Lang, Fritz

Lang, Fritz (läng), 1890–1976, German-American film director, b. Vienna. His silent and early sound films, such as Metropolis (1926), are marked by brilliant expressionist technique. He gained worldwide acclaim with M (1933), a study of a child molester and murderer. After directing 15 films, Lang fled Nazi Germany (1933) to avoid collaborating with the government and settled in the United States. His 20 Hollywood films continued his exploration of criminality and the cruel fate that can overtake the unwary. His notable American works include Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Hangmen Also Die (1943), The Big Heat (1953), and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).

Bibliography

See studies by P. Bogdanovich (1967), L. Eisner (1972), R. A. Armour (1978), F. W. Ott (1979), S. Jenkins (1981), C. Schnauber (1986), P. McGilligan (1997), and T. Gunning (2000).

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Lang, Fritz

(born Dec. 5, 1890, Vienna, Austria-Hungary—died Aug. 2, 1976, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S.) Austrian-born U.S. film director. He studied architecture in Vienna and served in the Austrian army in World War I. While recovering from war wounds, he began to write screenplays. He found work at a movie studio in Berlin, where he later directed successful films such as Between Two Worlds (1921), Dr. Mabuse (1922), the two-part The Nibelungen (1924), the expressionistic Metropolis (1926), and M (1931). After making the anti-Nazi film The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse (1933), he left Germany for Paris and later Hollywood. His U.S. films, which equal his German films in their intensity, pessimism, and visual mastery, include Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), Ministry of Fear (1944), Rancho Notorious (1952), and The Big Heat (1953). Many of his films deal with fate and man's inevitable working out of his destiny.

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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