The Wandering Image

MOVIE #1,557 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 04.19.24 FRITZ LANG: DIRECTOR FOCUS I'm by no means an expert on the era at large (or at small) but Lang is clearly the most cinematic director of the silent age that I've come across. There are some stunning mountain shots alongside other large-scale exteriors that I simply haven't seen accomplished in soundless cinema. I realize there are many notable examples from across the glove — like Griffith and Eisenstein — but many remain blindspots for me at this juncture. I've really only seen Hitchcock's silent output and a small, mostly random handful of other works, and they just pale in comparison visually. And I also realized that the best of Lang’s filmography, in both the sound and silent formats, is yet to come

Thought lost until the mid 1980s, the cut of this film that I watched offers a helpful explanation that this surviving footage is a little more than half the original version (see screenshot above). Picking up the plot on these 100+ year movies can be tricky enough when they're not missing multiple reels of film, so needless to say: I was pretty lost and tuned out quickly. Maybe it's cheating in a way to say that I still enjoyed it on a visceral level but that's how I feel.

---

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,556 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,558 ⫸

---

The Wandering Image (German: Das wandernde Bild) is a 1920 German silent drama film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Mia May, Hans Marr and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. It is also known by the alternative titles of The Wandering Picture and The Wandering Shadow (USA title). It was released on December 25, 1920.