 |
Divine
|
 |
Magic
|
 |
Destiny
|
Year: 1921
Director: Fritz Lang
Format: Blu-ray
Label: Masters of Cinema
Notes: An early Fritz Lang film that impresses with it's expressionistic beauty and technical achievements but, to me at least, falls a bit short of being a masterpiece.
The portrayal of Death incarnate has obviously been influential but my favourite thing about this character was Lang initially suggesting his malevolence only to later reveal he was actually serving a holy and necessary service. I don't know what Lang's religious views were but DER MÜDE TOD seems a devout film.
The framing device of bargaining with death allows three separate stories of futility to be told. This clearly mimics the structure of D. W. Griffith's 1916 film INTOLERANCE, although the earlier film used interleaved stories instead of the serial verse format used by Lang. Perhaps the relative brevity of DER MÜDE TOD made parallelism unnecessary. Looking forward, it was no surprise to read that Douglas Fairbanks wanted the flying carpet effect used here for his 1924 film THE THIEF OF BAGDAD. It remains an impressive achievement.
This is a good film that is visually stunning in places but ultimately pales compared to Lang's later fantasy masterpiece DIE NIBELUNGEN.
Comments
Post a Comment