The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

1933 - Germany
Directed By Fritz Lang


SYNOPSIS

A police investigation of a jewel heist leads them to Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge,) a man who's been mute and locked up in an asylum for a decade... and recently deceased. Is this master of hypnosis somehow controlling a group of thieves from beyond the grave?

MY THOUGHTS

Dynamic visuals and a still-relevant storyline make for an entertaining film.

I went into it expecting a horror film and not a crime film but it doesn't disappoint. The supernatural scenes of the ghostly Mabuse interacting and taking over his doctor are very effectively done and are downright creepy even today 80 years later.
The crime ring elements are on-par with the early Warner Brothers gangster films made at the same time. One scene far exceeds them though... when the bad guys shoot a cop who's figured them out while he's stopped at a traffic light. All the cars at the light drive off... except one.


The film is a sequel to the 1922 film Dr. Mabuse The Gambler, also directed by the legendary Fritz Lang. His last film would also visit Mabuse with 1960's The 1000 Eyes Of Dr. Mabuse. I have not seen either but am now eager to seek them out. This film clearly illustrates his talents as a filmmaker.

Mabuse lacks a central powerful acting performance like Lang's classic M, the film he did immediately prior to this. It does feature Otto Wernicke who played the same character (Inspector Lohmann) is both films. He is great, but the acting from everyone is overly melodramatic (and pales to M in every way) but doesn't detract from the film. It's almost expected in films of this vintage, so close to the silent era.

Visually the film is amazing. With the camera angles and use of shadows, the camerawork is clearly German expressionist. Combined with the subject matter, the film could be viewed as a proto-film noir.


Like Lang's epic Metropolis, Mabuse was heavily truncated and only recently have scholars been able to piece it back together. The Criterion DVD provides the most complete version of the film available.

You can definitely see a parallel with the villains in the film and the rise of Nazism in Germany at the time. Lang later claimed this was intended but that is in dispute (he liked to tell tale tales.) The rising Nazi government did seem to recognize this and banned the film. Mabuse didn't play in Germany until well after World War II. Parallels can also be drawn with terrorists in the modern age.

This remains a very accessible film and would be an excellent introduction to Fritz Lang's German work, if you haven't already seen M or Metropolis.