Lang’s Dr. Mabuse: Reviewed

Dr. Mabuse the Gambler / Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (dir. Fritz Lang, 1922, Germany). Starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Alfred Abel, Aud Egede-Nissen, Gertrude Welcker, and Bernhard Goetzke.

by Nathan Gilmore

Some movies are great because they illuminate the human experience in ways that seem startlingly familiar, universal. We see ourselves in them, for better or for worse. Some are great because they stretch the limits of cinematography in ways that we are unaccustomed to seeing, expanding the boundaries of the technically possible.

Dr. Mabuse the Gambler is neither of those. The first in a trilogy chronicling the titular Mabuse’s life of villainy, the film is significant in its primeval power—a forerunner to the more sophisticated films to come, from Lang himself and the other directors in general.

The film is about one man, one-dimensional, inhabiting a world where people are merely targets for his villainy. The episodic plot follows the exploits of Dr. Mabuse, a man of many talents, appearing as many things: physician, gambler, hypnotist—a kind of early supervillain. Through his strange powers, and with the help of several henchmen, he builds a fortune through cheating at gambling.

The plot has no concrete narrative structure. Instead, the story is presented as a series of vignettes depicting Dr. Mabuse’s exploits. You notice the very primitive feel of the cinematography. Mabuse is only five years older than Metropolis, but it feels much older, with its stylized over-emoted acting of Expressionism, with none of his later film’s plot or characterization. The jerky motion of the 24 frame-per-second rate, and of course, the lack of synchronized soundtrack contributes to that, but even more so, the subject matter could not be more different.

Of course, Metropolis is based in the future—Mabuse takes place in the time of its making. Its plot is rudimentary, characterization done in the broadest strokes, where Metropolis features a range of characters with unique motivations and attitudes.

Mabuse is a mesmerist: his powers of hypnotism drive the plot and move the action. Mesmerism seems to be a sort of catch-all: its specific effects are vague, which effectively builds suspense—a mesmerist is capable of almost anything. Mabuse is also a master of disguise. He appears here as a powerful magnate, there as an old man.

Mabuse frequents the underworld of an unnamed city filled with nightclubs and bars. His assistant Spoerri is addicted to cocaine—shocking to see in a movie of this period.

Among other things, Mabuse runs a money-counterfeiting operation. He plots to defraud the stock exchange by stealing a trade agreement. At the stock exchange we see an interesting bit of anti-Jew wisecracking crop up, exploiting the old racist trope of Jews as swindlers. Because Mabuse stole the trade agreement, the market plunges, and Mabuse takes advantage of the crash to make a huge profit. It’s also interesting to see what we think of as a very modern “white collar” crime this early in movie-making.

Mabuse’s powers include being able to induce headaches from across the room. He uses his powers of suggestion and hypnosis to convince Mr. Hull, a scion of a millionaire industrialist, to gamble at cards with him. Mabuse cheats with hypnotism and takes Hull’s money. Hull is so thoroughly under Mabuse’s spell that he refuses to stop, even at the urging of the club’s management.

A rash of gambling fraud appears throughout the city—not from one suspect, but dozens: “a young gent, a blond American, a dark haired Russian.” A policeman named Von Wenk investigates. Meanwhile, Mabuse continues his other nefarious deeds, experimenting with poison, and accosting young women.

Mabuse continues frequenting the gambling clubs, hypnotizing his opponents. Hull uses his own disguise now, trying to catch Mabuse cheating.

After a disgruntled opponent physically attacks Mabuse, he flees the club back to his hotel. He now takes the  guise of a Dutch professor.

Next, Mabuse attends a seance where he becomes infatuated with a Countess. In order to drive a wedge between her and her husband, Mabuse telepathically causes him to cheat at cards. The Count’s guests are enraged by his cheating, and in the ensuing fight Mabuse spirits the Countess away to his fortress.

Mabuse is triumphant: “Only now shall the world learn who I am…a titan who jumbles up laws and gods like withered leaves!”

Von Wenk suspects that an external, suggestive will is at work and that a hypnotist named “Sandor Weltemann” may be behind it—none other than Dr. Mabuse in yet another disguise. He uses the pretense of a magic show to hypnotize Von Wenk into driving his car off a cliff. His men  intervene and Von Wenk comes to his senses and attacks Mabuse’s fortress.

In the final stand, Mabuse’s henchmen are killed and the Countess is rescued. Mabuse flees into the sewers (reminiscent of the catacombs of Metropolis) and, tormented by his misdeeds, hallucinates the ghosts of his victims. Spoerri, under interrogation, gives the police a key to Mabuse’s hideout. They capture the now-insane Mabuse and lead him away.

Mabuse the Gambler was well-received, despite its length and lack of plot. Moviegoers saw in it a portrait of contemporary Germany, with its depiction of corruption in high places and sinister forces in the lower parts of society. Lang was aware of the brewing political turmoil in Germany, or was uncannily prescient:  early reviews hailed the film as “a mirror of its age” and “a document of our time.”

It’s a far lesser film than Lang’s masterpiece, Metropolis. The stunted character development with their rudimentary personalities and slow pacing make it a challenge to digest. But Mabuse merits watching simply for its early exploration of themes that would inform and animate Lang’s better films. If Metropolis is a masterpiece of Science Fiction, Mabuse is a historical document, in which the evolution of imaginative filmmaking is preserved.

***

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (dir. Fritz Lang, 1933, Germany). Starring Otto Wernicke, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Gustav Diessel, and Wera Liessem.

by Samuel J. Stephens

The horror wrapped inside this 1933 crime drama is the name of Dr. Mabuse (Mah-boos-ah), a genius in the criminal underworld. Mabuse is not interested in personal gain—he is an ideological madman perpetuating crime in order to destroy society.

Fritz Lang’s film is indeed a “crime film,” a combination of police thriller and horror, and a warning about the rising political power in Germany in those days. The plot follows Inspector Lohmann, as he tries to make sense of fragmentary clues around a series of crimes, all leading to the mysterious name of Mabuse. Tom, one of the criminals employed in Mabuse’s organization, hopes to make a fresh start of things with his girlfriend, Lily. Tom goes to confront Mabuse, only to pull open the curtain, revealing nobody.

The spirit of Mabuse fills the film, making its way into every aspect of the characters' lives, from the unlucky Tom, to Dr. Baum who is consumed with Mabuse’s thoughts. Mabuse cannot speak, but given pen and paper, the silent madman begins writing. His scrawlings are incomprehensible but, Baum insists, ultimately logical. He is very insistent indeed that Mabuse is the personification of logic, increasingly obsessed with the madman’s scribblings. Baum is the personification of science seduced by ideology. The other madman lurking in the film is Hitler, and Nazism, whose words explain the “logic” of Mabuse’s punishment on the world: 

“...A state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon tainted ideals of a world doomed to annihilation. When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the reign of crime.”

Mabuse communicates these words to Baum in the most terrifying scene in the film. Baum is the head physician at the asylum where Mabuse is housed. He is also a lecturer for medical students. In a scene of exposition, he tells his students the history of Mabuse’s imprisonment: it seems the criminal escaped the death penalty when it became clear he was insane.

We are told that Mabuse, in his original confrontation with police, locked in a house and refusing to submit, declared “I am the state!”

The camera pans around the auditorium on the faces of the students, some in the rafters, fully engaged in the subject. Many are spectacled, wearing well-coiffed or frumpy suits, or high-necked sweaters. It is as though Lang, about to depart Germany, is saying watch out, these students are being hypnotized by a madman.

Michael Farin, a German scholar of Lang, characterizes the source material, the novel by Norbert Jacques, that embodied the zeitgeist after the First World War:

“Two things are very important for Jacques and the Mabuse character. On the one hand the concept of the philosophical superman in the tradition of Nietszche [...] The aftermath of WWI...meant the absolute destruction of any value system that may have existed. And in this destruction lay, of course, something unique: the rebirth of this tremendous will to live [...] I think the Mabuse character worked so well because it reflected so perfectly the period and its longings, this desire to possess the world.”

Baum’s projector shows to the students a picture of Mabuse (played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge) , the first time we see him in the film. White-haired, pale, sharp-featured, he slumps forward on a hospital bed, head hanging low, eyes wide-open. “He retreated into his ego,” says Baum. Except to a few it is not yet known that Mabuse drives all aspects of the underworld with his telepathic powers. 

The score by Hans Erdmann (who scored 1922’s Nosferatu) is used sparingly, and Lang is interested in using natural and machine sounds, especially in the opening scene where a furnace hammer drowns out the words of two criminals as a lone policeman spies on them. The sound for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was done by Adolf Jansen and Conrad von Molo, who was also the film’s editor.

Although film noir has roots in German Expressionist films such as those by Lang, Testament is not what I think of as traditional noir. Britannica.com defines film noir as being “characterized by such elements as cynical heroes, stark lighting effects, frequent use of flashbacks, intricate plots, and an underlying existentialist philosophy.” Ingrid Bergman’s face in Casablanca draped in the shadow of her wide-brimmed hat is a famous example. The shadows in the restored Testament cling to corners, likely finely etched charcoal drawings. Shadows are prominent, but they do not stretch out. I think especially of the striking opening shot, slowly panning around a basement with its various accoutrements. It’s astonishing how much detail is captured by the camerawork. Objects and backgrounds are focused with purpose: brick-backed basements, police offices, dingy apartment, and sterile asylum.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse reintroduces Commissioner Lohmann, the police captain, one of Lang’s characters from M. Played by Otto Wernicke, Lohmann is an affable, gregarious man. He’s annoyed by an interrupting phone call, making him late to the opera. Although the film builds up his reputation, it’s not entirely certain Lohmann is any kind of Holmesian-level genius. He wonders aloud a lot, sees oddities and calls them odd, and stumbles upon the answers. He is at least partly a comic figure but not incompetent. When a crew of criminals are holed up in a shootout with police outside the door, he offers “if you’ll be reasonable, we’ll be reasonable.” What makes Lohmann interesting as a character is his way with people. He’s cajoling, even accommodating. He knows when to sympathize with the criminal, and how to entrap them in their own lies.

The acting is uniformly excellent—nobody gives a bad performance, and all the side characters fit their roles beautifully. Lohmann’s police station secretary Müller, played by Klaus Pohl, shuffles around, working overtime for his demanding and somewhat slobbish boss.

What fascinated me about this film was how familiar it felt, not only in plot, but in the everyday characters it depicts. The film is in German, but none of the expressions are different than in other noir or action films of any decade. This genre is wonderfully entrenched, and therefore recognizable.

The film contains one weak scene. David Kalat, a Lang historian, says that the concluding car chase was for a long time “the one to beat” in all of cinema. The chase scene features some fascinating edits: as the pursued criminal drives faster, the camera looks up at the trees, which are framed so that trees on the left of the driver appear on the right of the screen, and vice versa. A wonderful effect to enhance the psychological descent into madness. Unfortunately, this is marred by cuts to our heroes in pursuit and, for some reason, these scenes are sped up in the manner of old silent films—Lohmann and Tom zip and pop around like cartoon characters. Kalat’s commentary offers no history or speculation on this point. This sequence, although not brief, is forgivable considering how strong the film is in regards to pacing, plot, characters and dialogue (funny and insightful and tragic), and the title character—a figure who haunts and terrifies the eyes. Strongly recommended.

Endnotes: My Resources.

For this review I watched The Testament of Dr. Mabuse on the Criterion Channel’s website, which is the restored German version of the film, as well as the extras: “Commentary: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” feat. Fritz Lang historian David Kalat; “Mabuse In Mind” with actor Rudolf Schündler; “Michael Farin on The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” a social history of the novels and films; “Fritz Lang on Mabuse”, and “The Three Faces of Dr. Mabuse” with Kalat discussing three versions of the film, including a French version with French actors in many roles. I referenced the Internet Movie Database page for details on cast, crew, etc. I also use Britannica.com’s definition for Film Noir.