'Seven chapters from the Italian Renaissance as told by Fritz Lang' an opening title card tells us, thus getting one chapter up on the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt's book, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy from 1860. In the film, the youth of Florence are chafing under the yoke of Church and State power since they just want to have fun. Along comes the seductive courtesan Julia, who halts the Corpus Christi procession and whose entertainments are soon giving the young people what they've been looking for. Church and State strike back, as does the hermit Medardus, whom Julia converts to her ways. The plague begins making the rounds and Medardus, seeing the error of his ways, brings the Black Death into the city, ending his life, Julia's life, and the film. Lang's philosophy in constructing the plot seems to have been, 'If in doubt, keep it in,' so there's a bit of everything in the plot: Susannah and the elders, Masque of the Red Death, etc., and the film might have been more effective had Lang not ranged quite so widely afield. The sets and settings are especially well done and the photography very good. The acting may seem quite mannered to us, but Cesare and the Cardinal have formidable faces and Medardus, the tortured hermit, is sympathetic.
Review of Pest in Florenz
