The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (Distributed for British Film Institute)

Book Description

In this remarkable new study, the renowned historian and theorist of early cinema turns his attention to the work of Fritz Lang, proposing new readings of the entire output of one of cinema's foremost directors. Gunning examines the films not only as a stylistically coherent body of work, but as an attempt to portray the modern world through cinema. The world of modernity in which systems replace individuals is conveyed by Lange's mastery of cinematic set design, composition, and editing. Lang presents not only a decades-long vision of cinematic narrative that can be compared to that of Alfred Hitchcock or Jean Renoir, but a view of modernity that relates strongly to the ideas of Adorno, Brecht, Benjamin, and Kracauer.
From the sweeping allegorical films of the '20s to the chilly and abstract thrillers of the '50s, Fritz Lang's films, Gunning claims, are among the most precious records of the twentieth century. The Films of Fritz Lang immeasurably enriches our understanding of a great artist who fades away even in being recognized and interpreted, an enigmatic figure at the junction of aesthetics, history, biography and theory.

Customer Reviews:

Great book on Lang.......2006-09-25

Occasionally quirky and idiosyncratic, this rich and thought-provoking book uses wide variety of sources and methodologies to analyse the work of one of the true geniuses of cinema.
Recomended to all students of cinema.

Fritz Lang, a Guide to References and Resources: A Guide to References and Resources (Reference Publication in Film)

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Fritz Lang, a Guide to References and Resources: A Guide to References and Resources (Reference Publication in Film)
E. Ann. Kaplan
Manufacturer: G. K. Hall & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0816180350

Fritz Lang's Metropolis : Cinematic Views of Technology and Fear (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)

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Fritz Lang's Metropolis : Cinematic Views of Technology and Fear (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture)

Manufacturer: Camden House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1571131221

Book Description

The volume provides a broad range of materials and resources for the study of Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis, including both well-known, previously-published critical essays and contributions appearing for the first time here. Lang's film has justifiably become an icon for the complexities of Weimar culture. Among the important general issues it also raises are the relation between ideology and art, the status and authorship of the film text in the entertainment market, the city, the construction of gender, the relation between the human body and the machine in modernity, and the relation between mass and high culture. Minden and Bachmann provide a two-part introduction which provides a context for what follows: Bachmann's part deals with the genesis, production, and contemporary reception of the film, while Minden's defines the problems posed by the text and reviews the solutions to these problems as proposed by later generations of critics. The first part of the book proper then provides selected contemporary reviews, commentary by Fritz Lang and others involved in the making of the film, and extracts from Thea von Harbou's original novel. In the second part, eight modern scholars provide fresh essays on the genesis, promotion, and reception of the film. Approximately half of the material in the volume has never before appeared in print. The volume will appeal to students of German, film, cultural and intellectual history, and social theory.Michael Minden is University Lecturer in German at Cambridge University and a fellow of Jesus College. Holger Bachmann received his Ph.D. from Cambridge on Arthur Schnitzler and film.

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A DISAPPOINTMENT
The essential companion to the film!
Improved Scans and printing
An opportunity wasted

Metropolis
Thea Von Harbou , Fritz Lang , and Forrest J. Ackerman
Manufacturer: James A. Rock & Company Publishers
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0918736358

Book Description

The 75th Anniverary edition of Thea von Harbou's classic, the basis for van Harbou's screenplay for Fritz Lang's ground-breaking 1926 Science Fiction Epic of the same name. This edition of the novel is "stillustrated" with scenes from the Fritz Lang film classic as will as behind the scenes photos photos. Theis edition also includes poster art work, film advertisements, and more including pieces from Forrest J Ackerman's extensive collection of "Metropolis" related artifacts.

Customer Reviews:

A DISAPPOINTMENT.......2005-03-23

I was very disappointed to open this book and find very bad quality illustrations. For $24 I would expect better than this. The illustrations, which are mostly stills from the movie, are about the same quality as newspaper photos from 40 years ago---very low contrast, mostly gray tones. This ruins what should have been (and sounded like) a good book. I take issue with the previous reviewer who said it has "improved scans". If this is the improvement, I'd hate to see what they looked like before. Any book about movies that features Metropolis will have far better quality stills from the movie than this book.
Metropolis is one of my favorite films, and its influence can still be discerned today. Moreover, it is a political metaphor for class divisions that grow ever deeper in America. As long as there is a ruling class and an underclass this movie will stay relevant. Your money would be better spent on the excellent DVD of the fully restored film than for this disappointing book.

The essential companion to the film!.......2003-04-29

Thea von Harbou's book is the indispensable companion to Fritz Lang's immortal film. As most people know, Lang's film was butchered by German and American editors-we have lost about 25% of the film. Essential scenes and many of the subplots were deleted to make it fit within a small time frame. Reality Check: The shorter the film, the more times they can show it, and the more money they collect. Consequently, with the best of restorations, we are seeing a film with as many gaps as a hockey player's smile.

This book, which was serially published before the film's release, fills in the gaps. You get a better sense of the story that Lang and von Harbou are trying the tell. The book allows you to get inside the heads of Freder and co. in a way that the film does not allow. You get a stronger feel for the dystopic milieu that Freder fixes.

This story is essentially mythic, so devotees of Joseph Campbell, George Lucas, and James N. Frey will devour the book and the film. You see the messianic and redemptive elements that makes this story so enduring. This story is one of my favorites, and rates with anything C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein wrote, although not with the same level of craftsmanship.

This particular edition is the 75th anniversary edition. It includes an introductory essay by Forrest J. Ackerman, a Metropolis aficionado. It is illustrated with a few movie sills, and several movie posters from German and American screenings. These illustration selection could have been better, and for crying out loud, next time please do not put the pictures in sideways!

The only drawback with this book is the size-it is 8 ½ by 11, as opposed to the normal novel-book size of 7 by 4. It is awkward to read and hold. It feels in my hands more like a coffee-table picture book than a novel. So it is a little hard to read in this fashion. The translation, however, is readable, and doesn't have an "Germanisms."

I'm not sure if this book "stands alone" apart from the film. It wasn't conceived as such, but was more of a segway for the film. However, the story or the "feel" of the times and perplexities of the dystopic Metropolis. In this sense, the book achieves it's purpous.

Anything that lasts 75 years is worth investigating. I love film and am glad that I own the novel so doubles my cinematic pleasure.

Improved Scans and printing.......2002-10-25

This 75th Anniversary edition of Metropolis had been completely re-scanned and the book reprinted on improved presses (as of 10/2002) so that the interior illustrations and quality are much improved. A very nice present for the holidays and a fitting companion to the recently released digital version of the original film.

An opportunity wasted.......2002-07-30

While it is good to have the novel METROPOLIS available once again, it is a pity the presentation couldn't have been better and more professional. The stills from the film are badly reproduced and look like they went through a poor fax. The posters are in poor black & white instead of color.
In addition, since METROPOLIS is a short novel, it would have been quite easy to add a couple of chapters. One excellent one would have been a reprint of the "Famous Monsters" articles of several decades ago that dealth with the film's special effects. Another article of interest would've been a discussion of the restortation efforts on this film, especially with another restoration to come out this year and, I believe, to be released by Kino Video on DVD next year.

Customer Reviews:

Void of any real content.......2005-06-18

I picked this book up awhile back, it was pretty thick so I looked forward to reading it. Once I got around to it I was pretty suprised. The book lists ever movie Lang made and then gives 4 to 5 pages of text and pictures. The majority of this text just describes scenes from the movie. Now, the question is A) If you havnt watched one of the movies why would you spoil it by reading about its scenes? and B) If you have watched one of the movies why would you read a description of something you've already seen? The sections of the book that are unlike this a very short and hardly worth looking at. To me this seems like a cofee-table book, only much longer, and less usefull.

In-depth Fritz with pictures.......2001-12-26

You already now something of Fritz Lang or you would not be reading this. Lotte Eisner goes further in depth in which Fritz is and what he has accomplished through the years.
There is a small Fritz Lang: Autobiography
Then the book is chronologically divided between the German years 1919-1933 and the American period of 1936-1956. Then it goes to the German years of 1959-60.

Book Description

Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis has justifiably become an icon for the complexities of Weimar culture. Among the important general issues it also raises are the relation between ideology and art, the status and authorship of the film text in the entertainment market, the city, the construction of gender, the relation between the human body and the machine in modernity, and the relation between mass and high culture. This volume provides a broad range of materials and resources for the study of Lang's film, including both well-known, previously published critical essays and contributions appearing for the first time here. The editors provide a two-part introduction that furnishes context for what follows: Bachmann's part deals with thegenesis, production, and contemporary reception of the film, while Minden's defines the problems posed by the text and reviews thesolutions to these problems as proposed by later generations of critics.The first part of the book proper includes selected contemporaryreviews, commentary by Fritz Lang and others involved in the making ofthe film, and extracts from Thea von Harbou's original novel. In thesecond part, eight modern scholars provide fresh essays on the genesis,promotion, and reception of the film. Approximately half of the materialin the volume has never before appeared in print. The volume will appealto students of German, film, cultural and intellectual history, andsocial theory.Michael Minden is University Lecturer in German atCambridge University and a fellow of Jesus College. Holger Bachmannreceived his Ph.D. from Cambridge on Arthur Schnitzler and film.

Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen

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Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen
Save your money
The misrepresentation is mainly by omission

Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen
David J. Levin
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

This highly original book draws on narrative and film theory, psychoanalysis, and musicology to explore the relationship between aesthetics and anti-Semitism in two controversial landmarks in German culture. David Levin argues that Richard Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen and Fritz Lang's 1920s film Die Nibelungen creatively exploit contrasts between good and bad aesthetics to address the question of what is German and what is not. He shows that each work associates a villainous character, portrayed as non-Germanic and Jewish, with the sometimes dramatically awkward act of narration. For both Wagner and Lang, narration--or, in cinematic terms, visual presentation--possesses a typically Jewish potential for manipulation and control. Consistent with this view, Levin shows, the Germanic hero Siegfried is killed in each work by virtue of his unwitting adoption of a narrative role.

Levin begins with an explanation of the book's theoretical foundations and then applies these theories to close readings of, in turn, Wagner's cycle and Lang's film. He concludes by tracing how Germans have dealt with the Nibelungen myths in the wake of the Second World War, paying special attention to Michael Verhoeven's 1989 film The Nasty Girl. His fresh and interdisciplinary approach sheds new light not only on Wagner's Ring and Lang's Die Nibelungen, but also on the ways in which aesthetics can be put to the service of aggression and hatred. The book is an important contribution to scholarship in film and music and also to the broader study of German culture and national identity.

Customer Reviews:

Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang, and the Nibelungen.......2006-10-26

What verbiage! Get to the point!
I'm sorry; I read and re-read and still have no clear idea what the author is trying to say.
The author could have saved much paper by writing one clearly stated sentence--and been done with it.
If I see the word inflected one more time--well I already screamed.
It does have some neat pictures from the Fritz Lang movie.
And while I have seen the Verhoeven Nasty Girl movie (and liked it and found it quite interesting), it seems out of place to put its commentary in a book along side Wagner's Ring, Lang's movie and the book Das Nibelungenlied.

Save your money.......2004-06-08

I heard the author speak at a conference on Wagnerism and Music
overseas, and it contained the gist of this book. Basically the
author is a professional hand-wringer victim, who travels around
the world cadging free meals and lodging by trotting out a very
shop-worn personal rant against Wagner, Lang, and the Nibelung
legend. It reminded me of nothing so much as a very whiny baby
who's grown up to be an equally whiny guy who's found a comfy
living whining at music conferences, and is ultimately a boring,
tiring person who needs to get a real life-and stop whining!

His rant really ticked me off, it is very puerile and boring.

If ya gotta buy the book, buy it used.

The misrepresentation is mainly by omission.......2003-12-29

David Levin's book _Richard Wagner, Fritz Lang and the Nibelungen_ centers around the allegation that Mime in Wagner's opera _Siegfried_, and Alberich in Fritz Lang's 1920 film _Die Nibelungen_ (both dwarfs), are antisemitic representations.

Levin's arguments for these twin accusations will cause jaw-dropping disbelief in anyone familiar with Wagner's or Lang's work. He writes: "Thus Mime is repeatedly shown to be narrating (a terrible thing in Wagner's eyes and works) while Alberich embodies a version of 'Hollywood' cinema (a terrible thing in Lang's eyes and works)."

Anyone who's seen or heard a Wagner opera knows that far from narration being "a terrible thing in Wagner's eyes", it's a Wagner specialty. All Wagner's important characters are incorrigible narrators, to an extent that's notoriously off-putting for newcomers. (Levin later claims that Mime is unique because he narrates events that haven't previously been represented in dramatic form. Nice try, but so do most of Wagner's other characters, from Senta and the Dutchman to Wotan and Gurnemantz.)

This isn't just a minor error. It's actually Levin's whole argument concerning Wagner: that Wagner's character Mime was a narrator, Wagner hated narrators and thought narration was somehow Jewish, therefore Mime is an antisemitic representation and the _Ring_ is an antisemitic parable.

But if we took Levin's test seriously, all the major Wagnerian characters would be Jewish representations, and Wagner would emerge as the most obsessively philosemitic dramatist in history. (Except that according to Levin's test, everyone in Greek tragedy and Japanese Noh drama is Jewish too.)

Levin's accusation against Fritz Lang is that his _Nibelungen_ film, made in Germany in 1920, was antisemitic in its depiction of the dwarf Alberich. Levin gave two grounds for his claim that Lang's Alberich is an antisemitic representation.

First, Levin said that Lang's biographer Lotte Eisner had claimed that critic Siegfried Kracauer had thought that Lang's depiction of Alberich was antisemitic. Unfortunately for Levin, Kracauer's discussion of Lang's film is in print, and Kracauer made no such allegation. More importantly, Kracauer's opinion would only have weight if Kracauer had actually provided arguments or evidence in support of this reading of Lang's film. So Levin's first piece of supporting evidence is unsubstantiated hearsay; that one critic, Kracauer, may or may not have thought Lang's Alberich was a Jewish caricature, but provided no arguments in support of that interpretation, which he probably did not support.

Well, you can't get much more convincing than that!

And Levin doesn't. His other argument is that Alberich took Siegfried into an underground cave and shone an image on the wall: the Nibelungs mining for gold. Levin argued, essentially, that projecting images on a wall (a symbol of filmmaking) is somehow a Jewish thing to do. Therefore Lang's Alberich is an antisemitic Jewish caricature.

Obviously that's not much of an argument, expressed so baldly. So Levin expressed it hairily. Delving into the works of Freud, Klein, Lacan, etc, he engaged in a great deal of oracular pronouncing and general arm-waving. It's probably fair to describe Freudianism as a dead religion now the Freud Wars are over, and Levin did his case little good by tying so much of it to the Freudian tradition.

But against Levin's psychoanalytic flights of fancy there's just one awkward fact. It's that Fritz Lang was of Jewish descent, and he fled Nazi Germany to America (to Hollywood) partly because of politics and partly because of his Jewish ancestry.

How did Levin deal with that awkward fact? The same way he dealt with the awkward fact that _everybody_ in Wagner is a narrator, not just Mime. Levin simply didn't mention it. But at one point he cited a biography of Fritz Lang, so he can't credibly claim ignorance of the awkward fact.

An intellectually honest academic has to mention facts that hurt their thesis, and argue around them. A book that simply buries awkward facts, presumably in the hope that the readers won't know better, is not an intellectually honest book.

Levin does a lot of omitting awkward facts. For example Levin tells us that when Wagner's Siegfried (_Siegfried_ Act II) killed Mime it was because Mime was sort of Jewish; Siegfried heard Mime narrating, and realised that narrators are aliens who should be killed. Next stop, Levin suggests, is the Holocaust.

But Levin can only argue this by omitting the actual content of Mime's speech. Mime was telling Siegfried, inadvertently but truthfully, that he intended to drug Siegfried unconscious and then decapitate him. Thus Siegfried could not risk sleeping, if he wanted to wake up again. In a forest, unattended by a police service with the resources to apprehend murderous stalkers, Siegfried killed Mime in self-defence: not because Mime was a narrator, but because Mime would kill him the next time he fell asleep. (By the way Mime's threat to Siegfried was not even narration. It was exposition. Since "narration" is such a central concept in Levin's book, he should at least know what "narration" means.)

Here, as with his claims about narration in Wagner, and whether Fritz Lang is likely to have made antisemitic movies, Levin used the technique known as "misrepresentation by omission". He also applied this technique in his discussion of Wagner's prose. But although I'd meant to discuss such things as Levin's claim that Siegfried burnt down the world ash tree in order to forge Nothung (a false claim that suggests that Levin may not have actually read the _Ring_ libretto), and many other things, I'm close to the word limit.

Basically this book is nonsense. Wagner students are used to this sort of thing; Wagner brings out this sort of tin-foil-hatted lunacy in some academics. But admirers of Fritz Lang, in the real world a victim rather than a perpetrator of Nazi bigotry, have the right to be a little annoyed by this mildly misleading piece of work.

Cheers!

Customer Reviews:

Fritz Lang would be proud!.......2000-04-05

With this version of "M," Jon J. Muth updates the visual of Fritz Lang's classic screen play. The story is told through Muth's stunning photo-realistic charcoal sketches, that mold Lang's cinematic tale to fit perfectly into a graphic novel format. "M" is yet another example of the heights to which visual and verbal storytelling can soar.

Fritz Lang. His Life and Work. Photographs and Documents.

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1000 EYES OF FRITZ LANG

Fritz Lang. His Life and Work. Photographs and Documents.
Nicole Brunnhuber , and Gabriele Jatho
Manufacturer: Jovis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3931321746
Release Date: 2001-08-02

Book Description

A true cinematic pioneer, Fritz Lang began his film career as a writer and director of silent movies in Germany between the World Wars. His early films, such as Dr. Mabuse, Metropolis, and his first "talkie," "M", have become classics, and positioned him as a leading light in the German film industry in the early 1930s. Fleeing from the Nazis in 1933, Lang went to Hollywood, where he earned legendary status for such films as Man Hunt, The Big Heat, and While the City Sleeps, movies that did much to define the look of film noir. His influence on such filmmakers as Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell, and others is unmistakable. This major retrospective book is copiously illustrated with film stills and photographs from his films as well as from his private life. It includes detailed information about his life and work in both Berlin and Hollywood, and will be the most extensive consideration of his oeuvre to date.

Customer Reviews:

1000 EYES OF FRITZ LANG.......2001-12-09

This is a brilliant large-format book. It charts the Jewish/
Austrian film director's traumatic flight from Nazi Berlin in 1933 to Paris, then to permanent exile in Hollywood. We witness
his struggles with moguls, producers, actors and crew who were
unable to cope with his innate perfectionism. His life and his
films are inextricably entwined. The detailed text is backed
by relevant documents: unstamped passports, love-letters to and from Marlene Dietrich, scrawled film notes, reports of witch-
hunts, and stunning photographs of Lang at work on his many
films. The book is a fitting tribute to our Last Dinosaur. I
highly recommend it to everyone who loves films.

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Well-researched but pointlessly accusatory
A Missed Opportunity
Comprehensive, balanced, intelligent bio of film genius
Terrific biography of the enigmatic Lang
excellent insight

Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast
Patrick McGilligan
Manufacturer: St Martins Pr
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0312132476

Amazon.com

Fritz Lang directed Metropolis, M, Liliom, Fury, The Big Heat, and many other of the cinema's enduring masterpieces. But in Patrick McGilligan's assessment, Lang "lived his life--and cultivated his legend--with the glinted eyes of a maniac." Until his death in 1976, Lang carefully manipulated the events of his past, omitting his first wife's mysterious death, his tyrannical treatment of his associates, and his many liaisons with famous women. In this superbly researched and riveting biography, McGilligan peels Lang's autobiographical fictions to reveal the facts about these omissions as well as his flirtation with Nazism, his alleged Communist affiliations, his sadistic tendencies on the set, and his unparalleled cinematic genius.

Book Description

Named a Notable Book of the Year by The New York Times and one of the Year's Best Nonfiction Books by Publishers Weekly: The definitive life of the dark genius who gave us M and Metropolis.

Customer Reviews:

Well-researched but pointlessly accusatory.......2001-08-08

McGilligan is a demon researcher, digging up facts, comparing contradictory stories, and writing in a very clear and readable prose. But this book amounts to a steady, unrelenting attack on the character of Fritz Lang, and is even needlessly dismissive of many of his movies.

McGilligan suggests Lang murdered his first wife and that he was a Nazi sympathizer; the former is highly unlikely, the latter is demonstrably false. If anyone has a kind word to say about Lang, their comments are relegated to the last few lines of a paragaph that's otherwise devoted to attacking the director. Lang evidently really was a tyrant on the set, but he also made many friends over the course of his career. It's interesting to note that McGilligan didn't bother to interview Michel Piccoli, the French actor whom Lang regarded almost as an unadopted son.

McGilligan seems to have had an agenda, which was to depict Lang as a completely unsympathetic "beast" (as in the title). NO biographer, especially one as ambitious as McGilligan, should ever present their material with a strong bias, positive or negative. McGilligan's work is more important and meaningful than that of, say, Charles Higham, but this kind of bias dramatically reduces the value of his work.

A Missed Opportunity.......2000-06-23

...a serious missed opportunity. McGilligan wrote this bio as a man sitting in judgment, holding Lang to a standard so high that the most PC contemporary couldn't possibly meet it.

Whatever Lang does is wrong, no matter what the circumstances. Take his flight from the Nazis. McGilligan discovers serious contradictions in Lang's account of his strange and frightening confrontation with Goebbels. McGilligan's conclusion? That Lang was a Nazi sympathizer himself, the evidence being a delay of two months in leaving Germany. This is nonsense. The book itself demonstrates that Lang made more anti-Nazi films (one in the midst of the isolationist period) than any other director. Thea von Harbou, on the other hand, a full-bore party member who stuck it out until the bitter end, is handled with kid gloves.

A slight contradiction there, as there is in the account of the blacklist era, where Lang, already burned by one gang of political extremists, is condemned for not adequately defending another, clearly portrayed as dishonest and untrustworthy. The man just can't win.

McGilligan also gets some very well-known Hollywood stories wrong (see the Harry Cohn story on p. 398).

Lang may have been a flawed genius, but he was a genius, and deserves to be treated as such (see "Print the Legend" by Scott Eymas to see how it's done). His definitive biography remains to be written. This ain't it.

(The book also suffers from the standard execrable St. Martins copyediting job: "If it ain't in spellcheck, it don't matter!")

Comprehensive, balanced, intelligent bio of film genius.......2000-05-24

Did you know, dear reader, that Fritz Lang invented the backward countdown that is now a staple of blastoff protocol? We can't ever say art doesn't influence life! It becomes clear though that Mr Lang tried very hard to influence the facts so that some important parts of his lifescript were rewritten to make a better story. For example, his "escape" from Nazi Germany which reads like an inferior Hitchcock. But no less than Braque or Malevich in painting, film artists deserve study too. There are many problems facing the student of the latter however, as the film making process might involve thousands of individuals - the analysis can be quite daunting not to mention whose perspective is the more valid amongst the thousands. Author Mr McGilligan is up to the task. It may be that the qualities of Mr Lang revealed by his research - fastidious attention to detail, healthy ego, obsessive number of takes, authoritarian manner on the job - may be the very ones that made him many enemies as well as a great movie maker. Henry Fonda for one loathed Mr Lang 'til the day he died. Mr McGilligan overcomes the problem of what is "true" by giving the reader the best evidence of alternative viewpoints and invites the reader to choose. For example, Mr Lang may have murdered his first wife, or she may have committed suicide with his gun after discovering him and his mistress flagrante delicto. Either way Mr Lang was in some ways a nasty piece of work. He was also elegant, intelligent, a high decorated Viennese war hero, art collector, painter, of Jewish ancestry on one side of his family, who fully participated in the decadence of 1920's Berlin, and 1930's Hollywood. His appetite for sex and drugs is covered in the book. Even in old age he accepted the "services" of an admiring fan and frequented prostitutes almost to his last days. Nevertheless, the creator of TESTAMENT of DR MABUSE, METROPOLIS, RANCHO NOTORIOUS and THE BIG HEAT was a great enough talent to be paid homage to by GODARD and BUNUEL. Whether your taste runs to the production process of film making, the clash of huge egos, eg, Spencer Tracy V Fritz Lang, gossip, or a part-history of 20th century cinema, or analysis of the life and work of one of its great artists, then this book is a real treat.

Terrific biography of the enigmatic Lang.......1999-06-25

Mr McGilligan has brought his usual exhaustive research to this book about the Man Who Made METROPOLIS. Lang has long been an enigmatic character in the film world, always quick to reinvent his own history through the numerous interviews he has done over the years, most notably with Peter Bogdanovich in the book FRITZ LANG IN AMERICA. McGilligan uncovers much new material on Lang, a man who seems to have had just as dark a side as some of the characters in his films. Interestingly, the author seems to have discovered that he didn't actually like the director much as he researched the book! FRITZ LANG: THE NATURE OF THE BEAST is a compelling read.

excellent insight.......1999-04-28

although the "darkness" of lang's life is described, there are aspects of the atriste that give insight into his "pain"..metropolis was discussed at length and the agonies exposed.. good book,easy to read if you have any real interest in the man behind the robot...

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