Editing Fritz Lang (section)

== Career ==
===Expressionist films: the Weimar years (1918–1933)===
Lang started work as a director at the German film studio [[Universum Film AG|UFA]], and later [[Nero-Film]], just as the [[German expressionist cinema|Expressionist]] movement was building. In this first phase of his career, Lang alternated between films such as ''[[Der Müde Tod]]'' ("The Weary Death") and popular thrillers such as ''[[Die Spinnen]]'' ("The Spiders"), combining popular genres with Expressionist techniques to create a synthesis of popular entertainment with [[Art film|art cinema]].

[[File:Fritz Lang und Thea von Harbou, 1923 od. 1924.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|Lang and [[Thea von Harbou]] in their Berlin flat, 1923 or 1924]]

In 1920, Lang met his future second wife, the writer [[Thea von Harbou]] through director Joe May. Harbou co-wrote and directed the film ''Das wandernde Bild'' with Lang.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Enigma of Thea von Harou |url=http://www.williamahearn.com/thea.html |access-date=2025-01-22 |website=www.williamahearn.com}}</ref> She co-wrote every Harbou-Lang film till 1933, including ''[[Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler]]'' ("Dr. Mabuse the Gambler," 1922 – which ran for over four hours, in two parts in the original version, and was the first in the [[Dr. Mabuse]] trilogy), the five-hour ''[[Die Nibelungen: Siegfried|Die Nibelungen]]'' (1924), the dystopian film ''[[Metropolis (1927 film)|Metropolis]]'' (1927), and the science fiction film ''[[Woman in the Moon]]'' (1929). ''Metropolis'' went over budget, to the UFA's detriment. It was a financial flop, as were his last silent films ''[[Spione|Spies]]'' (1928) and ''Woman in the Moon'', produced by Lang's own company.{{citation needed|date=June 2019}}

In 1931, independent producer [[Seymour Nebenzahl]] hired Lang to direct ''[[M (1931 film)|M]]'' for Nero-Film. His first [[Talkie|"talking" picture]], considered by many film scholars to be a masterpiece of the early sound era, ''M'' is a story of a child murderer ([[Peter Lorre]] in his first starring role) who is hunted down and brought to justice by Berlin's criminal underworld.

Lang was hard to work with. During the climactic final scene in ''M'', Lang allegedly threw Peter Lorre down a flight of stairs in order to give more authenticity to Lorre's battered look.

In the films of his German period, Lang produced an oeuvre that established the characteristics later attributed to [[film noir]], with its recurring themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity.

Lang started having an affair with the Austrian actress [[Gerda Maurus]] during the filming of ''[[Spione]]'' (1928).

At the end of 1932, Lang started filming ''[[The Testament of Dr. Mabuse]]''. As [[Adolf Hitler]] came to power in January 1933, the new regime banned the film on March 30 as an incitement to public disorder. ''Testament'' is occasionally deemed an anti-Nazi film, as Lang had put Nazi phrases into the mouth of the title character. A screening of the film was cancelled by [[Joseph Goebbels]], and it was later banned by the [[Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kracauer |first1=Siegfried |url=https://archive.org/details/fromcaligaritohi0000krac |title=From Caligari to Hitler: a psychological history of the German film |year=1947 |isbn=0-691-02505-3 |url-access=registration}}</ref> In banning the film, Goebbels stated that the film "showed that an extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence", and that the film posed a threat to public health and safety.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kalat |first1=David |title=The strange case of Dr. Mabuse: a study of the twelve films and five novels |date=2005 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=0-7864-2337-4}}</ref>

<ref name="religion">{{cite web |url=http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/Fritz_Lang.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060112145624/http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/Fritz_Lang.html |url-status=usurped |archive-date=January 12, 2006 |title=The religion of director Fritz Lang |access-date=January 22, 2009}}</ref> Throughout his marriage with Harbou, Lang was known for being a philanderer. Two of his lovers of these years included [[Gerda Maurus]], the leading actress in Lang's last silent films ''[[Spione]]'' (1928) and ''[[Woman in the Moon]]'' (1929), and Lily Latte in 1931.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Robinson |first=David |date=1997-07-13 |title=Bully Boy |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-13-bk-12127-story.html |access-date=2025-01-22 |website=Los Angeles Times |language=en-US}}</ref> In the early 1930s, Harbou started an affair with [[Ayi Tendulkar]], an Indian journalist and student 17 years her junior.{{sfn|McGilligan|1997|p=168}}

===Emigration===
According to Lang, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called Lang to his offices to inform him that ''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse'' was being banned but, nevertheless, he was so impressed by Lang's abilities as a filmmaker (especially ''Metropolis''), that he offered Lang the position of head of German film studio UFA. Lang said it was during that meeting he had decided to leave for Paris – but that the banks had closed by the time the meeting was over. Lang claimed that, after selling his wife's jewelry, he fled by train to Paris that evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind.<ref>{{cite web |title=Fritz Lang Biography |url=https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000485/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm |website=IMDb |access-date=2019-09-05}}</ref><ref>Michel Ciment: ''Fritz Lang, Le meurtre et la loi'', Ed. Gallimard, Collection [[Découvertes Gallimard]] (vol. 442), 04/11/2003. The author thinks that this meeting, in fact, never happened.</ref><ref>[[Allan Havis|Havis, Allan]] (2008), ''Cult Films: Taboo and Transgression'', University Press of America, Inc., p. 10</ref><ref>Thomson, David (2012) ''The Big Screen: the story of the movies'' New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux {{ISBN|978-0-374-19189-4}} pp. 64–65; Lang's version deemed suspect</ref> Despite this, Lang's passport of the time showed that he traveled to and from Germany throughout 1933.<ref>{{cite web |title=Fritz Lang Tells the Riveting Story of the Day He Met Joseph Goebbels and Then High-Tailed It Out of Germany |url=http://www.openculture.com/2015/04/fritz-lang-tells-the-riveting-story-of-the-day-he-met-joseph-goebbels.html |website=Open Culture |access-date=29 March 2018 |date=28 April 2015}}</ref>

Lang left Berlin permanently on July 31, 1933, four months after his meeting with Goebbels and his initial departure. He moved to Paris,<ref name="KalatDVD">David Kalat, ''[https://www.criterion.com/films/721 DVD Commentary for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse]''. New York City, United States: The Criterion Collection (2004)</ref> having divorced [[Thea von Harbou]], who stayed behind, earlier in 1933.<ref name="howard hughes">{{cite book |last1=Hughes |first1=Howard |url=https://archive.org/details/outerlimitsfilmg0000hugh |title=Outer Limits: The Filmgoers' Guide to the Great Science-fiction Films |date=2014 |publisher=[[I.B.Tauris]] |isbn=978-1-78076-165-7 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/outerlimitsfilmg0000hugh/page/1 1] |access-date=22 January 2015 |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{sfn|McGilligan|1997|p=181}}

In Paris, Lang filmed his only French film, a version of [[Ferenc Molnár]]'s ''[[Liliom (1934 film)|Liliom]]'', starring [[Charles Boyer]]. He then moved to the United States.<ref name="KalatDVD"/>

=== Hollywood career (1936–1957) ===
Lang made twenty-two features in his 20-year American career, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in [[Hollywood (film industry)|Hollywood]], and occasionally producing his films as an independent. He became a [[naturalized citizen]] of the United States in 1939.<ref name="NYT20090515">{{cite news|last=Kehr|first=Dave|url=|title=Fritz Lang, Trailing Nazis|work=The New York Times|date=15 May 2009}}</ref>

Signing first with [[MGM]] Studios, Lang's crime drama ''[[Fury (1936 film)|Fury]]'' (1936) saw [[Spencer Tracy]] cast as a man who is wrongly accused of a crime and nearly killed when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail where he is awaiting trial. However, in ''Fury'', he was not allowed to represent black victims in a lynching scenario or to criticize racism, which was his original intention.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ELNZDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA98 |title=Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Films |publisher=Springer International Publishing |year=2018 |isbn=978-3-319-77081-9 |editor-last1=Letort |editor-first1=Delphine |location=Cham, Switzerland |page=98 |access-date=September 7, 2018 |editor-last2=Lebdai |editor-first2=Benaouda}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Scott |first=Ellen C. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27fQBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1736 |title=Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era |publisher=[[Rutgers University Press]] |year=2015 |isbn=978-0-8135-7137-9 |page=1736 |access-date=September 7, 2018}}</ref> By the time ''Fury'' was released, Lang had been involved in the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, working with [[Otto Katz]], a Czech who was a [[Comintern]] spy.<ref>{{cite news|last=Hoberman|first=J.|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/movies/homevideo/fritz-langs-hangmen-must-die-and-man-hunt-on-blu-ray.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220102/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/movies/homevideo/fritz-langs-hangmen-must-die-and-man-hunt-on-blu-ray.html |archive-date=2022-01-02 |url-access=limited |url-status=live|title=Fighting the Nazis With Celluloid|work=The New York Times|date=October 9, 2014|access-date=March 26, 2021}}{{cbignore}}</ref> He made four films with an explicitly anti-Nazi themes, ''[[Man Hunt (1941 film)|Man Hunt]]'' (1941), ''[[Hangmen Also Die!]]'' (1943), ''[[Ministry of Fear]]'' (1944) and ''[[Cloak and Dagger (1946 film)|Cloak and Dagger]]'' (1946). ''Man Hunt'', wrote [[Dave Kehr]] in 2009, "may be the best" of the "many interventionist films produced by the Hollywood studios before Pearl Harbor" as it is "clean and concentrated, elegant and precise, pointed without being preachy."<ref name="NYT20090515" />

[[File:Fritz Lang and Gloria Grahame on set of Human Desire.jpg|270px|thumb|left|Lang with [[Gloria Grahame]] and [[Broderick Crawford]] on the set of ''[[Human Desire]]'']]
His American films were often compared unfavorably to his earlier works by contemporary critics, although the restrained Expressionism of these films is now seen as integral to the emergence and evolution of American genre cinema. ''[[Scarlet Street]]'' (1945), one of his films featuring [[Edward G. Robinson]] and [[Joan Bennett]], is considered a central film in the film noir genre.

One of Lang's most praised ''films noir'' is the police drama ''[[The Big Heat]]'' (1953), known for its brutality. As Lang's visual style simplified, in part due to the constraints of the Hollywood studio system, his worldview became increasingly pessimistic, culminating in the cold, geometric style of his last American films, ''[[While the City Sleeps (1956 film)|While the City Sleeps]]'' (1956) and ''[[Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956 film)|Beyond a Reasonable Doubt]]'' (1956).

===Last films (1959–1963)===
Lang, as his health worsened with age, found it difficult to find congenial production conditions and backers in Hollywood and contemplated retirement. The German producer [[Artur Brauner]] had expressed interest in remaking ''[[The Indian Tomb (1921 film)|The Indian Tomb]]'' (from an original story by Thea von Harbou, that Lang had developed in the 1920s which had ultimately been directed by [[Joe May]]),<ref>{{cite journal |last=Plass |first=Ulrich |title=Dialectic of Regression: Theodor W Adorno and Fritz Lang |journal=[[Telos (journal)|Telos]] |volume=149 |page=131 |date=Winter 2009}}</ref> so Lang returned to Germany<ref name="gold195912">{{cite news |url=https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1959-12/Galaxy_1959_12#page/n5/mode/2up |title=Of All Things |work=Galaxy |date=December 1959 |access-date=15 June 2014 |author=Gold, H.L. |page=6}}</ref> to make his "Indian Epic" (consisting of ''[[The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959 film)|The Tiger of Eschnapur]]'' and ''[[The Indian Tomb (1959 film)|The Indian Tomb]]'').

Following the production, Brauner was preparing for a remake of ''[[The Testament of Dr. Mabuse]]'' when Lang approached him with the idea of adding a new original film to the series. The result was ''[[The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse]]'' (1960), whose success led to a series of new Mabuse films produced by Brauner (including the remake of ''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse''), though Lang did not direct any of the sequels. Lang was approaching blindness during the production,<ref>[[Robert Bloch]]. "In Memoriam: Fritz Lang" in Bloch's ''Out of My Head''. Cambridge, MA: NESFA Press, 1986, 171–80</ref> and it was his final project as director.

In 1963, he appeared as himself in [[Jean-Luc Godard]]'s film ''[[Contempt (film)|Contempt]]''.