The Testament of Dr Mabuse [Das Testament des Dr Mabuse] **** (1933, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Gustav Diessl) – Classic Movie Review 2987

In 1933 German meister director Fritz Lang brings back his evil crime baron Dr Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) from his 1922 silent classic Doctor Mabuse the Gambler [Dr Mabuse, King of Crime] and creates a meisterwerk. It is an another thoroughly enjoyable, richly detailed thriller but this time with an underlying motive: ‘to show Hitler’s terror methods as a parable’.

Arch-criminal Dr Mabuse has been in a mental asylum for nearly a decade. But, when new crime wave grips the city of Berlin, all clues seem to lead to him. The police detective inspector Kriminalkomissar Lohmann (Otto Wernicke) sets out to foil the nefarious Mabuse’s plan for world domination and this time battles him in a case of banknote forgery.

Also again writing with Thea Von Harbou, as director Lang revels in the vocabulary of sound technology and mixes in silent-film techniques and Expressionist images, with cinematography by Fritz Arno Wagner.

Expectedly, the film was duly banned by the German Government, though Dr Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, still offered to make Lang leader of the new fascist cinema. Wisely, Lang left for America. However, he eventually returned to a postwar Germany and made a further sequel, The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2987

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