The Films of Fritz Lang

The Films ofFritz Lang Allegories ofVision and Modernity

TOM GUNNING

A BFt book published by Palgrave Macmillan Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments IX Introduction: Standing Outside the Films - Emblems The Inscribed/Imprinting Hand 1 The Screening Room: 'Strange but True' 4 The Interview and the Clock 8

PART I: Reading the Text of Death - Lang's Silent Allegories: Der müde Tod (1921), Die Nibelungen (1924), Metropolis (1927) 1 The Märchen: Der müde Tod - Death and the Maiden Who Tells the Timely Story of Death? 15 The Allegory ofthe Maiden: Reading and Desire 22 Final Figure: The Look at the Camera 30 2 The Decay ofMyth: Siegfried's Death, Kriemhild's Revenge 34 3 Metropolis: The Dance ofDeath The Allegory ofthe Machine 52 The Universal Language of Silent Film 56 Demons ofEnergy: Who Rules the City of Metropolis? 62 Gothic Modernism: Technology as Modern Magic 64 Oedipal Nightmares, Allegorical Riddles 68 Apocalypse without End, Endings without Conviction 77 Burn Witch Burn 80

PART 11: The Mastery of Crime - Lang's Urban Thrillers: Dr. Mabuse, the GambIer (1922), Spies (1928), The Testament ofDr. Mabuse (1932) 4 Mabuse, Grand Enunciator: Control and Co-ordination The Sensation-film and the Spaces ofModernity 87 The Terrain ofModernity: Space, Time and the Mastery of Communication 94 The Mechanical Production of Counterfeit Identity 99 The Grand Enunciator and the Power of the Gaze 108 Playing with Time 113 5 Haghi The Evil Genius/Mauvais genie 117 The Staging of Desire 123 Building Identity from Fragments 127 Finale: Bringing Down the House 134 VI CONTENTS

6 The Testament 01 Dr. Mabllse A Message, Condemned to Death, Has Escaped 139 'Pay No Attention to that Man behind the Curtain' 146 The Same Old Song, but with a Different Meaning (Since You've Been Gone) 155

PART III: Hinge -M (I93 1) 7 M: The City Haunted by Demonie Desire 'Oh Mother I Am Lost!' The Murder of Eisie Beckmann 163 Formed in Fright: The Topography of Terror 175 Der Schwarze Mann 184 The People vs Hans Beckert 192

PART IV: Fritz Lang's America - The Sodal Trilogy: FlIry (1936), YOIl Only Live Once (1937), YOIl and Me (1938) 8 You Ought to Be in Pictures: Liliom and FlIry The Flight ofthe Refugee 203 Meet lohn Doe: Lang Arrives in America 212 A Whole Town of lohn Does: The Lynching of loe Wilson 219 'You Can Have the Strand in Your Own Town': loe Wilson's Private Theatre 226 9 YOIl Only Live Once The Paradoxes ofVision 235 Identities Assembled and Expunged in a Carceral Society 245 The Re-educating of loan Graham Taylor 250 10 YOIl and Me A 'Cinematic Hash': Experimental Cross-breeding among the Hollywood Genres 261 You Can Not Get Something for Nothing 272

PART V: Framing Desire: The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), The Seeret Beyond the Door (1948), HOllse by the River (1950) 11 The Woman in the Window: Cydes ofDesire Prelude to Nightmare: Shop Window Sweetheart 283 The Paranoid World Made of Glass 293 Eternal Return 299 12 Scarlet Street: Life Is a Nightmare Mirror Images 307 The Fourteen-Carat, Seventeen-Iewel Cashier 313 The Artist's Signature and the Mourning Play ofthe Melancholy Baby 323 No Perspective: The Cancelling Out of Chris Cross 332 13 Seeret Beyond the Door: Broken Frames and Piercing Gazes Pastiche and Palimpsest 340 Speaking and Seeing: A Woman's View and Voice 349 Unlocking Bluebeard's Seventh Room 354 Architecture of Doom 362 CONTENTS vii

14 Coda: House by the River Effacing the Traces and Writing the Abject 368 The Flow ofthe Writer's Hand 378

PART VI: The 50s Exposes and Lang's Last Testament: The Blue Gardenia (1953), The Big Heat (1953), While the City Sleeps (1955), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956), The Thousand Eyes ofDr. Mabuse (1960) 15 The Blue Gardenia Contradictions of a Decade 389 Offthe Hook 395 Booking Cinderella 402 16 The Big Heat Circuits of Corruption 408 The Construction ofAuthority 415 Rogue Cop 421 The Big Heat Falls Alike on the lust and the Unjust 428 17 While the City Sleeps/Beyond a Reasonable Doubt The News is Made at Night 434 Television, Person to Person 439 Inside Out 447 18 The Circle Closes on the Last Mabuse Return to the Scene of the Crime 457 Recycled Vision, Feigned Blindness, Total Exposure 465 The Site ofRemembering and Forgetting in Late Modernity 471 The Death ofCinema, Cinema and Death 475 Notes 481 Bibliography 507 Index 519