The colossal canvas of Metropolis was a tough act to follow, but Fritz Lang's breathtaking silent thriller manages to match and in some areas top that earlier milestone. Returning to contemporary Weimar without quite abandoning Metropolis' sense of futuristic entrapment, Lang structures Thea von Harbou's pulpy plot around another fate-orchestrating mastermind, Haghi (the casting of Dr. Mabuse himself, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, encourages thematic links), a wheelchair-bound, Lenin-whiskered banker bent on world domination. The one threat to his reign of terror is a government secret agent known as No. 326 (Willy Fritsch), whose repertoire of disguises ranges from scraggly bum to debonair swell -- Haghi aims for the hero's emotional Achilles' heel by sending comely spy Gerda Maurus to neutralize him, not counting on the two falling in love. As always with Lang, there's a geometric scheme to the narrative, manifested not only in the compositional design but also in the parallels drawn between the mutual love of Fritsch and Maurus and the disastrously one-sided romance between a dignified Japanese courier (Lupu Pick) and one of Haghi's minxy vamps (Lien Deyers). Even more audacious is Lang's use of ellipsis, particularly in the opening flurry of images setting stage for secret hideaways, bullets flying through windows, and suicide pills. (One stunner: the getaway to a break-in is summed up by a single, extremely low-angle shot of a grinning biker.) Though the movie's international skullduggery, gadgetry and malefic, shapeshifting Blofeld stand-in have often pegged it as a prototype for the James Bond thrillers, Lang's moral rigor is actually the opposite of that genre's audience-nudging mix of sadistic violence and unfeeling sex -- the emotional complexity leading up to Pick's hara-kiri is precisely what the 007 films trade in for degraded kicks. Cinematography by Fritz Arno Wagner. With Louis Ralph, Hertha von Walther, and Fritz Rasp. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce
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