" (158) was Lang's response to the interviewer's question when the interviewer Power asked him in 1973, "How do you take your coffee?" (158). This response is characteristic of the dark underlying tone that is prevalent in many Lang's films. According to Professor Polan, many Lang's films share a recurring theme - destiny, a destiny which is typically random and uncaring. In a world that is inherently corrupt and inhospitable, it almost seems as if characters were destined to find themselves entrapped in unwanted and frequently doomed situations. While watching Lang's films, the contemporary viewers, who were living through the Great Depression, are naturally inclined to ask themselves: are our lives bounded by fate, which is dictated by our savage environment, or do we have the freedom and ability to make decisions that are not predetermined by any prior occurrences? Suppose we do have free will, how can we exercise it? In his film, The Woman in the Window, Lang responds to these questions by first acknowledging the existence of fate and its uncaring nature. He communicates this message to his audience by presenting a bleak view of the universe that is typically Langian - thematically, stylistically and narratively. Lang then leaves subtle clues at the end of this film which demonstrates that he may in fact be a proponent of free will. One of the messages that he may have wanted to convey to his audience is that free will, while achievable, comes at a cost.
To further discuss the theme of destiny, the concept of fate needs to first be defined in a Langian context. While fate is generally thought of as an abstract power that controls the future of people, Tom Gunning believes that the notion of fate in Lang's films is based on a rigid cause-and-effect structure, grounded in modern everyday life. He renames this idea of fate as the "Destiny-machine", which can be described as a vast and elaborate system that society organized as a machine.
The film, M, directed by Fritz Lang, is an instant classic because of its innovation in sound. ... This film was also Fritz Lang's first "talkie". ... For Fritz Lang, however, it was to be used sparingly. ... Fritz Lang uses sound as if it were another part of the visual. ... It is believed that Fritz Lang based his movie on this serial killer. ...
Fritz Lang"s: Metropolis Critical Response By. Josh BoockThis Fritz Lang classic silent film of the futuristic city of metropolis and its mechanized society is possible more powerful to day then when it was released, at depicting the dehumanization of centralized urban cites. ... Fritz shows us this by contrasting; the people marching like rats in step from a shot looking down at the divisions and the people frolicking above ground in this dreamy trance, the dinginess and hard, sweaty, dangerous work below to the beauty of the city. ...
Evidentially the most noteworthy movie of the era, Fritz Lang's Metropolis came to Germany with impressive special effects and direction and later spread throughout Europe and to North America. ... Unfortunately for the genre, this was a gem in a trash-heap; for cinema, the 1950's were a time of shameless monster movies with non-sensical plots, poor acting, and special effects that were none-too-special. ... The 1960s passed with much the same mix of monster movies and novel adaptations. ... From 1902's A Trip to the Moon to 2003's Terminator 3, these quasi-science fiction...
While other movies from around the same time were using painted-on sets to illustrate normal, everyday locales, Metropolis" sets seemed limited only by the imagination of Fritz Lang and others who were involved in the film's creation. ... Lang visually shows us how cold, crowded, but still beautiful Metropolis is. ... Suspended streets, air traffic, and oddly shaped buildings manage to show us the bustling city as Lang envisioned it. ... One thing I found difficult to grasp was what, exactly, Lang was trying to say with this movie. ... Certainly, Lang presented the world as being horr...
The themes of the films cover everything from pre-war paranoia in Germany, with Fritz Lang's M(1931), to American gangster movies like Public Enemy (1931). ... It started in Germany with directors such as Lang and Wiene who began making films about sly and dangerous criminals while at the same time their country was being taken over by censoring dictators. ...
The history of movies/film, although only a century old, is rich and complex. ... Although the German film industry was booming, filmmakers found it difficult to create movies because of the hard economic times and because of the big competition with Hollywood. ... Writer Carl Mayer, designer/painter Hermann Warm, Walter Roehrig, and Walter Reimann played significant roles in the movement, as did Directors Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari, 1919), Fritz Lang (Dr.Mabuse, 1922; Metropolis, 1927), Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922; The Last Laugh, 1924), and Paul Leni (Waxworks, 1924, and in Holl...
In particular, the dehumanization of workers, into what Marx called a "cattle - like existence", echoes throughout both movies, albeit in different degrees. ... In the opening scenes of Metropolis, Fritz Lang uses a montage of machines and workers to draw similarities between the two. ...
Released in 1927, "Metropolis" is a silent science-fiction film directed by Fritz Lang, the famous German Expressionist filmmaker. ... Whether it be in movies or music videos, to this day, we can see that the influence of it certainly lives on. ... The image Fritz Lang created in Rotwang is actually extremely influential in the iconography of the "standard" mad scientist. ... They continuously sprout up in films and movies, and with real significance to the characters' identities and plots' storylines. ...
