Motivations for an impromptu Fritz Lang marathon were largely coincidental. Upon picking up Thomas Pynchon’s latest, “Shadow Ticket,” I was compelled by the themes of Antisemitism that ran in the background of certain chapters. While doing research for horror films (it is October, after all), I stumbled upon one of the most daunting titles in all of silent cinema. Somewhere next to Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) was an even older film from the reliable mastermind Fritz Lang. Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922) has permeated pop culture more largely because the director has become an institution in the century since. It’s hard not to see his accomplishments with Metropolis (1927) or M (1931) and see a visionary with a lot to say.
More than the 4.5-hour runtime of The Gambler was my curiosity regarding the larger franchise. Where most series often feel wrapped up within a decade, Lang drew out Mabuse’s arc for decades, running between 1922 and 1960 while presenting something significant and (I’d argue) personal. Going in, I envisioned Lang’s relationship to Mabuse as something similar to Francois Truffaut and Antoine Doinel or Kurt Vonnegut and Kilgore Trout. He was an avatar for the creator, symbolizing something essential to a larger worldview. I wouldn’t exactly call Lang an intentional user of serialization, but there had to be a reason he returned to him at pivotal moments of his career.
While this will focus on The Gambler, I want to briefly touch on why Dr. Mabuse is one of the greatest characters of early cinema. As an Austrian filmmaker, Lang saw the rise of Nazi occupied Germany firsthand. By the time of the second entry, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), he was keen to comment on the rhetoric that real-life versions of Mabuse used to promote hatred and violence. The film is haunting in its own right, at times transcending the comical origins in favor of something meatier. It may feel less thrilling if watched in tandem with The Gambler, but The Testament embodies something crucial in art’s ability to persuade. In fact, The Nazis were quick to ban The Testament for what they deemed harmful rhetoric. In theory, Lang’s finale with The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) was closer to pulp than a warning shot, but it wasn’t above reflecting the traumatic influence of the past and how certain ideologies could be recycled and reclaimed by younger generations.
I had chosen to watch these films, apropos of nothing, during the week when one of the major news stories answered a question one could have about Lang. Why keep returning to Mabuse? World War II was supposed to suppress evil. And yet, as I collected my thoughts at the end of this journey, I was met with articles detailing how members of a young Republican committee had written a lot of controversial rhetoric, including praise for Adolf Hitler. Adding in the vice president refused to condemn these words, it only helps to suggest that Mabuse’s greatest threat wasn’t when he was alive, but how he lives eternally in the ether, occupying minds. Even something as trivial as my loving the style of The Gambler plays into how compelling the lawbreakers are. They validate something that polite society would never accept. We are taught to criticize Mabuse, and yet can’t help envying him.
There is no way to predict that Lang intended to spend so much time with the character as he did, let alone through three very different prisms. Even so, to watch what he did from the jump is to see the next century of supervillain cinema start to take shape. When I watch The Gambler, I am seeing traces of Batman, of a Gotham City that is overrun with German Expressionist architecture and characters who don’t know the meaning of the word flamboyant. While Mabuse is a tad more menacing than campy, there’s still a lot of absurdity at play as Lang goes through amazing set pieces that reflect hunger. This is a young director, not even in the Hollywood system yet, who has so much ambition and scope that you kind of want to give it to him. I know that Metropolis gets all the credit for having a fuller vision, but The Gambler is a self-indulgent, naïve exploration of hubris both on screen and behind.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the detail most likely to keep viewers away. A runtime of 4.5 hours would be enough to make anyone procrastinate, especially given that it’s a German silent film whose title cards push the limits of formatting. Except for directors like Bela Tarr, nothing will ever be as daunting as The Gambler. Like the title, it ironically asks a lot of risk from the audience to seek unforeseen gains. I’m sure many could jump at intermission, but there’s still something to seeing this full vision that is unlike any other.
Despite my familiarity with older cinema, I was caught off guard by the opening exchange. Before Lang has settled into his environment, he introduces a doctor talking to his assistant about how he’s doing cocaine again. When pressured to quit, he insists that the man commit suicide for being such a bother. It’s a moment that would seem transgressive even today, and yet it’s the opening scene of a 1922 epic that pushes the boundaries of good taste over and over.
The doctor, Mabuse, wouldn’t be out of place in a Universal Horror title a decade later. He has the charming pseudoscience down pat while possessing telekinetic abilities that could make his robberies all the more fortuitous. While scenes where he shapeshifts between multiple personas add to the underlying fear of his schemes, there’s something both recognizable and mysterious about him. The cat and mouse structure is more reminiscent of later comic book narratives like The Dark Knight (2008) than anything I’ve seen from that time. Even something as banal as playing cards produces this multi-tiered attack on the supporting cast’s innocence that makes one start to doubt their own psychology.
It goes without saying, but Lang was also a master of visual technique that at times flew with reckless abandon. His use of a fish-eye lens allows wide shots to zoom in, focusing on the disturbing make-up designs of Mabuse as he looks closer to an extra in a Boris Karloff feature. The gambling scene that ends Part One is chock full of these images that are nothing more than an old man asking people to play cards, and yet it’s profoundly manipulative. Very little is going on except this close-up, and it still knows how to get under your skin because, on some level, the man we’re staring at is both real but also not a genuine avatar of who we think we know.
I may also prefer The Gambler to later entries because of how it constructs a larger society. While the central conflict creates tension, there are side plots that include stops over at mental asylums and scorned lovers that make the madness all the more lived in. When characters come face to face with Mabuse’s crimes, they are forced to confront a morality tale that questions life’s very existence. They must consider how he keeps surviving in the wild. Add in that he’s at some points a ghost/spirit who haunts his subjects, and you get a character who is both easy to get wrong but also symbolizes Lang’s limitless potential.
Maybe part of the reason this resonates with me is because of how contemporary a lot of it still feels. I recognize that it probably got away with the profane nature because it was a German film in the 1920s, and that evil was punished (for now). However, there must’ve been some pearl-clutching at Mabuse’s senseless behavior at the time. The worry of a man with a harmful message being able to spread it far beyond the limits of mass media must’ve been even more disturbing in an age before the internet connected billions and made truth secondary to visiting the information superhighway.
For those who want a better analog to modern conflict, I recommend jumping to the more streamlined The Testament. It may actually behoove those not drawn into cartoonish style and over-the-top allegories to watch one that’s more in line with the horror cinema of the time. It still carries the urgency of Lang’s dramatic intent, but it throws a wrench in logic. The Gambler, for all of its grandeur, at least has a practicality for most of the runtime for Mabuse to contrast with. By The Testament, he is closer to subliminal messaging you hear walking down the street.
At the end of my journey, I have to ask… what was so appealing about Mabuse to Lang that he kept returning to him? Unlike, say, “The Godfather” with Francis Ford Coppola, I have to believe he didn’t make the sequels initially for profit. Lang was always in touch with exploring racism and violence in the world, and I’d argue there might be more urgent examples of this throughout his career. Yet, Dr. Mabuse as a character has returned at the start, middle, and end of his portfolio. If he’s Lang’s Doinel, what is he saying about the filmmaker’s worldview?
For me, the answer is that evil may take on physical forms, but it’s ultimately symbolic and interpretive. One person’s values can become a cult and, as seen with Nazi occupied Germany in the 1930s, could lead to real-world harm. I’m still not sure that The Gambler is a response to anything of that nature, though it likely didn’t help following World War I and a time of economic downturn, where suggestive messaging could take hold more easily. The Testament seems the most obvious in how Mabuse symbolizes that downturn, though I’d argue The Thousand Eyes is the most curious wrinkle, less because it’s good and more because, in its own chintzy way, it is saying that history repeats itself and we must be careful how we respond. As far as messages to end a career on, Lang nailed it.
But if one wants to forgo history lessons and academic depth, The Gambler remains the most accessible entry for my money. It goes beyond any real-world allegory and creates a thrilling crime caper that is, genre-wise, all over the place and does so much to thrill the viewer. The reality clashes with the supernatural and creates something almost hallucinatory. The moral of the story may be way too obvious, but I’d argue the ride is worth the payoff. Lang may have made more focused movies, but the energy of a young filmmaker with a lot to prove drives The Gambler to another level of cinematic excellence. He may not have been fully able to predict the direction that evil went over the next 40 years, but he sure had more of an idea than anyone else did. The fact that he stuck it in such a raucous epic is a testament to his superior talents.
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