Fritz Lang

Lang, Fritz 

Born Dec. 5, 1890, in Vienna. German motion-picture director (Federal Republic of Germany).

Lang studied at an engineering school and at the Academy of Arts in Vienna. He began writing screenplays in 1916 and two years later made his directorial debut. He made such crime films as Doctor Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), whose hero was a power-hungry criminal. M (1931; from the German Morder, “murderer”), another crime film, was about human impotence before the irresistible forces of evil. Die Nibelungen (1924) represented Germans as the master race, and Metropolis (1926) contrasted the idea of class peace with capitalist exploitation.

After the establishment of the fascist regime (1933), Lang emigrated to France, where he made Liliom (1934; based on the play by F. Molnár), and then to the USA. Lang’s most important films there were Fury (1936), a study of lynch law, and the antifascist Hangmen Also Die. He has lived in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1958. His most recent films include Tigress of Bengal (1958) and The Thousand Eyes of Doctor Mabuse (1960).

REFERENCES

“Fritz Lang.” In Kolodiazhnaia, V., and I. Trutko, Istoriia zarubezhnogo kino, vol. 2. Moscow, 1970.
Jensen, P. M. The Cinema of Fritz Lang. New York-London [1969].

V. S. KOLODIAZHNAIA