The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

Eye Society

The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse

aka Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse

Germany 1960

Directed by Fritz Lang

Eureka Masters of Cinema Region 2

And so I finally come to the last of the three Fritz Lang Mabuse films... although the series was “continued” by other directors after this one, including entries by Jess Franco and Claude Chabrol in later decades.

Of course, the original Dr. Mabuse died in the previous of Lang’s Mabuse films, way back in 1933, and rather than bring him back from the dead, so to speak, Lang opts for a more realistic sequel by having a new “super-villain”, also a master of disguise, carry on in his name, this time by controlling his victims from his base in a hotel which is filled with thousands of cameras with which to watch his victims... the “thousand eyes” of the title.

This movie, at least when watching it now, seems to have little to really offer in the way of adding new or exciting elements to the mix. I am assuming that audiences contemporary to it’s initial release must have felt differently because the series really got some legs after this third installment, but there’s not much here which I can’t imagine audiences would have been that unfamiliar with... apart from an automated, revolving... no hold on... I’ll get to that soon. The murder of a man by firing at him silently from the window of another car and then leaving that car stopped at the stop light after his death as a way of hammering a point home visually, for example, had already been done in one or other of the earlier Mabuse films (and would go on to be done again in later films such as The IPCRESS File if memory serves me correctly).

I know a lot of people go nuts for what is, essentially, Fritz Lang’s final film as a director, but I found this one to be easily the least interesting of the Mabuse films I’ve seen so far (although I seem to have blotted the Chabrol version out of my memory... I think I had a severe anti-Chabrol reaction to that one at the time) and mostly I found it a little boring compared to the other two.

What I didn’t find boring, though, was Gert Fröbe’s performance as Inspector Kras, who once again is one of a smarter breed of movie policeman than you may find in other films of this nature... slow to catch the “modern Mabuse” obviously, otherwise you wouldn’t have any film, but less stupid than the way these folk are usually written in these kinds of thrillers and certainly smart enough to deduce the presence of a bomb just before it’s about to explode. Four years before playing Goldfinger in the Bond movie of the same name, Fröbe’s performance shows pretty good acting skills... nothing showy, just a character you can believe in, playing a very “aware of his surroundings” officer of the law. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was one of the movies that lead to his casting in the later Bond film and... no scratch that. I would be very surprised if the producers of Goldfinger hadn't seen this particular entry in the Mabuse series because... well I noticed something which I think might have caught the interest of the writers or producers of that classic Bond flick at the time...

In Ian Fleming's original novel of Goldfinger, the Aston Martin car (obviously not a DB5 at that point) was equipped by Q branch with various gadgets... but one of those gadgets wasn't a set of revolving number plates (with thanks to Tim Pelan aka @johnneyred for the confirmation that this particular item was not in the novel... it’s been decades since I read it). That was invented for the movie version... no wait did I say invented? Maybe I meant inspired... or put in as an homage to or, you know... craftily stolen for use in the Saltzman and Broccoli movie? For, as Mabuse is fleeing from Fröbe’s men and a police dragnet in a car chase at the end of the film, he uses the same style of automated revolving number plates as later turned up in the movie version of Goldfinger, four years later. It’s just a throw away shot and unless you did the maths then you might not think anything of it... but it’s my belief that when the casting people were screening movies of Fröbe so they could see if he was a good candidate for the role in the Bond movie, they saw a little something else they liked and nicked it for their movie too. That’s not gospel, of course, it’s just my supposition as to what happened... but I bet I’m right. I recall from various interviews over the years that a load of the Q sequence in Goldfinger was put in during extra reshoots after the initial filming was completed.

Other than this, though, there’s not a great deal going on in this movie that’s all that interesting, in my opinion and taking into account the historical context of the film. Not to say that there’s anything greatly wrong with this third entry either, of course. It’s well acted, well shot and... well... it’s Fritz Lang after all! I just thought that this movie could have been a little more than just the sum of its parts and I find this easily the weakest of the three in Lang’s trilogy. Don’t let that put you off from watching what is considered a cinematic achievement of some merit, however... and Gert Fröbe is always worth a watch.

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

Verbal Mabuse

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

(aka The Testament of Dr. Mabuse)
Germany 1933
Directed by Fritz Lang
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Region 2

Warning: Spoilers beamed directly

into your mind if you read any further!

Fritz Lang made Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse as a sequel to his silent classic, Dr. Mabuse Der Spieler (reviewed here), 11 years after the original film was released. It again “stars” Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Mabuse but to say this actor is the main lead of this second film would be pushing it a bit. I don’t know if the actor was actually incapacitated during filming but he is barely glimpsed and doesn’t really move from his bed in the few shots he’s in.

The character also, kind of, dies not very far into the movie... although he lives on in two guises... one as a ghostly version of himself with a brain that is visible above his grotesque, popping eyes... all done via crude but effective special effects. Thus, anyone who’s ever watched this movie without having had the benefit of seeing the original movie before-hand will be left unimpressed, I suspect, with Klein-Rogge. The absolute masterful power and strength of will of this actor, that pierced the screen of the original movie and pierced the audience with a wake up call burnt directly on to the retina is really not present in this one. Mabuse is just an inmate of an asylum where he was deposited after he went mad at the end of the first movie.

Even though the character dies, Mabuse is not dead in spirit... he uses his ghostly presence after death to invade the mind of the head of the sanitarium and uses his body to continue his crimes which, in this movie, consist of bringing down the entire government by himself...

Or, you could also take the tack that the head of the sanitarium has gone completely mad after reading Mabuse’s crazed and obsessive, compulsive scribblings and the ghostly presence of Mabuse is merely his own mind playing tricks on him... that he has gone completely insane and been inadvertently “inspired” by Mabuse and his writings of how to pull off “perfect” crimes... stepping into his shoes full-time after Mabuse has breathed his last.

There are still lingering shades of the German Expressionist style throughout this movie but, then again, I’m beginning to think it’s partially what defined Lang’s personal style at that particular period of his life. I remember taking a look at the Lang movie Rancho Notorious (1952) a couple o’ decades back and thinking that, although it was shot and released in colour... it all looked wrong or, to repeat my exact comment, it looked like it was a colour movie which had been lit for black and white. Perhaps it was the very striking areas of light and dark that were prevalent when I made that comment. Either way, long after German Expression is thought to have died off (or, in my opinion, fled Nazi Germany to find a new home in the 1940s Hollywood Film Noir style), here is Lang with some very interesting and almost surreal compositions... but supporting a movie which has a more naturalistic acting style and which, in some ways, continues the themes of the film he made directly before it, the Peter Lorre starrer M!

That is to say, that while the notorious criminal deeds and cliffhanger traps, such as two lovers locked in a room waiting for a time bomb to explode in an hour’s time, are reminiscent again and in some ways a toned down version of the antics of such characters as Fantômas and Irma Vep, the interest in police procedures and the science of detection is very much in evidence in this film (as it was in M).

The heroic figure of Inspector Lohmann, as played by Otto Wernicke, is an enjoyable performance but it’s been quite some time (over twenty years maybe) since I last watched M and I didn’t realise until I looked him up that the character of Inspector Lohmann, again as played by Otto Wernicke, is also in M... no wonder both movies look at the science of detection with an almost obsessive (for the time) bent... the film is a sequel to both Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler AND M. So I’m going to have to grab a DVD copy of M now and watch that again. I do, in fact, have a painted comic book mini-series adaptation of M with a free flexi-disc (remember those) of Fritz Lang whistling In The Hall Of The Mountain King on it but... somehow I don’t think that’s going to quite cut it. I guess Criterion must do a decent version of it.... right?

Anyway, I have to say that, although the character of Mabuse himself was a bit of a cop-out in this one, the movie itself is an enjoyable romp through 1930s Germany and I was really quite into it. Definitely looking forward to the final installment of the Lang directed trilogy (other directors have tackled Mabuse since) entitled The Thousand Eyes of Doctor Mabuse (aka Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse) which was made 27 years after this one... especially since I know it has a pre-Goldfinger Gert Fröbe in it. I’ll let you know how that one goes down with me as soon as I can. Thanks for reading.