Essays on Fritz Lang

10 Essential Films

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 He was born 126 years ago, before sci-fi films, serial killer movies and  film noir were invented. He’d help invent them all. Fritz Lang was one  of the giants of cinema, and these 10 films find him at the top of his  game. 

Singular History of Cinema

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Lang, from the beginning of his career to the end, was the sort of filmmaker whose art was his craft.  

Fritz Lang: The Silent Fims

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 Mythical  heroes, sacrificing heroines, criminal madmen and uncontrolled  super-science are his themes;  it’s a paranoid’s view of the first half of the 20th Century, expressed  with fantastic innovations that literally re-write the rules of cinema. 

Fritz Lang in Hollywood

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  A history of Lang's 22 films produced over 20 years in Hollywood

Father of the Film Epic

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The first true epic scale director, or blockbuster style director, was German director and screenwriter Fritz Lang 

Edgar Allan Poe of Cinema

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The Dark side of Lang's work

Genre Creator

FILM NOIR

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Fritz Lang is widely regarded as the creator of the film noir genre.  

SERIAL KILLERS

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 M: The Blueprint for The Serial Killer

SCIENCE FICTION

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The Influence of Fritz Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ on Future Science Fiction Films

SPY

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 Fritz Lang’s "SPIES" (1928) anticipates  the master spy thriller and the romantic  intrigues of Graham Greene, not to mention much of the paraphernalia of Ian Fleming, especially in their movie versions. 

ADVENTURE

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From playing with Death to finding a lost Incan civilisation,"THE SPIDERS" (1919) and "DESTINY (1921) are bursting with adventure and intrigue.

Fantasy

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  Fritz Lang's 2-part silent film of 1924, Die Nibelungen, is an epic  masterpiece of German fantasy cinema from the 1920s.