5 Great Directors From 5 Great Filmmaking Nations
4. Germany Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang was one of Germanys earliest auteurs, having written and directed almost all of his films produced in his home nation. It also becomes apparentin some diverged waythat Lang had control over the writing in his Hollywood productions, too.
To demonstrate this idea, take a good look at Spione (1928) and The Big Heat (1953); both have a potency that disallows what is commonly known as the femme fatale, and, because of this, relish in blissful deceit. Its entirely possible that Lang wrought Sydney Boehms screenplay into something less bourgeois than his other commitments to paper, which includes the fraudulent High Wall (1947).
Born in Vienna in 1890, Lang studied architecture and engineering at the Vienna University of Technology before he left in 1913 to study painting in Paris, where he became aware of the new currents. Still the most astonishing cinematic treatment of legends, Langs "Die Nibelugen" saga Siegfried and Kriemhelds Revenge (1924) pioneered the mystical grand narrative, producing the link between imagination and human memory. Even Langs now-antique special effects are wondrous in ways that have nothing to do with improved technology and everything to do with artistry.
Langs Metropolis (1927) is the mother and father of all science-fiction. Lang's cut ran over two and a half hours. After its premiere, the movie was trimmed by 40 minutes, then shortened again and re-edited for American release. For 75 years, it has existed as a magnificent ruin. (Commercial cuts acted on Metropolis "as winds, rain, barbarians, etc., do upon classical edifice," Stan Brakhage once observed.)
In a suitably epic archival undertaking, all the surviving material was culled to create a restoration, which represents about 80 percent of Lang's version and returns his narrative structure (reintegrating lost subplots and extending familiar sequences) while it revives the original score.
Like most other spidery aesthetes, Lang encountered problems when refused full artistic control over his pictures. (His acting role in Godards wonderful Le Mépris suggests as much.) M (1931), Langs first "talkie," was almost abandoned before production because Stakken studio denied him a space to shoot it. That, added to the life-threatening pressure from the Nazi party makes Ms creationa miracle in itself. No less of a feat, then, is it, that M would become one of the most cinematically laborious films of the 20th century.
What perplexes me most about Lang is that he actually garnered more respect in his day than he ever did after it. I could write an entire article listing the influences of these magnificent directors, but has anyone had the ability to charm Alfred Hitchcock, Luis Buñuel and Stanley Kubrick and into filmmaking, other than Lang?