercilessly exploiting the Countess (Welcker) and his own girlfriend 
(Nissen), ruling by terror over his gang of forgers and murderers, able to 
strike anytime, anywhere at anybody, including his antagonist, the public 
prosecutor Von Wenck (Goetzke, who played Death in Lang's Der Muede Tod 
[1921]). Having dominated a world of depravity, corruption, addiction, 
charlatanism and unrestrained "free enterprise", gambling with human lives, 
Mabuse finishes totally mad and is carted off to an asylum at the end of 
Part 2 entitled Inferno - Menschen der Zeir ( Inferno - Men of our Time).

As in all Lang's work, the exercise of power is signified, appropriately for 
a film-maker, in terms of the power to "see" and to control through a 
technology as well as a mystique of vision. The mise en scene of looking, 
initiated in the monitors used in Die Spinnen (1919) and further elaborated 
in Metropolis and Spione (1928), culminates in the two Mabuse sequels Lang 
directed himself, Das Testament des Dr Mabuse (1933) and Die Tausend Augen 
des Dr Mabuse (1960), his last film. In his first Mabuse, Lang reserves most 
of the bravura sequences and effects around the theme of vision as Mabuse 
hypnotically influences or controls his victims, or conjures up visions for 
them. Lang was so pleased with his cinematographer, Carl Hoffmann, that he 
used him again on his next project, the massive two-part epic Die Nibelungen 
(1924). Apparently, Sergei Eisenstein and Esther Shub learned their editing 
skills analyzing and attempting to re-edit the Mabuse film.

The Overlook Film Encyclopedia - Science Fiction


from:
http://www.moviesunlimited.com/alpha/225743.ASP

The Crimes Of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
This dubbed-in-English version of Lang's "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse" 
features an opening sequence that depicts Germany in shambles after a Second 
World War (in 1939!). 76 min.
Director: Fritz Lang Cast: Heinrich Gretler, Georg John, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, 
Theodor Loos, Klaus Pohl

The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
Fritz Lang's second film featuring the criminal mastermind finds Mabuse a 
harmless asylum inmate, but a new crime wave has a police inspector looking 
for a connection. The thriller's not-always subtle parallels between Mabuse 
and Hitler led to a Nazi ban and forced the director to flee Germany. With 
Rudolph Klein-Rogge, Otto Wemicke. 120 min. In German with English 
subtitles.
Director: Fritz Lang Cast: Heinrich Gretler, Georg John, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, 
Theodor Loos, Klaus Pohl


______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com