231 The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

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Alonzo the Armless
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#26 Post by Alonzo the Armless » Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:43 am

HerrSchreck wrote:
Alonzo the Armless wrote:I'm guessing most people who watch this today see it as an art film, but I'd love to know how it was perceived when it forst came out. Was it seen as an exciting action film with moments of terror,...
It was seen as a Fritz Lang film, which was a globally recognized genre (and product) back then even more than it is today. He is a global legend today, but he was a global celebrity back then, a household name the way any blockbuster director is today... as well as being a living legend.
Thanks for that info. The only director I can think with that kind of status today might be Spielberg. Audiences back then sure had better taste.

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lubitsch
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#27 Post by lubitsch » Wed Jan 04, 2006 5:48 pm

HerrSchreck wrote: From THE SPIDERS all the way thru to the end, you can never go wrong with a Fritz Lang film (except for some of the US stuff i e WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS which, interestingly was one of his more successful films). I still watch my copy of the SPIDERS regularly... do NOT miss HANGMEN ALSO DIE (Lang & Berthold Brecht & James Wong Howe an de kamera... paranoiac heaven!)... and DEFINITELY do not miss (before supply dries up because Fantoma lists this set as discontinued, I hear) the truly sublime INDIAN TOMB 2 dvd set / KirchMedia restoration, bringing the complete film to the US for the first time in history. This film, on my MultiVideo Labs 900+ line monitor, is the absolute best color image I've ever seen a DVD produce. It is just stunning, and it is a full-blown, two-part Lang heroic epic in the true tradition of his silent NIBELUNGEN/SPINNEN. WOnderful that Germany gave him such a beautiful project upon his return back home, whereby he acquired the control he was used to enjoying back in his glory days w Pommer & Nebenzal.
He didn't acquire control over anything. Lang was disappointed with the German postwar film industry and the people, hated the conditions and was only offered sure fire remakes of old classics. He gave up after making two films and dismissed later his Indian epic as large scale silliness and rightly so. Lang was pretty much tired by the mid 50s and his return to Germany was a far less successful one than e.g. Siodmak's or Odwald's.
The bad joke is that his films are among the extremely few available and known German ones in the time span from 1945 to 1965 outside of Germany while far superior films by directors like Käutner, Staudte and others are virtually unknown.
Lang is a memorable visual director but a rather debatable one if you have to deal with stories and actors, both areas in which he wasn't always successful.

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tryavna
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#28 Post by tryavna » Wed Jan 04, 2006 6:05 pm

lubitsch wrote:He gave up after making two films and dismissed later his Indian epic as large scale silliness and rightly so. Lang was pretty much tired by the mid 50s.
Lang is a memorable visual director but a rather debatable one if you have to deal with stories and actors, both areas in which he wasn't always successful.
I agree in large part with you except for two points:

1.) Lang, like Ford, was a notoriously unreliable source of information and evaluation of his own work. So we have to be careful automatically agreeing with his dismissals of some of his own films.

2.) While Lang's ill health was probably a factor in the decline of his output (both quantity and quality), he was still a solid craftsman. I think his 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is an excellent thriller, and for all its laughable special effects, his "Indian Epic" is still a lot of fun -- and quite powerful and creepy in places.

I've never known exactly what to think of Lang's treatment of his actors or some of the clunky storytelling in even his most famous films (Metropolis being the most obvious example). But then again, there are a lot of directors we tend to excuse for these same shortcomings.

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#29 Post by djali999 » Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:17 pm

I think there's also a huge cultural blindspot in regards to Lorre in M. We're so used to him showing up and doing the "Peter Lorre thing" that we forget that his performance in M had to come from somewhere. Although we know Lang and Lorre didn't get along, given how deeply Lorre's performance in M is seeped in Langian symbols and gestures and how integrated into the entire artistic piece it is, I have to conclude that he was directed to that place by Lang. It's one of film's great performances. A poor director of actors wouldn't have gotten it.

I think a key example here also is Tracy in Fury. He'd never acted that way before, and if he had, I haven't seen the picture yet (I am not a bottomless fount of knowledge, sadly). I defy anybody who has seen the picture to be able to shake his monologe when he returns from the dead. That didn't come out of thin air.

I also think that there's a general disinterest in Lang as an actor's director due to his most infamous work and, let's face it, most of our first exposure to him being Metropolis. It's a film that plays out on a hysterical level, and the actors behave accordingly. Even in this context they're played right over the top, and I think a lot of these opinions about the value of Lang as an acting director are residue of our modern distaste for this kind of stylization.

I don't mean to make assumptions and perhaps I'm mistaking the exceptions as the indicators here, but that's what I suspect is going on whenever I hear about Lang being "only visually interesting."

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#30 Post by tryavna » Thu Jan 05, 2006 1:20 am

I just wanted to clarify that I wasn't saying that Lang was a poor director of actors in any aesthetic sense. Rather, what I meant by his "treatment of his actors" and what I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that Lubitsch was referring to was Lang's infamous ill treatment of actors in general. You know, the sort of stuff that Bogdanovich himself has serious ethical reservations with in his commentary tracks -- Lang's whole tyrannical posturing that alienated more than just big bad producers.

No, I think Lang could and did elicit superb performances from some of his actors. Just watch Clash by Night again. Or any of the Edward G. Robinson's performances in his films for Lang. On the other hand, it's obvious some actors and actresses simply did not respond to his style. Stewart Granger, for example, who was nobody's idea of a model thespian, seems to be going through the paces even more than usual in Moonfleet.

I absolutely adore Lang's films -- even the weaker ones -- so I didn't want my earlier post to be viewed as a case of damning Lang with faint praise. Though I think we ought to admit when one of his films is genuinely weak, as in Moonfleet, or has a serious flaw, as in the script for Metropolis.

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HerrSchreck
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#31 Post by HerrSchreck » Fri Jan 06, 2006 4:25 am

lubitsch wrote:
HerrSchreck wrote: INDIAN TOMB 2 dvd set / KirchMedia restoration, bringing the complete film to the US for the first time in history. This film, on my MultiVideo Labs 900+ line monitor, is the absolute best color image I've ever seen a DVD produce. It is just stunning, and it is a full-blown, two-part Lang heroic epic in the true tradition of his silent NIBELUNGEN/SPINNEN. WOnderful that Germany gave him such a beautiful project upon his return back home, whereby he acquired the control he was used to enjoying back in his glory days w Pommer & Nebenzal.
He didn't acquire control over anything. Lang was disappointed with the German postwar film industry and the people, hated the conditions and .

Wow... I just caught this one. You just came barreling in shot out of a cannon...

He didn't acquire control over anything? Wow-- here I was thinking all this time that Lang directed this film. Who was the director, then? Lit those scenes, moved the actors around, you know... did that really nice looking very fun to watch epic film?

Lube, Lang was disappointed with everyone everywhere... was his own worst enemy, created horrible working conditions for himself due to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. You're entititled to your (ahem, unique) opinion of course-- but the general revised critical opinion is this film marked a return to the kinds of film, the scale of filmmaking, that marked his hi-control silent years.

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lubitsch
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#32 Post by lubitsch » Fri Jan 06, 2006 6:36 am

HerrSchreck wrote: Lube, Lang was disappointed with everyone everywhere... was his own worst enemy, created horrible working conditions for himself due to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. You're entititled to your (ahem, unique) opinion of course-- but the general revised critical opinion is this film marked a return to the kinds of film, the scale of filmmaking, that marked his hi-control silent years.
Whose general revised opinion? Frankly if I read the posts in this thread I'm more than mildly amused. The last posters give in to such a funny auteurism ... oh boy one would think that's gone since the ridiculous days of the nouvelle vague critics who picked their auteurs and then stated that every film by an auteur is a great affair.
First it should be bloody obvious that Lang had varying degrees of control in USA and it's silly to try to elevate completely routine works like e.g. his two Fox westerns through his auteur status. Lang couldn't write screenplays, the ones he did in his beginnings are wildly melodramatic trash see THE SPIDERS or other early scripts. He was interested in creating pictures and composing effective scenes, that's the main point. His major and favored plot point was the lone man crushed by destiny or circumstances and the stories he filmed about this theme could be completely hollow, trivial stories like Harbou's scripts or very good ones. But it's often hilarious to read how critics consider every film an auteurs work. The flatly lit and completely unimaginative last two films WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS and BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT show a very tired director of two low budget productions with mediocre acting all around which generates no interest in the story. The solution of one French critic was to call this films not films noirs but films gris (grey films) in order to find a good term for the development of the beloved auteur.
Regarding his Indian films I strongly suggest that you also consider the versions of 1921 and 1937 as equal masterpieces, they are no better or worse. the screenwriter and the actors all felt that the film was outmoded stuff as did all reasonable critics who didn't try to consider it as expressions of an auteur. Brauner has made many of such large scale epics which are equally silly or good. It's a trashy story with exotic cliches (snakes, statues and ritual dances, sinister Asians, the love of an European to an exotic women and so on), wooden actors, a wildly melodramatic plot and stereotyped characters. The one mildly interesting point are a few effective scenes like the lepers in the cave.
If there wouldn't be the name of Lang and Brauner had chosen another director like e.g. Dieterle who also remade another originally silent epic for him, you would never rave about the film. But that's what happens if your only view of films is the simple way of auteurism.

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HerrSchreck
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#33 Post by HerrSchreck » Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:08 am

lubitsch wrote:
HerrSchreck wrote: Lube, Lang was disappointed with everyone everywhere... was his own worst enemy, created horrible working conditions for himself due to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. You're entititled to your (ahem, unique) opinion of course-- but the general revised critical opinion is this film marked a return to the kinds of film, the scale of filmmaking, that marked his hi-control silent years.
Whose general revised opinion? Frankly if I read the posts in this thread I'm more than mildly amused. The last posters give in to such a funny auteurism ... oh boy one would think that's gone since the ridiculous days of the nouvelle vague critics who picked their auteurs and then stated that every film by an auteur is a great affair.
First it should be bloody obvious that Lang had varying degrees of control in USA and it's silly to try to elevate completely routine works like e.g. his two Fox westerns through his auteur status. Lang couldn't write screenplays, the ones he did in his beginnings are wildly melodramatic trash see THE SPIDERS or other early scripts. He was interested in creating pictures and composing effective scenes, that's the main point. His major and favored plot point was the lone man crushed by destiny or circumstances and the stories he filmed about this theme could be completely hollow, trivial stories like Harbou's scripts or very good ones. But it's often hilarious to read how critics consider every film an auteurs work. The flatly lit and completely unimaginative last two films WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS and BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT show a very tired director of two low budget productions with mediocre acting all around which generates no interest in the story. The solution of one French critic was to call this films not films noirs but films gris (grey films) in order to find a good term for the development of the beloved auteur.
Regarding his Indian films I strongly suggest that you also consider the versions of 1921 and 1937 as equal masterpieces, they are no better or worse. the screenwriter and the actors all felt that the film was outmoded stuff as did all reasonable critics who didn't try to consider it as expressions of an auteur. Brauner has made many of such large scale epics which are equally silly or good. It's a trashy story with exotic cliches (snakes, statues and ritual dances, sinister Asians, the love of an European to an exotic women and so on), wooden actors, a wildly melodramatic plot and stereotyped characters. The one mildly interesting point are a few effective scenes like the lepers in the cave.
If there wouldn't be the name of Lang and Brauner had chosen another director like e.g. Dieterle who also remade another originally silent epic for him, you would never rave about the film. But that's what happens if your only view of films is the simple way of auteurism.
What crawled up your ass & died? You're out of control and furious about something I'm not actually interested in identifying. I never said DAS INDISCHE GRABMAL was a masterpiece-- I said it was a lot of fun & gorgeous to look at.

There are some gals & gents who think I totter in the realm of extreme posts once every here & there... but even my most nuclear ideological opponents come to my defense because I am careful about neutralizing the offense of my points by prefacing statements with "In my opinion this film is _______," and "There is absolutely nothing wrong with your liking/disliking ______".
I happen to absolutely fucking LOVE SPIDERS... I own it, I own the Joe May INDIAN TOMB as well as the Lang.

You come on with these supersonic jolts saying

"are wildly melodramatic trash see THE SPIDERS or other early scripts"

Well guess what? I love the SPIDERS. I adore DER MUDE TOD. So you just directly said I like trash. I find that pretty fucking tedius. That's the kind of sophomoric lack of worldliness that sucks the fucking exquisite fun right out of a high stakes intellectual argument (and believe me, I'm chomping at the bit but hold back because I can forsee the result)-- like OOPS, WRONG ROOM, BYE NOW. Who wants to discuss intangibles with someone genuinely fucking furious before the exchange begins?

Outa here.

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Lino
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#34 Post by Lino » Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:13 am

HerrSchreck wrote:Outa here.
You will not be missed.

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HerrSchreck
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#35 Post by HerrSchreck » Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:44 am

Annie Mall wrote:
HerrSchreck wrote:Outa here.
You will not be missed.
Ahh Tra--, I uh mean Annie... The opportunities are such a roaring tidal flood it woouldn't be fair. Cottage industry what?

And what in god's name, may I ask, did ever do to you?

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Lino
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#36 Post by Lino » Fri Jan 06, 2006 7:52 am

hint: Val Lewton thread. Not that I am holding any grudge...but please stop with the swearing and attacking and bitching. Is old age such a bad place to be? I sure hope I don't turn out this bitter.

The thing is, you seem to have such an enormous background of information and first-hand knowledge of things and this is invaluable stuff for me and others that are threading the same path you did years back. But you just don't accept any opinions that seem to be contrary to yours and that is not a healthy conversation principle.

I would love to hear what you have to say about lots of other things currently in discussion on this forum if only you start to back off your guard a little bit. Please say you will consider this, ok?

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HerrSchreck
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#37 Post by HerrSchreck » Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:17 am

Annie Mall wrote:hint: Val Lewton thread. Not that I am holding any grudge...but please stop with the swearing and attacking and bitching. Is old age such a bad place to be? I sure hope I don't turn out this bitter.

The thing is, you seem to have such an enormous background of information and first-hand knowledge of things and this is invaluable stuff for me and others that are threading the same path you did years back. But you just don't accept any opinions that seem to be contrary to yours and that is not a healthy conversation principle.

I would love to hear what you have to say about lots of other things currently in discussion on this forum if only you start to back off your guard a little bit. Please say you will consider this, ok?
How old do you think I am?

I'm 38. Is that that old?

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Lino
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#38 Post by Lino » Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:24 am

I'm 31. No, 38 is not THAT old. Maybe I'm confusing you with David Frankenstein, oh, sorry, Ehrenstein...

Anyway, back to Fritz Lang, boys! Class is not dismissed yet!

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tryavna
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#39 Post by tryavna » Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:47 pm

lubitsch wrote:The last posters give in to such a funny auteurism.
Not sure if this slam is directed at me or not. I thought I was distancing myself somewhat from hard-core auteurism by admitting both that Lang's later career does indeed show a falling-off of productivity (probably due as much to his ill health as to his irascibility) and that we ought to acknowledge those serious shortcomings in his work that do exist. At the same time, however, Lang is one of those directors for whom the auteur theory was created -- hence it fits him very well. That means that if you like his kind of movies, then each one has something interesting to offer. It's just like Hitchcock. Neither director made a truly unwatchable movie (except maybe for Hitch's Paradine Case) simply because both men were too good as craftsmen for that to happen.

Maybe "craftsman" is a less loaded term than "auteur"? I don't know. But I do know that I've derived a great deal of pleasure from all the all the movies directed by Lang that I've seen. I honestly can't say the same for most other "auteurs": there are a few entries in the canons of Hitchcock, Ford, et al that bore me. Maybe I'm just on Lang's same wavelength. But I never held up his "Indian Epic" as some sort of neglected masterpiece. In my opinion, it's just good trashy fun when viewed from the proper perspective.

Wow! When the days come that you're accused of being a snob (i.e., an "auteurist") for liking a guilty pleasure every now and then....

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#40 Post by Lino » Sat Jan 07, 2006 4:35 am

I haven't got a single thing against older people (you should know that) but there is one thing I'm totally against: offending people in a nasty and vicious way.

Back to Lang and Mabuse now...

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ben d banana
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#41 Post by ben d banana » Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:08 pm

With all due respect to Schreck and David, and as someone who enjoys Lang, and even as a kid tended to care more about who made a film rather than risking following stars or whatever, I'm all for Lubitsch stating his rather unpopular opinion. He feels he's had a rather bullshit theory shoved down his and everyone's throat for decades and he isn't going to take it anymore. I'd much rather read a heated debate between you folks, on a subject I enjoy, than listen to people whinge over a release schedule that doesn't include every film they've been told to love.

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Gregory
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#42 Post by Gregory » Sat Jan 07, 2006 9:30 pm

There is certainly a place for critiques of auteurism. I certainly agree with some such critiques. However, it's not the existence of such critiques that is objectionable, it is the particular nature of them, what they contain and how they are expressed that is at issue here.
Board member Lubitsch* is on to some good ideas but goes way off-course in my opinion when suggesting that an auteur who consistently explores similar themes, techniques etc. within different stories and contexts (e.g. Ozu) is essentially just engaging in repetition ad nauseam. I also disagree that all the forms of auteurist theory espoused on this forum can or should be conflated with those of Truffaut ("The worst film by Hitchcock is better than the best of Huston") or anyone else in the Cahiers school, necessarily. There are subtler shades of auteurism and they deserve fair consideration. I won't launch into any further criticism of these statements because this is a thread on Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Perhaps a separate thread on this issue would keep this from popping up in other threads and would be more fruitful.

*Below I'm mainly referring to Lubitsch's statements in The Heiress thread, not just this one.

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tryavna
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#43 Post by tryavna » Sun Jan 08, 2006 2:10 am

Gregory wrote:I also disagree that all the forms of auteurist theory espoused on this forum can or should be conflated with those of Truffaut ("The worst film by Hitchcock is better than the best of Huston") or anyone else in the Cahiers school, necessarily. There are subtler shades of auteurism and they deserve fair consideration.
Perhaps a separate thread on this issue would keep this from popping up in other threads and would be more fruitful.
I agree with both of these very sensible statements. Obviously, the question of the "auteur" is going to come up again and again in this forum due to the nature of Criterion's typical releases and the interests of many who post here. So it's a subject that ought to be approached in an intelligent and conversational way, especially as many of us (myself included) are still attempting to negotiate exactly what usefulness auteur theory offers to current film criticism/appreciation.

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HerrSchreck
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#44 Post by HerrSchreck » Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:22 am

ben d banana wrote:With all due respect to Schreck and David, and as someone who enjoys Lang, and even as a kid tended to care more about who made a film rather than risking following stars or whatever, I'm all for Lubitsch stating his rather unpopular opinion. He feels he's had a rather bullshit theory shoved down his and everyone's throat for decades and he isn't going to take it anymore. I'd much rather read a heated debate between you folks, on a subject I enjoy, than listen to people whinge over a release schedule that doesn't include every film they've been told to love.
This basically going to be a variation on David's statement, but I have to say it:

Look. We all feel very strongly about film, otherwise we wouldn't be expending the calories typing & typing & typing about them. I have no problem debating anything with anybody anytime. I don't mind having my points dissected. But who wants to exchange ideas with a raging, humorless, brick wall, who doesn't even throw a little humor into such fierceness, who makes you feel like she wants to personally come & scratch the shit out of you for your appreciation of DIE SPINNE? I want to exchange ideas, now matter how heated, with someone whose replies will be at least somewhat unpredictable.

There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Lang tended to repeat himself over and over again. All the veneers of reality being peeled away to reveal the paranoiac truth behind the reassuring facade, the endlessly repeated wise old man/professor/recluse/druggist, stooped & shuffling aroound cramped, dark & musty quarters & forever solving the obscure clue that confounds the protagonist (the Chinese key in Spiders, the druggist in Destiny, provides the translation to Mia May in The (orignal, Lang-0scripted) Indian Tomb, old Manfeldt in Frau Im Mond, Rotwang in Metropolis, the list can go on & on).

What I think is an utter wheel-spinner, even if I didn't admire Fantoma's/KirchMedia's restoration disc-- and greatly enjoy the innocent fun and beautiful photography & mise-en-scene (remind's me of the mneticulousness of the Kobayashi of KWAIDAN as well as that of Kubrick in 2001)-- of Langs '59 Indian Tomb, is the proclamation "you wouldn't even be speaking of it if it weren't a Fritz Lang film."

Well, yeah, so what? Even if it were true (which I'm not so sure... I enjoy visual movies a great deal, and all doesn't need to be heart-wrenching super-serious masterpieces like the Passion of Joan of Arc; INd. TOMB '59 might have stuck in my mind as a gorgeous one-shot, even if I knew no other Lang, the same way I swam in the images of Kwaidan, before I'd seen REBELLION & SEPPU) Great directors have their ups & downs-- what's the point of that statement? It was leveled with such a jolt of seeming contempt, as if we were all fools for even picking the discs up in the first place. The statement goes nowhere, though. People have mediocre Hitch, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Lean, Murnau, Dreyer, A. Mann, hell, the list can go on forever. What is the point of calling attention to it? I'm sure Lubitch has heroes-- I'm sure he/she'd love to get his/her hands on Die Puppe, probably has some of the german silent melodramas/costume pitcures Lubitch made, some of which are more pure escapist entertainment than they are head shredding landmarks which blew the parameters of silent film way open. Or ETERNAL LOVE. But why break horns for acquiring them into ones collection & having fun watching them? Some folks are "completists" since many DVD titles are so inexpensive nowadays (single disc Warners, Fox, Universal's, Paramount-- hell I think I paid 11 bucks for that beautiful STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS) one can afford to acquire nearly everything by even the most prolific directors. I know myself that I long to see the forgotten, ho-hum titles just as much as I long to see the masterpieces of certain directors. This is because, though the film in question may be weak, it's instructive to see why, particularly versus his successes: aside from the obvious desire to trace the development of themes & visual ideas, it's interesting to attempt to discern what was it that caused the icon to stumble... was it studio interference? was the interference ex-post-facto "final cut" butchering?... or was it cost cutting or censor-fear or mere mindless overruling one's vision to cater to the perceieved lowesrt common denominator? or was it heavy drinking or sex-prompted blindness on the director's part? a bad script? old age shearing off his edge?

I know myself, and I pointed it out volountarily before Lubitch came barreling in, that there's a bit of Lang that doesn't do much for me personally. No matter who's directing, or when, or with whom-- nostalgia or no-- it's as impossible for me to squeeze enjoyment out of a film which does nothing for me as it is to proclaim an erection with a limp dong.

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#45 Post by viciousliar » Sun Jan 08, 2006 5:15 pm

I'm glad you decided not to leave the forum after all(or become a non-poster), HerrSchreck. Obviously some people would like to believe that "cleverly" disguised put-downs, sugar-coated with references to such and such authorities could pass unnoticed. Some kind of petty "status game." And I'm not trying to fan the flames.

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lubitsch
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#46 Post by lubitsch » Sun Jan 08, 2006 7:05 pm

davidhare wrote:If only Lubitsch had the expressive skills to put it that way I would have happily engaged in a post auteurist thead (which I've started to try out elsewhere. And let's do it, starting with Renoir's later work, for instance.)
As it is I feel like I'm being visited by Martians.
Don't worry I'm neither green nor do I intend to eliminate all auteurists :D.
I admit that I sound quite aggressive, but then again Truffaut and allies were probably even more so, effectively smashing the careers of some directors with their vicious criticism.
Obviously there are directors who are auteurs in the purest sense like Chaplin controlling everything and then you have various diminishing degrees of influence of directors down to to MGM contract directors whose entire job was to say "action" and "cut". Lang's influence is sometimes quite big (excluding the scrpit) and sometimes so limited that then it isn't particularly helpful to talk about a "Fritz Lang film".

The more urgent point is the effect auteurism has on our knowledge of film. If you were canonized an auteur you can bet that every damned film you've turned out will be available for eternity and the Criterion Collection follows this rule focusing to a occasionally dangerous degree. But if you are not an auteur, you're in serious trouble, just search for the films of Julien Duvivier, Wolfgang Staudte or others in USA.
If I'm not entirely wrong the entire output of German films of the 30's on DVD in USA is THE BLUE ANGEL, TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, Lang's two German sound films and a melodrama by Sirk, all works by auteurs who additionally worked in USA. Needless to say that this isn't exactly a good representation.
It's even worse if you deal with 1945-1965. You get on DVD almost only two films by Lang which are really minor works and I could name you three dozen better films from this time, but ... they aren't known auteurs.
So if I argue rather violently against auteuritis, it's because the selection of films for video and DVD production follows the auteur rule, enforces their standing and kills of most of the films which aren't classified this way.

But maybe we really shouldn't hijack this thread about TESTAMENT which by the way is a nice example of the visual director Fritz Lang who films trashy stories. Lang was later able to connect his theme of doomed people with social or psychological aspects which helped the films a lot but one should never forget that he comes from the trashy pulp novel background and his intellectual grasp of stories is at least in Germany nonexistent.

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tryavna
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#47 Post by tryavna » Mon Jan 09, 2006 1:43 am

lubitsch wrote:his intellectual grasp of stories is at least in Germany nonexistent.
Lubitsch, I understand your reservations about auteurism in general, and I think I share some of them -- hence some of my previous posts. But when you write unfounded and reductive generalizations like this, I simply have no idea what you mean or where you're coming from. When I watch Der Mude Tod, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Die Nibelungen, and M, I see before me the work of extremely intelligent and sensitive filmmaker who seems to be in complete control of all the elements that go into making a great movie, not just some vague "visual" flair you keep referring to. The stories -- even in the case of M and Dr. Mabuse -- seem to have much more going on for them than thrills and pulp. And I also see lots of evidence, including some that gets mentioned in the docus on the DVDs of Dr. Mabuse and Metropolis, that Lang was a man who was deeply engaged in the intellectual and artistic movements of his period.

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lubitsch
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#48 Post by lubitsch » Mon Jan 09, 2006 5:40 am

tryavna wrote:
lubitsch wrote:his intellectual grasp of stories is at least in Germany nonexistent.
But when you write unfounded and reductive generalizations like this, I simply have no idea what you mean or where you're coming from. When I watch Der Mude Tod, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Die Nibelungen, and M, I see before me the work of extremely intelligent and sensitive filmmaker who seems to be in complete control of all the elements that go into making a great movie, not just some vague "visual" flair you keep referring to. The stories -- even in the case of M and Dr. Mabuse -- seem to have much more going on for them than thrills and pulp. And I also see lots of evidence, including some that gets mentioned in the docus on the DVDs of Dr. Mabuse and Metropolis, that Lang was a man who was deeply engaged in the intellectual and artistic movements of his period.
DER MÃœDE TOD is a simple legend which is padded with three exotic episodes. It's not such a big affair in the intellectual department, is it? The three stories are basically all the same in their representation of a futile fight against a ruler and it isn't exactly the greatest idea to combine it with the frame story giving the impression that defeat against a tyrant is as inevitable as death himself.
DR.MABUSE is a trashy novel with enough plot complications and hollow characters to keep three films going. To represent the crises and many varying problems of the Weimar republic via a master criminal is probably the silliest imaginable idea, it certainly is an inadequate one.
I know the DIE NIBELUNGEN quite well having just made a presentation about them in a advanced seminar which dealt with the reception of the medieval epic in history. You should be aware that the story is known for
a) its logical ruptures, it's a not modern in characters and so on
b) a violently nationalistic and racist reception.
Lang's or better Harbou's adaptation solves none of the problems, they try to deal with the story problems via a good vs. evil schema which must fail. The less said about the racial aspects the better.
You kindly left out the other silents, especially METROPOLIS is a mindnumbingly dumb film, the hilarious conception of women is always great fun to watch.
With M and sound something different begins though TESTAMENT harks back to the silents. Maybe it's sound, maybe it's a budding awareness of the mounting problems of the time.
But until 1929 Lang's films are NOT intelligent. He shares this trait with other remarkable visual silent directors who were idiots if you deal with the scripts alone. Eisenstein's OCTOBER, Griffith's BIRTH and Gance's NAPOLEON are just the most obvious examples for communist, racist or fascist propaganda. Being a gifted picture maker, doesn't mean at all that you have any intellectual grasp of the world around you It's the same with music, with painting or sculpture. And you shouldn't forget that his films were written by his not overly bright wife and not by Lang himself.
he/she
It's he :D.
hat in the hell he's talking about (eg "trash novels" (as though these were never used in cinema)
Surely they were but you get a serious problem if your film is at the same intellectual level as the trashy story.
And of course a total rejection of auteurism, such as it was/is, and not without good reason, but he/she doesn't really amplify this, and three decades of post auteurism, since the Cahiers, Sarris canon. - plural of canon, by the way.))
Some intellectual debates are nice and well, but the fact is that cinema still seems to be about Hitchcock and Renoir and so on. BTW I never totally rejected auteurism, it's highly useful ... if used with care and not as a way to reduce all problems of creation and evaluation.

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lubitsch
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:20 pm

#49 Post by lubitsch » Mon Jan 09, 2006 5:43 am

tryavna wrote:
lubitsch wrote:his intellectual grasp of stories is at least in Germany nonexistent.
But when you write unfounded and reductive generalizations like this, I simply have no idea what you mean or where you're coming from. When I watch Der Mude Tod, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Die Nibelungen, and M, I see before me the work of extremely intelligent and sensitive filmmaker who seems to be in complete control of all the elements that go into making a great movie, not just some vague "visual" flair you keep referring to. The stories -- even in the case of M and Dr. Mabuse -- seem to have much more going on for them than thrills and pulp. And I also see lots of evidence, including some that gets mentioned in the docus on the DVDs of Dr. Mabuse and Metropolis, that Lang was a man who was deeply engaged in the intellectual and artistic movements of his period.
DER MÃœDE TOD is a simple legend which is padded with three exotic episodes. It's not such a big affair in the intellectual department, is it? The three stories are basically all the same in their representation of a futile fight against a ruler and it isn't exactly the greatest idea to combine it with the frame story giving the impression that defeat against a tyrant is as inevitable as death himself.
DR.MABUSE is a trashy novel with enough plot complications and hollow characters to keep three films going. To represent the crises and many varying problems of the Weimar republic via a master criminal is probably the silliest imaginable idea, it certainly is an inadequate one.
I know the DIE NIBELUNGEN quite well having just made a presentation about them in a advanced seminar which dealt with the reception of the medieval epic in history. You should be aware that the story is known for
a) its logical ruptures, it's a not modern in characters and so on
b) a violently nationalistic and racist reception.
Lang's or better Harbou's adaptation solves none of the problems, they try to deal with the story problems via a good vs. evil schema which must fail. The less said about the racial aspects the better.
You kindly left out the other silents, especially METROPOLIS is a mindnumbingly dumb film, the hilarious conception of women is always great fun to watch.
With M and sound something different begins though TESTAMENT harks back to the silents. Maybe it's sound, maybe it's a budding awareness of the mounting problems of the time.
But until 1929 Lang's films are NOT intelligent. He shares this trait with other remarkable visual silent directors who were idiots if you deal with the scripts alone. Eisenstein's OCTOBER, Griffith's BIRTH and Gance's NAPOLEON are just the most obvious examples for communist, racist or fascist propaganda. Being a gifted picture maker, doesn't mean at all that you have any intellectual grasp of the world around you It's the same with music, with painting or sculpture. And you shouldn't forget that his films were written by his not overly bright wife and not by Lang himself.
he/she
It's he :D. Sorry if the icon causes confusion, it's a German singer and actress Yvonne Catterfeld who has a remarkable similarity to Germany's and France's (and mine) most beloved actress Romy Schneider.
hat in the hell he's talking about (eg "trash novels" (as though these were never used in cinema)
Surely they were but you get a serious problem if your film is at the same intellectual level as the trashy story.
And of course a total rejection of auteurism, such as it was/is, and not without good reason, but he/she doesn't really amplify this, and three decades of post auteurism, since the Cahiers, Sarris canon. - plural of canon, by the way.))
Some intellectual debates are nice and well, but the fact is that cinema still seems to be about Hitchcock and Renoir and so on. BTW I never totally rejected auteurism, it's highly useful ... if used with care and not as a way to reduce all problems of creation and evaluation.

User avatar
HerrSchreck
Joined: Sun Sep 04, 2005 11:46 am

#50 Post by HerrSchreck » Mon Jan 09, 2006 6:14 am

davidhare wrote:Do you think he/she deserves this level of reply until he/she actually elucidates what in the hell he's talking about (eg "trash novels" (as though these were never used in cinema), a blanket statement on the "worthlessness" of various projects, etc; Lang's absence of control - over what? And of course a total rejection of auteurism, such as it was/is, and not without good reason, but he/she doesn't really amplify this, and three decades of post auteurism, since the Cahiers, Sarris canon. - plural of canon, by the way.))

When he/she can talk rationally these things I'm happy to spend more time in this pig-in-the poke.
Thank you Dave. This is what is impossible to converse with. Opinions stated as fact a la "Of course we know (pure opinion strongly stated)" with no explanation whatsoever. For chrissake Lang had no background in trashy novels (!?) or any novels for that matter. Harbou published some spun off of the larger early films, but Lang came out of the military with a background in visual arts/architecture.

And what we're really arguing about is marketing. If a director has multiple, all cylinders turning flat out masterpieces-- and particularly if he made his films in more than one country over a long career-- then he's got a greater chance seeing to bulk of his canon in print. Rights are going to be spread out over the globe, and all these holders will see dollar signs for their 3 or 4 posessions and scramble to put them out on home video-- and by default... wa la: a fully available canon. If a guy has one or two masterpieces, and the rest of his ho-hum canon is buried away in one studio in one country... well yeah, it's difficult to import export. All it takes is one "no" or unreasonable price, and the whole world is deprived of everything. Look at, uh, Universal, with their silent films, all these early Paramounts, Double Indemnity... they don't care. Same w Fox and Sunrise. The whole industry begged-- it took years for them to finally allow a restoration/telecine of the best remaining fine grain... and even then they wouldn't package the fucker up for sale individually. I had to call their PR firm up claiming to be a reviewer to get a solo copy so I wouldn't have to by the other 4 discs & send in the Proof of purchase's (the way they did it at first-- there was no "Classics" box set).

Even so, there's no hard & fast rule. Being an auteur guarentees nothing yet. Where the hell is Josef Von Sternberg in R1 DVD? For that matter-- where the hell is SILENT LUBITCH in R1 DVD? Where the fuck is Ophuls? Naruse? Lupu Pick? Gerhard Lamprecht? Weine? Non-Fox USA Jules Dassin?

And by the way you've got Machden In Uniform, Munchhausen, Titanic, Storm over Mount Blanc, SOS Iceberg, The Blue Light, Olympia, Triumph of the Will (obviously), People On Sunday-- off the top of my head and with no research for 1930 (+ later) non Lang German films.

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