Fritz Lang was a filmmaker before his time. During the silent era of cinema, he took the best elements of German Expressionism, and created some of the most memorable and loved sci-fi and horror movies of all time.
Freidrich Christian Anton Lang was born in Vienna in 1890, the son of a construction company manager. After High school, Lang trained to be a painter. After touring Europe, he enrolled himself in the Austrian army at the start of the First World War.
Suffering from a fairly serious injury, Lang was confined to hospital, where he started to pen film scripts. Eventually dismissed from the army after suffering shell-shock, Lang took to acting, enrolling with a Vienna-based theatre.
He was soon head-hunted by the German film Industry as a Screenwriter, producing scripts for Berlin-based Decla, before working for Ufa and then American owned Nero-Film.
His directorial debut came 1919 with 'Halbbut' (The Halfe-Caste) which featured many elements that would become trademarks of Lang's work, most noticable the theme of a man undone by his love for a woman.
In 1920, he met a fellow writer, Thea von Harbou. The two would embalked on a relationship and began to work together, penning some of the directors best-known films. They married later that year.
Lang started to gain recognition with the 1919 adventure film 'Die Spinnen, 1. Teil: Der Goldene See' ('The Spiders, Part1: The Golden Lake'). Like many of Lang's films, this was intended as the first in a series of four. Indeed, this feature was a big success, and a sequel was soon required (although the final two installments never came). Lang was therefore pulled off his next planned picture, 'Der Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'...one can only speculate if Lang would have improved upon what many already see has the first classic horror movie.
'Der mude Tod' ('The Tired Death'), a fantasy feature which many claimed influenced the American 'Thief of Baghdad'(23), was Lang's next project. In order to rescue her husband from beyond the grave, a woman makes a pact with death. If she can save the lives of three individuals about to die, death will restore life to her husband. Her travels take her to Baghdad, Italy and China, where she attempts to help the would-be victims of the Grim Reaper. A imaginative and atmospheric movie, Lang and von Harbou have cunjured a superior mixture of Sinbad-style thrills and chilling issues of human mortality.
Another big hit for Lang was 'Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler' ('Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler'), a master portrayal of a master criminal. Thanks to Lang's work here, Dr. Mabuse would become a regular part of German cinema right through to the late 1980's. Lang would direct three entries into the series. This the first, is a silent classic. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is a master of all that is evil, the nucleus of all Berlin's crime. State Attorney von Wenk (Berhard Goetzke) attempts to track down the 'Great Unknown', and stop his evil doings. Mabuse uses hypnotism to cause the weak-minded rich to lose there fortunes in his crooked casinos. Lang has clearly become a master of style by this time, with sensational use of montages, editing, narrative, scenic design and character development. He clearly felt the desperation ravaging post-war Germany at the time, as the finanical hardship and depression experienced by the public hangs in the atmosphere like a black cloud.
'Die Niebelungen' was Lang's attempt to re-introduce the German public to it's once proud hertiage. Based on the legend of the 13th Century hero Siegfried (Paul Richter), who fights dragons, and cruel warriors in a series of mythological adventures. A huge success, the sequel, Kriemhild's Revenge, was released shortly after, confirming Lang's status as a leading figure of the Fantasy Film genre.
Lang's sci-fi masterpiece, 'Metropolis', was released in 1926 onto an unsuspecting world audience. One of the first Science Fiction movies ever, 'Metropolis' is a visual trip into the future; the imagery of imposing futuristic skyscrapers, robots and cloning has inspired Sci-fi movies to this very day. The plot, based on a story by his wife von Harbou, always overshadowed by the incredible special effects, concerns the rise of the lower classes; striking scenes of the bald-headed slaves, opperating heavy clockwork-type machinery whilst the the upperclass enjoy a work-free life, seem to have inspired propaganda artwork by the Communist Party in future years. The hero of the piece (Gustav Frohlich) decides to throw off his luxury lifestyle and inspire a revolution. In order to stop the rebellion, a mad scientist, Prof. Rotwang (Rudolf Klien-Rogge), has the woman he loves (Brigitte Helm) cloned and replaced by a robot.
Lang, forever the perfectionist, went way over budget, and over time filming 'Metropolis', which nearly bankrupted the Ufa Studios. Taking two years, and costing 5.3 million marks, it was the biggest, and most expensive film in German history at that time. But ever this didn't please Lang: 'I don't like Metropolis', he said in 1958. 'I didn't like it even when I made the film'. Most people wouldn't share Lang's feelings on this recognised classic, on a visceral level, it's the most important film of the silent era.

Lang again ventured into the fantasy genre with 'Woman on the Moon'. Life once again would prove to imitated art, as nearly 30 years after Lang used the 10...9...8... countdown in this movie, it was adopted by the Soviets and the US in real rocket launches; Lang claimed he used it only for dramtic effect. 'Woman on the Moon' (aka 'By Rocket to the Moon') was again based on a von Harbou story, was not as successful as 'Metropolis', mainly because this silent film was released at at a time when the public demand sound.
Naturally enough then, Lang's next movie, in 1931, was Germany's first-ever talkie.

A classic in it's own right, it was the directors own favourite. 'M' (1931) is the study of a repulsive child murder (Peter Lorre). The murders so shock the public, that the police's efforts to track him down severly hamper the activity of the local criminal factions. The gang leaders decide to unite and catch the murderer, and, in one of the most unforgettable scenes in cinema history, put the killer on trial in the basement of an abandoned warehouse.
Considering this was the directors first venture into sound, 'M' is an unbelievable success. The fascinating portrayal of sexual abnormalty is years ahead of it's time, every scene of this sometimes unexpectedly amusing film is a joy to watch. It also made a genre star out of Lorre (born Laszlo Lowenstein), who soon fled Nazi Germany for Hollywood.
1932 saw Lang return to one of his previously successful characters with 'Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse'. The supercriminal dies lonely and insane in an asylum. However, the head of the sanitorium inherits Mabuse's evil traits, and sets out to gain revenge on those that put his away. Atmospheric and as break a commentary on the state of Germany as the original, this was another huge success.
The success of this film brought Lang even further acclaim, and from quarters he didn't appreciate. Soon after 'Testament' opened, Lang was approached by Goebbels, and asked to supervise the making of Nazi propaganda film. Lang fled Germany that day, leaving behind a personnal fortune, his own studios, a priceless art collection and, above all, his wife, a Nazi sympathizer (they divorced in '33).
Lang's first stop was France, where he made another popular fantasy movie 'Liliom'. A worthless, wife-beating carnival owner, Lilliom takes his life, put is turned away from the gates of Heaven, and given a second chance to make good of his life. A sentimental comedy, 'Lilliom' preceeded a series of similar recognised classics, including 'Heaven Can Wait' and 'Stairway to Heaven'. Like most of Lang's films, this inspirational feature is a classic in it's own right.
Lang eventually moved to America, (where he would remain for the next twenty year). Unfortunately, Langs time in America seemed to mark the end of his HSF career, as the director (enjoying mixed fortunes) would traverse a wide range of genres, from westerns to war films. Amongst his most successful features were 'Fury' ('36, his Hollywood debut), 'You Only Live Once' (37) 'Hanmen Also Die' (40), Woman in the Window' (44), 'Rancho Notorious' (52), The Big Heat (53) and 'Moonfleet' (55).
Also worthy of mention is the classic thriller 'While the City Sleeps'(56), the story of a newspaper's attempt to track down a killer, which featured such genre stars as Vincent Price, Dana Andrews and George Sanders.
In 1958, Lang returned to Germany. He made two jungle adventures 'Der Tiger von Eschnapur' and 'Das Indische Grabmal' (condensed as 'Journey to the Lost City' for American Audiences), before filming 'Die Tausend Augen Des Dr. Mabuse' ('1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse' '60), which saw him once again return to the character he first made famous nearly 40 years ago. This low budget effort, featuring German greats like Gert Frobe and Wolfgang Preiss, is a low budget classic which inspired a new batch of Dr. Mabuse movies by other directors. A hotel manager, apparently responsible for 15 murders, believes he is the reincarnation of the long dead master criminal. The hotel is completely bugged with mini-cameras and two way mirrors, and idea borrowed from Nazi plans to spy on foreign dignitares after they had won the war.
'Die Tausend Augen Des Dr. Mabuse' would prove to Lang's last movie. He retired to Beverly Hills in 1961, 15 years before he eventually pasted on. Fritz Lang had far from an easy life. He lost much with the uprising Nazi regime, before being black-listed by the paranoid Americans as a Communist whilst in the US. Lang also found the Hollywood studio system difficult to work in; it often cramped his creativeness and restricted his expressionistic talents.
Lang had once said: "I should say that I was a visual person. I experience with my eyes and never, or rarely, with my ears...to my constant regret'. Nobody can argue that Lang was an extraordinarily talented visual film-maker, but dispite this comment, there was more to Lang than just that. Only a handful of directors (Hitchcock amongst them) were ever successful in transferring from the silent era to sound, and Lang was one of those. 'Metropolis' has inspired the look of futuristic movies for generations, whilst 'M' helped established the way in which sound is used in film to this very day.