Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast

Images

Fritz Lang as a boy in turn­of­the­century Vienna. The custom of the era was to dress boys in girls' frocks. (Courtesy ofFriedrich Steinbach) Fritz Lang's paternal grandmother, Johanna Lang, gave the future film director his surname, a deeply rooted Catholicism, and a mystery at the heart of his lineage. (Courtesy ofFriedrich Steinbach) Lang's parents, Anton and Paula, led a "thor­ oughly bourgeois" exis­ tence. Their attire here suggests a vacation at a tourist site. (Courtesy of Friedrich Steinbach) While Fritz led a cushioned life, his older brother, Adolf (right), was not as fortunate, and was treated almost as an outcast with­ in the family. (Courtesy of Friedrich Steinbach) Die Spinnen (1920), an adventure cliffhanger, was a schoolboy's recipe that nonetheless hinted at the brilliance of a budding master. (Photofest) Rudolf Klein­Rogge, von Harbou's ex­hus­ band, in his prototyp­ ical Lang role as Mabuse in Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler (1922). (Photofest) Bernhardt Goetzke (as Death) and Lil Dagover, Lang's first major 'Virgin star/' in Der milde Tod (1921), the director's first great collaboration with Thea von Harbou. (Photofest) The memorable scene in which Siegfried (Paul Richter) slays the dragon in the epic saga Die Nibelungen (1924). (Photofest) The ill­destined Kriemhild (Margarethe Schon) with Siegfried (Paul Richter) in a scene from Die Nibelungen. Lang with producer Erich Pommer aboard the S. S. Deutschland heading to America for the first time: October 1924. (Courtesy of John Pommer) A musical break: Lang, Helm, and Thea von Harbou (at piano) on the set of Metropolis (1927). Von Harbou actually played the piano well, and occa­ sionally accompanied the filming; Lang, by his own admission musical­ ly ignorant, was more of a publicity virtuoso. (British Film Institute) Prestigious visitors to the Metropolis set: (left to right) boxer Jack Dempsey and his wife, American actress Estelle Taylor; producer Erich Pommer; Thea von Harbou; and unidentified others flanking Fritz Lang. (Courtesy of John Pommer) One way or another, the director got his way: Lang enslaving the bald­headed extras in the Tower of Babel scene. They were then optically multiplied to meet his arith­ metic of thousands. Lang and Karl Freund (garbed, characteristically, in white) held aloft by crew members during the floodtide of Metropolis. Cameraman Gunther Rittau (in profile) and art director Erich Kettelhut at work on the Metropolis miniatures. (Courtesy of the Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek) Brigitte Helm suf­ fered through hours of painstaking photography for one of the most famous moments in Lang's cinema, when the robot­Maria is brought to life. The futuristic Metropolis cityscape, inspired, according to Lang, by his first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline. The miniatures, which took months to prepare, yielded an image that lasted only a few seconds in the final film. Lang bending Helm to his will on the set of Metropolis (with Gustav Frolich at left). BELOW: The robot­ Maria is burned at the stake in the film s unforgettable hellfire climax; many on the set feared for the actress's safety as the all­too­real flames licked at her body. Gerda Maurus, the Lang "find" who starred in Spione (1928) and Die Frau im Mond (1929), with whom the director had his most passionate —and, reportedly, sado­ masochistic — relationship. (Courtesy of the Berlin Document Center) Lang (gesturing at right) directing Gerda Maurus and others in Frau im Mond. In barren years, Lang would fondly remem­ ber the moment when he had the power to conjure his own moonscape. (Photofest) Lang at his self­designed desk in his Berlin home —an office, Lotte Eisner noted, not unlike that of the Master of Metropolis. (University of Southern California) An early 1930s snapshot of Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou, as their marriage —and professional partnership —began to wear thin. (Courtesy of Wilde Guttman/London Museum of Jewish Life) Lang at an early 1930s event—perhaps a press ball—with his M producer Seymour Nebenzal (in glasses) and other unidentified partygoers. (Courtesy ofStiftung Deutsche Kinemathek) The film's emblematic scene: Loire, discover­ ing the...