Amazon.com: It's hard to imagine that the razor-sharp Kino DVD of Fritz Lang's first magnum opus fails to capture any of the visual electricity and heady atmosphere experienced by Berlin filmgoers in 1922. The film's historical importance to the crime-film genre and its thematic relevance to the director's later work have never been in dispute, but with only murky, choppy editions to go by, the movie has largely been paid lip service for its legacy rather than appreciated for itself. Now, thanks to this definitive restoration by the Murnau Institute, we can properly see it and experience it.
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler is actually two films in one--or, more precisely, one film in two feature-length parts totaling four-and-a-half hours and conceived to be watched on consecutive evenings. Its title character is a criminal mastermind with the power and the will to orchestrate complex capers, counterfeit national currencies, manipulate the stock market, and hypnotically bend anyone to play a role in his diabolical designs. The hand of Mabuse seems to reach everywhere--for the excellent reason that the Doctor himself, a master of disguise, turns out to be just about anywhere at just the moment his intervention will wreak havoc and wreck lives. (He's played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who would repeat the part ten years later in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and also, in spirit if not in name, in Lang's dazzling 1928 film Spies; he was also the inventor Rotwang in Metropolis--as well as, offscreen, the former husband of Lang's screenwriter wife Thea von Harbou!)
The film's title in German is Doktor Mabuse der Spieler, and our supervillain is really less a gambler (all his games of chance are rigged) than a player: playing multiple roles, but even more importantly, playing with others' lives, playing with the very fabric of modern reality. The subtitles of the two parts are "A Picture of the Time" and "People of the Time"; the film is an artifact of the Weimar era when, as one character remarks, "We are bored and tired ... we need sensations of a very special kind to remain alive." Lang and his art directors, Otto Hunte and Karl Stahl-Urach, create a hallucinatory mise-en-scène in which the decor is at once stark and decadent, a playground for all manner of perverse spectacle and gamesmanship, a maze of corridors and doorways and streets where the modern and the gothic interlayer. This world ripe for Mabusian manipulation prefigured Hitler by a decade--and in one of his last declarations, the Doctor anticipates more contemporary visionaries of chaos: "I feel as a state within a state, with which I have always been at war." Fritz Lang continues to be a chillingly prophetic filmmaker. --Richard T. Jameson
THE GOOD DOCTOR.... Quite possibly the greatest silent film of all time. It's right up there with Gance's NAPOLEON & Eisenstein's POTEMKIN. Better than anything Griffith ever did. Pulp fiction for the masses, yet an artistic masterpiece! Closer to Keaton than Chaplin. Not to be taken seriously, but should be taken seriously...I love this film & recommend it to all. Certainly one of the TOP 25 GREATEST FILMS ever made.
Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler Winning the trust of wealthy businessmen he can manipulate to his own ends, mad mesmerist Dr. Mabuse (Klein-Rogge) employs his psychic abilities to lure millionaire Edgar Hull (Paul Richter) into a fateful card game, prising information he plans to use in order to corner trade on the stock market. But wily police commissioner Von Wrenk (Bernhard Goetzke) is on Mabuse's trail, and is planning to bring an end to the devious doctor's criminal operation.
Newly remastered by Kino video, this crisp DVD creates the electricity and atmosphere experienced by Berlin moviegoers in 1922. Lang's sinister thriller is a vivid, engaging tale of crime and evil (the German director's lifelong preoccupation from "M" to "The Big Heat") that plunges us into a seedy underworld of dingy cabarets and gambling houses in 1920s Berlin. Klein-Rogge is amazing as the malevolent master criminal, a calculating opponent seized with hubris and a penchant for clever disguises. Avoiding all the pitfalls of overly stagy silents, Lang brilliantly handles the (rather explosive) action and livens the pace, creating an atmospheric, fully realized world. Best viewed over two nights owing to its four-hour length, "Mabuse" is an eerily brilliant pinnacle of early cinema.
A major force in Germany 1922 The period after WW1 was for Germany featured by an unbridled vices, sharp depression in many orders, hopeless, desperation, deep despair, hysteria and cynicism. So Dr. Mabuse should be the prototype of his own time, a man who didn't' t believe in love but desire; a gambler, he bets, plays cards, roulette and lives and fates of people simply because there was not reason for not making it. "If God doesn't exist , everything is permitted" , in words of Dostoievsky. Mabuse represents the reincarnation of Faust in a decaying environment, where power is the reason for living and the perfect substitute for happiness. That's why the final is so admirably metaphorical when he escapes via the sewer tunnels.
Lang mirrored with accurate precision and dramatic realism the state of things in which Germany was involved would seem to materialize the foreseen visions of the Expressionism, artistically expressed just two years ago in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari."
Powerful filmic achievement that simply overpowers all kind of sublime adjectives to describe this prominent landmark in the cinema.
German Expressionist Masterpiece Though pre-dating "Metropolis",Fritz Lang's absolute silent masterpiece and not quite as nightmarish as "Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" or "Nosferatu", "Dr. Mabuse-The Gambler" created a disturbing (and frightfully prophetic) and highly suspenseful masterwork about the criminal genius Dr. Mabuse who manipulates people's minds to carry out his misdeeds. Some of the shots such as where the screen moves to a close up of Doctor Mabuse and the rest of the screen is black were new for their time. On two discs because the film was divided into two parts at the time, my only complaint is the plodding piano score that is too similar to that used for other silent films. Melodramatic yes but "Dr. Mabuse" is less so than most American films of the time. And of course Fritz Lang after fleeing Nazi Germany would continue to churn out classics such as "The Ministry of Fear". Make sure you get this 2 disc version, as other versions are heavily inferior in that the film quality is lacking and they are missing crucial footage.
A German silent cinema masterpiece in restored form
Fritz Lang's brilliantly directed and designed DR. MABUSE: THE GAMBLER (1922, Germany) is one of the crowning achievements of the German silent cinema from the decade following World War One. And Kino Video in Manhattan has given it a magnificent restoration that runs a full four-and-a-half hours. The print is beautiful, way longer than previous versions on home video, and with an evocatively harsh piano and violin score by Aljoscha Zimmermann and ensemble.
Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) is the archetype of all master criminals in a century of espionage movies, from James Bond to Alfred Hitchcock. He is a master of many disguises and is forever masterminding all means of terrorism in early 1920's Berlin. In this respect, DR. MABUSE: THE GAMBLER is very timely and contemporary.
In a movie that is also a commentary on 1920's Germany living, Mabuse works out of (or frequents) a cabaret with a gambling table that vanishes quickly in case of a police raid, and that offers cocaine for the mere asking. One wonders whether the cast and crew of Bob Fosse's CABARET (1972) saw this movie. Thea von Harbou's adaptation of Norbert Jacques' novel keeps the action moving quickly, despite the mammoth length. Something is always blowing up, and Mabuse is forever in another disguise to elude the police.
Actually, the 270 minute length is an asset because continuity holes have been filled in. We have two separate movies with an intermission for easy two night viewing on home video. (The intermission is at the two-and-a-half hour mark) The cinematography is by Carl Hoffmann, while the wondrous art direction is by Otto Hunte and Carl Stahl-Urach. Other cast members include METROPOLIS' Alfred Abel, Bernardt Goetzke, Aud Egede Nissen, and Paul Richter.
DR. MABUSE: THE GAMBLER is the grandfather of all espionage movies and cannot be recommended highly enough to fans of this genre. In its Kino Video restoration (which actually is a Berlin-Munich-Moscow restoration with Kino as American distributor), the movie is a stupendous achievement even by today's achievements. If you like it, then check out Kino's impeccable restorations of such other Lang silent restorations as DIE NIEBULENGEN (1924), METROPOLIS (1927), and SPIES (1928). At (800) 562-3330 or Amazon.com, they are the definitive source for Lang silents.
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