Dr. Mabuse the Gambler

MOVIE #1,703 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.07.24 FRITZ LANG: DIRECTOR FOCUS This is clearly the best Fritz Lang film to date. It’s also a 4½-hour long silent movie. In a nutshell, this is about an insane shaman-psychoanalyst who swindles the stock market and cheats at gambling with his mental prowess. He’s basically a proto-Scanner without all the exploding peoples’ heads business. Much like Dana Carvey in 2002’s The Master of Disguise, Rudolf Klein-Rogge (the titular Dr. Mabuse) is a real, uh, master of disguise. He likes playing dress-up. But all kidding aside this is an all-time silent era performance and I was struck by how universal, almost contemporary it felt. He just leans into the madness of this villain in a way that transcends the 100+ years gap that the modern viewer is tasked with grappling.

The movie is littered with spectacular visuals and incredible set designs, which — given the run-time — can seem a little far and few between, but are nevertheless beautiful…




Lang’s next effort is an even longer and more epic work: the closer to 5-hour, The Nibelungs. I’ll be breaking this entry up into two posts for the sake of my sanity. Stay tuned.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,702 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,704 ⫸

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Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (German: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler) is the first film in the Dr. Mabuse series about the character Doctor Mabuse who featured in the novels of Norbert Jacques. It was directed by Fritz Lang and released in 1922. The film is silent and would be followed by the sound sequels The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) and The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). It was released on April 27, 1922.