Some of you may know something about one area of collecting in my hobby.
Bruce certainly knows this, as he has sold me a number of items for
this particular sub-section of my collection. Walter knows also, as does Grey
what is it?
Fritz Lang
I have loved Lang's work ever since I first saw Siegfried on PBS in
NYC as an 11 year old movie fan.
PBS screened several of Lang's films when I was a boy. Metropolis,
Die Nibelungen, Spione, Woman in the Moon, the Spiders (Die Spinnen),
Destiny.. I had seen them all. I'm guessing that prints of Testament
were not readily available and that the overlong Mabuse the Gambler
probably never fit the time slot, no matter what massacred version
was available, so that I hadn't seen until I was older and Testament
until I was much older as I don't think any kind of good prints were
available and of course I also saw most of his Hollywood work. Of c
ourse, as time went by, better & better prints with more footage
added to the fun of watching his films. I obtained the numerous books
on Lang (including one by Peter Bogdanovich) and German cinema before I was 15
Lang was a genius. It's as simple as that. Few directors reach the
height that he did. Literally every one of his films through the
middle forties is a classic and highly rated, no matter how small his
budget was. William Wyler would be his direct competitor at this
level, but of course, neither beats the other in the contest from the
perspective of artistic merit (although we all know Wyler films won
more oscars for more actors than any other). Lang's successor would
be another great film maker - Stanley Kubrick. I think that any
Kubrick film could have been made by Lang and the resulting material
would be nearly the same. The underlying match between the two of
course is the bleak landscape of life that is the underlying theme of
all of their work. They are auteur directors of the first degree.
anyway... Bruce has in his current auctions an Austrian program for
Testament of Dr Mabuse (there is no German program as the film was
banned immediately and is the reason Lang left Germany with nothing
more than the clothes he was wearing). In Bruce's description he says:
the movie is a sequel of sorts to Lang's 5 hour silent movie "Dr.
Mabuse", which is sometimes shown in two parts; some people consider
this movie to be Lang's very best movie, amazing since he also did
"Metropolis" and "M"!
as a major Lang fan, I wonder if this is correct or not. From my
perspective, I think that the Siegfried-Die Nibelungen two film combo
is Lang's best, especially in it's completely restored version now
available. But the real problem in rating Lang's German films (which
are his best, period!) is that each one is a true masterpiece of some
form and trying to say one masterpiece is better than another
masterpiece seems to be somewhat self-defeating as a philosophy. No
doubt, other Lang fans will have a different favorite than myself and
don't get me wrong, Testament is an incredible film and I watch it
regularly. But for me.. the Siegfried's are the best
what do other collectors & Fritz Lang fans say?
ps: Bruce.. Testament is most definitely a sequel to Mabuse Der
Spieler. There are at least a couple references of some sort to the
earlier film and of course the make-up is the same
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