Review of Destiny

With the advent of the spoken movies one cinematographic species was forever extinguished—the cinema lyrical poem; I do not intend to say that all silent movies were such lyrical poems. Far from the truth; it is plain for everyone to see that the spoken and dramatic movies, and also the genres knew their avatars during the silent era. But some of the silent movies were lyrical poems—of a kind rendered impossible by the spoken cinema.

Perhaps—and I graciously say perhaps, yet I'm convinced of it—the most noticeable feature of DMT (let's keep it German, shall we not?) is its gloomy, eerie, uncanny, funeral atmosphere. Simultaneously, the pace is quite alert, while the three vignettes referred to below are refreshingly dissimilar.

Now let us see whether—and to what extent—we do agree. DER MŰDE TOD is a creepy melodrama, sometimes thrillingly beautiful, almost a great movie, certainly a good one; a young woman attempts to rescue her lover from the claws and pangs of the personified Death; which Death offers her several occasions to see human lives brutally extinct, and the director treats us with a few exotic scenes—a Mohammedan tale; an Italian Renaissance one; and a Chinese one, the best vignette might be that of Monna Fiametta and Girolamo. Lil Dagover plays the dignified young woman; she once represented the glamor of the silent screen.