Influenced by artists, authors and theorists, (Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Caspar David Friedrich, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud), Fritz Lang, born in Vienna in 1890, had aspirations to be an artist. However, that did not bode well with his father, and so he enlisted in the Austrian Army during WWI. In 1916, he was severely wounded, and two years later he was sent home, shell-shocked. After his military career, he returned to art, but in a different form. 
Lang began directing films in 1919, the first of which was Halbblut (The Half-Breed), which unfortunately “has been lost due to neglect and nitrate decomposition” (Dixon & Foster, pg 81). With Die Spinnen (The Spiders, 1919), he was finding his style, but sticking with the safe action-adventure genre of the period. It would not be until1921 and the allegorical film, Die Müde Tod (Destiny) that he would start to break away from the mainstream. This film began Lang’s groundbreaking work in exploring entirely new genres, such as the idea of the “super-criminal” in Doktor Mabuse, Der Spieler (Dr Mabuse, the Gambler, 1922) and the “psycho-killer” in M (1931), his first sound film. Of course, Lang’s sci-fi masterpiece, Metropolis, which has been called the last of the German expressionist films, is one of his most influential, with homages and inspirations of that film showing up in everything from Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) to Star Wars (Gerorge Lucas, 1977) to Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982). He has also been credited with influencing the work of directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel and Orson Welles.
In 1933, after finishing Das Testament des Doktor Mabuse (The Last Will of Dr Mabuse), he was called in to talk with Reichsminister Dr. Joseph Goebbels, and was simultaneously offered the position of studio head of the new Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA) production company and told that the film he had just completed would be pulled from circulation, due to its “subversive content” (Dixon & Foster, pg. 83). This was thanks to his then-wife and Nazi sympathizer Thea Von Harbou (screenwriter on Destiny, Metropolis and M), who turned him in. With the Nazi’s newfound interest in him, Lang left everything behind and fled the country (according to Lang, that very day), citing, in part, his own Jewish heritage (on his mother’s side). Not surprisingly, Von Harbou remained in Berlin, divorcing Lang and becoming a “screenwriter and… director in service to Hitler’s Germany” (Dixon & Foster, pg 83).
After a brief detour in France, Lang moved on to Hollywood, and seemed to move out of his more melancholic period. In America, his films (for MGM) became slightly more optimistic and less mythical, centering on characters that the viewer could relate to and attracting such star power as Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Bennett, Barbara Stanwyck, Tyrone Power, and Edward G. Robinson. In Hollywood he explored countless genres, including some, such as film noir, westerns, and musicals, which were new to his repertoire. But his departure from Hollywood was a bitter one, with his last two American films serving as political statements against the establishment.
Lang returned to Germany and his Nietzsche-esque style in 1958, once the Nazi threat was over, though he was never quite the same. His last film was Die Tausand Augen von Doktor Mabuse (The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse, 1960). In 1976, he planned to make a film about the hippie culture, but, sadly that plan never came to fruition. Lang died in 1976 in Beverly Hills, leaving behind a legacy in film that is impossible to dismiss.
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| Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou |
Sources:
Dixon, Wheeler Winston, and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. A Short History of Film. Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick NJ, 2008. Print.
