Films/DVD Asylum

I can only take Lang in moderation

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Victor Khomenko

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In Reply to: I'll be watching it soon posted by Bulkington on July 11, 2005 at 06:45:30:

You will enjoy it, I am sure, but Lang has that very negative emotional effect on me. Watching Metropolis or Mabuse produces such dehumanizing effect that after the film ends I am not looking for another one. The opening scenes of Mabuse, with that huge all-dominating machine shaking the whole building is so full of horror that it is capable of inducing strong depression.
The fact it is done so incredibly well makes it even more depressing. So the overal effect of the film is bone-chilling in the extreme, and there is hardly any overt violence happening there.
This is something the schlock movie makers like Spielberg should have watched before making the SPR kaka. There is much more horror in one minute of Mabuse than in the whole of the SPR.

Follow Ups:

Lang was invited to head the Nazi propanganda film studio - grinagog 10:27:05 07/11/05 (1)
by Joseph Goebbels; he refused, and left for Hollywood via France
The gap being later (in)famously filled by Leni Riefenstahl
Hitler was a fan of Wagner (Siegfried and Niebelungen) and viewing Metropolis with it's dehumanising themes; Reich propanganda would have appeared to be a seamless progression for Lang (!)
Bravo to him for not taking that offer up; but his early films are unwittingly the very model of what would later become fascist ideological cinema
I'm sure Lang later cringed at how prophetic he'd been, and how his art and vision was subsequently hijacked by the Bad Guys
I think it's impossible to remove any appreciation of Langs "German" films from the events that unfolded later, and yes, that's depressing...
Grins
- Many of those themes were co-authored by Thea von Harbou, Lang's wife at the time, and she did join the Nazi Party. - Audiophilander 11:42:15 07/11/05 (0)
  From the early 1920's his most extravagant productions, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, Spies, Woman in The Moon, etc., were the shared visions of Thea von Harbou & Fritz Lang. Indead, von Harbou novelized several of these seminal works around the time that the films were released; apparently they were best sellers in Europe.
  This shouldn't take away from the brilliance of Lang's early work or suggest that Thea von Harbou's eventual membership in the Nazi Party should obscure or detract from the groundbreaking accomlishments of either artist, but awareness of the history and ideologies involved are relevent to understanding the cultural themes highlighted in these great films.
  AuPh
SPR? - Bulkington 07:24:14 07/11/05 (0)
?
I'm ashamed to say I've never even see Metropolis before--not all the way through, at least. I'll ge getting quite a film education this year.
Netflix is a godsend.

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