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The first talk of a sequel to Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler may have been spurred by a vacation in Istanbul that Lang and Thea von Harbou took, with author Norbert Jacques in 1930. The director always claimed that he had long resisted the idea of making another Mabuse film. He emphasized that it was his producer, Seymour Nebenzahl , who sweet-talked him into creating a follow-up to the 1922 bipartite success, which ended with the madman Mabuse in police hands. Another Mabuse film, Nebenzahl argued, was guaranteed to strike box-office gold. The burgeoning rift between Lang and Thea von Harbou may have made the writing of a new, entirely original scenario problematic, and the dustingoff of a familiar property attractive. Following on the credits of the 1922 film, this Mabuse would be credited to Lang and von Harbou together. Some people believe the director's contribution to the scenario was more comprehensive than it had been in the earlier work, especially in view of the fact that von Harbou was secretly preoccupied with her love life. The sequel would start with Mabuse institutionalized. Locked in a padded cell, he busies himself filling up notepads with rambling hieroglyphics. That eerie image provided the film's title: Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse). Someone in the outside world appears to be doing Mabuse's insane bidding. Some omnipotent, unseen figure has taken over his malevolent crime organization and is masterminding wanton destruction—burning and bombing attacks on railways, chemical factories, banks, croplands. This "surrogate Mabuse" turns out to be none other than Dr. Baum, Mabuse's keeper in the mental ward; while researching abnormalities in the supercriminal's brain, Baum has experienced an apparition, perceived his own reflection in Mabuse's ghost, and become possessed of his patient's evil traits. Chief Inspector Lohmann—the same character and actor returning from M, but with a likable spin—provides counterpoint and humor. The story endows him with humanizing traits—he is fat and a snorer—but Inspector Lohmann is also an ace detective whose very name terrorizes criminals.The sequel would also introduce a predictable hero, Kent, who is tortured by the fact that his self-respecting sweetheart, Lilli, doesn't know he is a member of Mabuse's C H A P T E R 9 1932 19333 166 FRITZ LANG gang. Anguished by his secret, he is looking for a chance to quit the crime business. The script would exploit incidents and trends drawn from real life—astrology and clairvoyance (voguish among Berlin's aristocracy, no less so among Nazi leaders); newsreel-like scenes of unemployment lines and urban street life; up-to-date police procedural details (to the usual point of near excess); and reportage of "authentic events," as the director termed them in a letter to author Norbert Jacques. "Thefts of explosives and mysterious thefts of poisons from a number of pharmacies in Berlin had been noticed, and no suspects had been found," the director wrote to the Mabuse author, explaining how the sequel was being developed. "The threats from a deranged mind that I integrate later in the film had already been done in the sense that threatening letters from an unknown person had been received in the town of Magdeburg. All of these things I collected from newspaper clippings." The screenplay was thus given a relevance that was thoroughly up-to-date, reflecting a Germany that writhed—even more than in 1922—in the grip of sociopolitical crisis. The project dictated that Rudolf Klein-Rogge would be brought back to reprise his role as Dr. Mabuse. Otto Wernicke returned as Inspector Lohmann. Oskar Beregi played the insidious Dr. Baum, and Gustav Diessl and Wera Liessem portrayed the romantic couple, Kent and Lilli. Although nobody realized it at the time, the set for Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse was a kind of final reunion. This was Klein-Rogge's swan song for Fritz Lang. Willy Ley and other friends soon to leave Germany for political reasons dropped by during shooting. Von Molo was again the director's helpful assistant ; and when Das Testament went before the cameras in October of 1932, Emil Hasler and Karl Vollbrecht, who had reached such creative heights on M, were again made responsible for the art direction. For the last time Lang's "right-hand man" would be Fritz Arno Wagner. In a later interview, the cameraman recalled that the pride of working on a Fritz...

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