THE TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE (1933). In only his second film to use
sound after M, Fritz Lang made his own testament before leaving Nazi Germany
for ever. This sequel to his famous DR MABUSE two-part epic centres
around the discovery that in an insane asylum, the supposedly catatonic former
master criminal Dr Mabuse, an under-used though welcome Rudolf Klein-Rogge again,
has been furiously scribbling more ingenious heist plans that mysteriously are
being carried out in the outside world. His supervising professor Baum develops
an unhealthy obsession about his patient - “Mabuse
the genius!” he declaims with an unsettling lack of objectivity.
On the trail
of a vast new crime network that has sent an ex-detective colleague of his,
Hofmeister mad with fear, Inspector Lohmann pursues the case. This allows a
nice continuity as Otto Wernicke reprises the same role he had in M, a
pleasingly hard-boiled characterisation that alternates between breezily
rolling with the punches and occasionally exploding with rage when stonewalled
by suspects. (Sadly, Wernicke would later struggle to stay working as an actor
under the Nazi regime, allegedly only by making a sizeable donation to the
ruling party was he allowed to continue his career).
Within the
crime conspiracy, there is a love story as one of the gang, Kent (Gustav
Diesel), is begged by his girlfriend Lilli (Wera Liessem) to open up about his inner
conflict. There is some unintentional humour here when he comes clean. Admirably
she is unfazed about his prison record, but when he presses on with the worst
of it, that he killed two people - “One
was my girlfriend” - Liessem still shows zero reaction. Love is not just
blind, it also appears to be deaf - she makes Joe E. Brown at the end of SOME
LIKE IT HOT look judgemental. Anyhow, their resolve to go to the police gets
them abducted and locked in the odd meeting room cloaked by a curtain that their
mystery boss uses to communicate with his underlings. In a Republic serial-style cliff-hanger, they
escape from the room by flooding it with water.
Ultimately,
it’s revealed that it is the cracked Professor Baum who has taken up the mantle
of continuing the super-villain Mabuse’s work, masquerading as him with the aid
of gramophone voice recordings and hiding behind that curtained-off area. (Intriguingly,
this device is not only reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz, but is it coincidental
that the Professor shares the same surname as the writer of the children’s
books, all of which were published long before the film?). Baum is haunted by
the excellently grotesque spectre of Mabuse himself, silent and reptile-eyed
who compels him to bomb a chemical plant before being cornered back at the
asylum. A neat resolution sees Hofmeister here introduced to the spirit of
Mabuse, thus ending his temporary insanity, while Baum is not so fortunate; his
mental state now as shredded as the scribblings littered around him. He tears
at them, spaced-out, just like his mentor when Mabuse too was captured ten
years before…
Behind the
scenes at the Ufa studio, there were sinister alliances being made. In 1927, Alfred
Hugenberg, the media magnate had bought the studio and after becoming an influential
Minister in Hitler’s government he placed it under allegiance to the Nazi Party
in 1933. Hugenberg
banned M and THE TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE but offered Lang continued work at the
studio.
The director declined yet found an altogether more unwelcome fan
instead. Lang’s film earned him a
summons from Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s war-time Minister for Propaganda in 1933.
Goebbels had spotted that the main character was a mouthpiece for a criminal
version of an identical manifesto to that of the Nazi party. Nazism espoused
that by erasing the structures of the present, only then could the thousand
years of the Reich begin. Mabuse said exactly the same thing, that only when
the old order had been destroyed, a thousand years of his crime empire would
begin. Whilst on the one hand banning THE TESTAMENT for inciting disrespect in
the Nazi leadership, Goebbels told Lang that the Fuhrer had seen his film and
that: “..he has said that this is the man who will give us THE National
Socialistic film”. At that moment, Lang broke out into a cold sweat, wondering
how on earth he could get out, take his savings and flee the country. Goebbels
then offered Lang the job of official filmmaker for German (Nazi) film. The
director politely informed Goebbels that his mothers’ parents were Jewish. The
Minister replied with a blood-curdling attempt at charm: “Mr Lang, we decide
who is an Aryan”.
As soon as
he could, Lang took his savings, arranged for a train ticket, met his
girlfriend who agreed to let him take some of her jewellery safely with him out
of Germany, and he left the country to begin again in Hollywood - never to
return. There, he had a happy career making 21 films for a list of major
studios, never making more than two for any single company. He closed his
professional life in a somewhat circular fashion by concluding with his most
famous anti-hero in THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR MABUSE in 1960.
In the
superb film interview he gave to William Friedkin in 1974 (available on social
media), Fritz Lang summed up his legacy in a simple belief about the duty of
the film-maker. Usually a reluctant subject, he said: “(if) the film doesn’t
express what he wants to say and he needs to give an interview to explain why,
he is a lousy director….His films should speak for him.”
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