TSPDT - Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang

Survey of Filmmakers: Top 25 Directors (2005 poll by The Film Journal)

Jean-Pierre Melville's 64 Favourite Pre-War American Filmmakers (Cahiers du Cinema, October 1961)

Chris Fujiwara's Top 10 Directors

►501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

See Also

Claude Chabrol

Henri-Georges Clouzot

André De Toth

John Farrow

Louis Feuillade

Stanley Kubrick

Joseph Losey

F.W. Murnau

G.W. Pabst

Nicholas Ray

Robert Siodmak

François Truffaut

Director / Screenwriter / Producer

1890 - 1976

Born December 5, Vienna, Austria

Key Production Countries: USA, Germany

Key Genres: Film Noir, Drama, Crime Drama, Thriller, Crime, Police Detective Film, Psychological Thriller, Adventure, Spy Film, Master Criminal Films, Psychological Drama, Melodrama, Western

Key Collaborators: Thea von Harbou (Screenwriter), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Leading Player), Dan Seymour (Character Player), Joan Bennett (Leading Player), Theodor Loos (Leading Character Player), Fritz Arno Wagner (Cinematographer), Karl Vollbrecht (Production Designer), Otto Hunte (Production Designer), Dan Duryea (Leading Character Player), Arthur Hilton (Editor)

Highly Recommended: M (1931), Fury (1936), You Only Live Once (1937), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), Secret Beyond the Door (1948), The House by the River (1950), Clash by Night (1952), The Big Heat (1953), While the City Sleeps (1956)

Recommended: Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1926), Spies (1928), Western Union (1941), Ministry of Fear (1944), Rancho Notorious (1952), The Blue Gardenia (1953), Human Desire (1954), Moonfleet (1955), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), The Tiger of Eschnapur (1958)

Links: [ IMDB ] [ TCMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Biography (Jeffrey Scheuer) ] [ British Film Institute Feature ] [ Classic Film and Television Home Page ] [ A Fritz Lang Website ] [ Bright Lights Film Journal Article ] [ 1967 BBC Interview by Alexander Walker ] [ Cineaste Article (2005) ] [ Martin Scorsese on Fritz Lang ]

Books: [ Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast ] [ Fritz Lang ] [ The Films of Fritz Lang ] [ Fritz Lang: Photographs and Documents, Vienna-Berlin-Paris-Hollywood ] [ Fritz Lang: Interviews ] [ Fritz Lang's Metropolis: Cinematic Visions of Technology and Fear ] [ Fritz Lang: Genre and Representation in His American Films ]

DVD's: [ Amazon ]

1,000 Greatest Films: Destiny (1921), Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922), Metropolis (1926), Spies (1928), M (1931), You Only Live Once (1937), The Woman in the Window (1944), The Big Heat (1953), Moonfleet (1955), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), While the City Sleeps (1956), The Tiger of Eschnapur (1958), The Indian Tomb (1959)

250 Quintessential Noir Films: Ministry of Fear (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), Secret Beyond the Door (1948), The House by the River (1950), Clash by Night (1952), The Big Heat (1953), The Blue Gardenia (1953), Human Desire (1954), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), While the City Sleeps (1956)


	"Fritz Lang's cinema is the cinema of the nightmare, the fable, and the philosophical dissertation. Langs' apparent weaknesses are the consequences of his virtues...His characters never develop with any psychological precision, and his world lacks the details of verisimilitude that are so important to realistic critics. However, Lang's vision of the world is profoundly expressed by his visual forms." - Andrew Sarris (The American Cinema, 1968)

	"Few directors can have created so many images of entrapment as did Lang during his long, distinguished career. Repeatedly, his protagonists are imprisoned not only by an uncaring society or by their own flawed nature, but by Destiny itself: Lang's stories, which regularly return to the theme of crime and punishment, have the rigorous logic of a philosophical theorem." - Geoff Andrew (The Director's Vision, 1999)

	"Lang's continuing obsession with the psychology of human weakness made him the ideal thriller and film noir director, with masterpieces such as The Big Heat (1953), Clash by Night (1953), and While the City Sleeps (2956) to his credit." - Mario Reading (The Movie Companion, 2006)

	"A world of paranoia, fear and evil fills the work of Fritz Lang. His early German films (Dr. Mabuse, 22; Metropolis, 26; M, 31) are subtle, yet striking illustrations of those preoccupations, while later American works (Man Hunt, 41; The Big Heat, 53) are more explosive." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)

	"There's something which you should get out from an actor, something which is under his skin, something which he himself maybe doesn't know exactly. I hate - and I never did - to show an actor how to play a role. I don't want to have twenty-five little Fritz Langs running around. I have too much respect for an actor." - Fritz Lang (Directing the Film, 1976)