Die Spinnen
September 2nd, 2006
I won’t lie. Fritz Lang’s two-parter Die Spinnen is only recommended if you’ve seen most of his other movies already and can’t wait to see one of his earliest, from 1919/20. The image quality is as lousy as you’d expect–the picture is flickering with scratches–and the score is organ-only. Still, the pulpy adventure yarn is pretty watchable. It concerns Kay Hoog, a proto-Indiana Jones (Carl de Vogt), who travels to a lost Inca city and is persued by a shadowy crime organization known as the Spiders. Lil Dagover plays a Sun Priestress. Lang had projected two more sequels (the first adventure franchise?) but after he hooked up with Thea von Harbou, he went on to Destiny.
Der Müde Tod
May 29th, 2006
Whoa–I started to think of Fritz Lang as a bit of a hack who happened to be in the right place at the right time, but this 1921 flick (The Weary Death, usually translated as Destiny) restored some of my faith. The story, courtesy of Thea von Harbou, is great maudlin melodrama, but the images are fantastic. With Lil Dagover, Walter Janssen, Bernhard Goetzke and Rudolf Klein-Rogge.
