This early Fritz Lang picture made quite a splash among his fellow filmmakers. Hitchcock's favourite film, catalyst for Luis Bunuel's career, inspiration for many of the devices in the Douglas Fairbanks Thief of Bagdad and even one or two ideas in Powell and Pressburger's Tales of Hoffman, Der Mude Tod certainly has a lot to answer for.
This was also Lang's first collaboration with wife-to-be Thea von Harbou. The influence of a more talented screenwriter is clear, as this boasts a far stronger narrative than his earlier Spiders pictures, which he penned himself. The main storyline was famously inspired by a dream that Lang once had. I've lost track of the number of times I've woken up from a dream, thinking it was a fantastic idea for a screenplay, only to realise once I was properly awake it was unworkable. Lang and Harbou have done a good job then of weaving a fairly coherent story out of what is after all the product of someone's unconscious mind. And yet there are a number of weaknesses to it. For example, why is it necessary to introduce us individually to all the town's notaries, when their identities are of so little importance to the plot? This is at the expense of the principle characters, none of whom is fully rounded.
However, while Lang often failed to balance out a story, he had a real sense of structure when it came imagery and tone. Here was a director who truly thought in images and not words. If you look at Lang's greatest silent pictures, especially Metropolis, they are structured – often literally – like works of classical music, with calm passages giving way to more dynamic movements. You can see the beginnings of that trend here – the framing story in the German town is slow and appropriately dreamlike in its imagery. Then there is a sudden contrast with the burst of action that opens the story of the first light, and this frantic pace is kept up throughout the first and second stories. For this reason the third story, for all its special effects, is the weakest for me because it loses the pace of the first two and is the least tight in its construction.
The individual image was also highly important to Lang. Whereas his contemporaries in German cinema were doing everything with shadows and superimpositions, Lang often achieves greater effect with his manipulation of space. He had already experimented with scenery and space in his earliest films, but by now a very definite approach is beginning to emerge. Lang often likes show us a scene from two opposing camera angles, showing us the completeness of a set and making it feel real to the audience. He is not afraid to break the line of action – switching the camera from one side of the actors to the other - generally a directorial no-no, but to be honest it only causes confusion when everything is shown in close-ups and the space where the action takes place is not well defined. In Der Mude Tod, as with many of Lang's films, every shot seems calculated to suggest enclosure and entrapment – very apt for the theme of inescapable fate. On small sets, rear walls are often at 45-degree angles to the camera, so they appear to hem in the actors, while on the larger sets the sheer cavernous size of the room makes the actors appear tiny. Even in the outdoor scenes the action is often framed by an overhanging tree.
In spite of his constant attention to the architecture, Lang is now paying a bit more attention to his actors. The performances are comparatively restrained for a German silent film, with Lil Dagover resisting the temptation to slip into melodrama, and the always watchable Rudolph Klein-Rogge in the most normal, human role I have ever seen him in.
In Der Mude Tod, we see the first flourishing of Fritz Lang's genius. He is just a few films away from perfecting his technique. Still, the picture suffers somewhat from the same problem as many "effects movies", in that it is an impressive show without enough substance to back it up – in this case the main defect is a lack of well-defined characters.
This was also Lang's first collaboration with wife-to-be Thea von Harbou. The influence of a more talented screenwriter is clear, as this boasts a far stronger narrative than his earlier Spiders pictures, which he penned himself. The main storyline was famously inspired by a dream that Lang once had. I've lost track of the number of times I've woken up from a dream, thinking it was a fantastic idea for a screenplay, only to realise once I was properly awake it was unworkable. Lang and Harbou have done a good job then of weaving a fairly coherent story out of what is after all the product of someone's unconscious mind. And yet there are a number of weaknesses to it. For example, why is it necessary to introduce us individually to all the town's notaries, when their identities are of so little importance to the plot? This is at the expense of the principle characters, none of whom is fully rounded.
However, while Lang often failed to balance out a story, he had a real sense of structure when it came imagery and tone. Here was a director who truly thought in images and not words. If you look at Lang's greatest silent pictures, especially Metropolis, they are structured – often literally – like works of classical music, with calm passages giving way to more dynamic movements. You can see the beginnings of that trend here – the framing story in the German town is slow and appropriately dreamlike in its imagery. Then there is a sudden contrast with the burst of action that opens the story of the first light, and this frantic pace is kept up throughout the first and second stories. For this reason the third story, for all its special effects, is the weakest for me because it loses the pace of the first two and is the least tight in its construction.
The individual image was also highly important to Lang. Whereas his contemporaries in German cinema were doing everything with shadows and superimpositions, Lang often achieves greater effect with his manipulation of space. He had already experimented with scenery and space in his earliest films, but by now a very definite approach is beginning to emerge. Lang often likes show us a scene from two opposing camera angles, showing us the completeness of a set and making it feel real to the audience. He is not afraid to break the line of action – switching the camera from one side of the actors to the other - generally a directorial no-no, but to be honest it only causes confusion when everything is shown in close-ups and the space where the action takes place is not well defined. In Der Mude Tod, as with many of Lang's films, every shot seems calculated to suggest enclosure and entrapment – very apt for the theme of inescapable fate. On small sets, rear walls are often at 45-degree angles to the camera, so they appear to hem in the actors, while on the larger sets the sheer cavernous size of the room makes the actors appear tiny. Even in the outdoor scenes the action is often framed by an overhanging tree.
In spite of his constant attention to the architecture, Lang is now paying a bit more attention to his actors. The performances are comparatively restrained for a German silent film, with Lil Dagover resisting the temptation to slip into melodrama, and the always watchable Rudolph Klein-Rogge in the most normal, human role I have ever seen him in.
In Der Mude Tod, we see the first flourishing of Fritz Lang's genius. He is just a few films away from perfecting his technique. Still, the picture suffers somewhat from the same problem as many "effects movies", in that it is an impressive show without enough substance to back it up – in this case the main defect is a lack of well-defined characters.