In 1960s Germany, criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse uses hypnotized victims and the surveillance equipment of a Nazi-era bugged hotel to steal nuclear technology from a visiting American industrialist.
EN
“The 1922 Dr. Mabuse was a routine adaptation of Norbert Jacques’ thriller. [...] It grew out of its time. Germany was a place where every type of excess was encountered and the film reflected the inflationary hysteria, the anarchistic streak, the despair and vices of the time. The public loved it, as they did The Spy. Now, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse 11 years later was of course a veiled commentary on Nazism. The original of The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse was a newspaper article describing an experimental U.S. Army bullet that leaves no marks, and I wanted to make a brutal and realistic picture. In the original film, I had left Mabuse in a madhouse and I hesitated to bring him out again when Seymour Nebenzal thought we could make a pile of money in 1932. I saw the possibilities of snide commentaries with this story of a director of a lunatic asylum hypnotised by his patient. It was rather sophisticated, but Goebbels banned it on March 29, 1933 even before any trade screenings were held. Goebbels apologised and told me that he and Hitler had seen M together in a small-town movie house and they wanted me to make films for them.”
Fritz Lang1
Peter Bogdanovich: How did you come to make Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse [The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, 1960]?
Fritz Lang: Mr. Brauner had a big success with the first films, and I was back in the United States when I got a letter from him: do I want to remake Die Nibelungen? It’s a ridiculous idea – there are many reasons why it shouldn’t be done – and why should I repeat myself? After the war, a very close friend of mine, Mr. Erich Pommer – who was responsible, in my opinion, for the great success of the German films before Hitler – asked me if I wanted to do a remake of Der müde Tod. I said, “No, I have said everything I have to say – why should I redo it?” Anyway, Brauner said, “Well, then how about making a picture about Mabuse?” And I said, “I already killed that son of a bitch! That’s why I made The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse. It’s finished.” But he insisted, so it became a kind of challenge to me – and I had an idea that it might be interesting to show a similar criminal almost thirty years later and again say certain things about our time: the danger that our civilization can be blown up and that on its rubble some new realm of crime could be built up. But, you see, I didn’t make these pictures because I thought they were important, but because I was hoping that if I made somebody a great financial success I would again have the chance – as I had with M – to work without any restrictions. It was my mistake.
Peter Bogdanovich in conversation with Fritz Lang2
- 1“A man for all seasons: Fritz Lang interviewed in 1967,” Sight & Sound, 4 August 2020.
- 2Peter Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It (Alfred A. Knopf: New York, 1997).
