The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse | |
|---|---|
 The Testament of Dr Mabuse Poster |
|
| Directed by | Fritz Lang |
| Produced by | Fritz Lang Seymour Nebenzal |
| Written by | Thea von Harbou Fritz Lang Norbert Jacques (novel) |
| Starring | Rudolf Klein-Rogge Otto Wernicke Oscar Beregi Sr. |
| Release date(s) |  24 August 1933 April 21, 1933 (French version) |
| Running time | 122 min |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Preceded by | Dr. Mabuse the Gambler |
| Followed by | The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) is a 1933 movie by director Fritz Lang, a sequel to Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler. The film was Lang's second sound film and the second to feature Dr. Mabuse as a villain. Many modern filmmakers, including Claude Chabrol, have named Testament as the movie which inspired them in turn to make films.
Contents |
[edit] Plot synopsis
 |
All or part of this article may be confusing or unclear. Please help clarify the article. Suggestions may be on the talk page. |
The film opens in a noisy print shop, where a young man is spying on the activities. He is detected but manages to elude the criminal's attacks. He, now revealed to be a disgraced police detective named Hofmeister, phones his former superior Inspector Lohmann and frantically tells him that he has discovered a huge criminal conspiracy and found out the name of the head man. However, before he can disclose the name, the lights got out, shots are fired and Hofmeister is heard singing, driven to madness. Hofmeister vanishes and when he is found later, starts singing every time he feels watched, and is institutionalised at Professor Baum's asylum.
Baum (Oscar Beregi) also introduces the parallel case of Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), the ingenious criminal and hypnotist who ten years earlier went mad. Mabuse spends his days writing detailed plans for crimes, his Testament; at the same time, a criminal gang is committing crimes according to "the plans of the Doctor", with whom they confer only from behind a curtain. When Baum's colleague Kramm by chance discovers that recent crimes exactly mirror Mabuse's writings, he ends up shot by the gang's execution squad, Hardy and Bredow. Various clues lead Lohmann to suspect Mabuse's involvement, but when he arrives at the asylum, Baum reveals that Mabuse has just died. When Lohman disparagingly talks about Mabuse the criminal, Baum emphatically speaks about "Mabuse the genius".
Later, Baum studies Mabuse's writings and appears to confer with his ghost, which speaks about a "unlimited reign of crime" and seems to merge with the Professor's silhouette. On the same night, the hidden Mabuse confers with the sections of his organisation, preparing various crimes such as an attack on a chemical plant, robbing a bank, counterfeiting, poisoning water and destroying harvests.
One of the gang members, engineer Thomas Kent is torn between his criminal work, to which he was driven by his need for money, and his love for a young woman named Lilli (Wera Liessem). In particular, he feels uneasy about murder, as he had been jailed for killing his lover and his best friend, and repeatedly expresses his feelings, despite warning by his fellow gangsters and the hidden Mabuse. He finally confesses his past and his current situation to Lilli. The two decide to inform the police but before they can they are abducted by the execution squad and locked in the room with the curtain, where the hidden Mabuse announces their death sentence. They discover that the curtain only contains a loud speaker and that a bomb is ticking. After several attempts failed, they flood the place and break free.
Meanwhile the police are besieging a flat, where several gang members, including Hardy and Bredow, are staying. After a wild shootout, Hardy commits suicide while the other gangsters surrender. As Bredow testifies that they apprehended Dr. Kramm in the vicinity of the asylum, Lohman arranges a confrontation between the gangsters and the Professor, which proves inconclusive. However, Baum's reaction to Kent's sudden appearance at the police raises makes Lohman suspicious. Lohmann and Kent visit the asylum, where they discover that Baum is the man behind the curtain and has planned an attack on a chemical plant on this night. They race to the plant and discover Baum watching from afar. Baum flees back to the asylum with Lohmann and Kent in hot pursuit.
Directed by Mabuse's ghost, Baum visits Hofmeister in his cell and introduces himself as Dr. Mabuse, thereby breaking Hofmeister's shock. Baum tries to kill Hofmeister but is stopped by guards, just as Lohmann and Kent arrive. The last scene shows the insane Baum in the cell, tearing Mabuse's writings to shreds.
[edit] Cast
- Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Dr. Mabuse
- Otto Wernicke as Inspector Lohmann
- Karl Meixner as Hofmeister
- Oscar Beregi Sr. as Professor Baum
- Theodor Loos as Dr. Kramm
- Gustav Diessl as Thomas Kent
- Wera Liessem as Lilli
- Rudolf Schündler as Hardy
- Oskar Höcker as Bredow
- Theo Lingen as Karetzki
- Hadrian Maria Netto as Nicolai Griforiew
- Camilla Spira as Juwelen-Anna
[edit] Themes and subtexts
The film is a sophisticated work, and the best known movie in the series. It was only Lang's second sound film (the first being M) but its use of sound was highly advanced; a repeated motif in the film is sound that is misidentified by either the characters or the audience (a pocketwatch spring unwinding, intended to simulate a telephone's ring; a gunshot masked by the sound of car horns; a ticking that seems to be a bomb until we see the spoon tapping on an eggshell). It's a motif that fits neatly in with a larger theme of unsuccessful communication of all kinds. Lang also drew on the success of M by bringing back its police detective hero, Inspector Karl Lohmann, to pursue Mabuse. He also perfects the use of leitmotif he had introduced in M.
The film (along with its predecessor M) was banned in Nazi Germany on orders of Joseph Goebbels, as it was its content and terms like "the reign of crime" were considered disconcerting and possibly referring to the rise of Nazism.
[edit] French version
Testament was an extremely early sound film, and the cost of adding sound to a movie was still expensive; it was so expensive, in fact, that it was cheaper to actually film the same script with a different cast in a different language than to redub the German version into some other language. This was done with Testament; a German version and a French version were shot at the same time, using the same sets, but with two different casts. The only two actors who appeared in both movies were Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Mabuse), who had few lines, and Karl Meixner (Hofmeister), who spoke both German and French.
[edit] Remake
The film was remade under the same title by Werner Klingler in 1962. The remake was the forth installment of the West German Mabuse series of the 1960s.
[edit] External links
- The Testament of Dr. Mabuse at the Internet Movie Database
- Criterion Collection essay by Tom Gunning
|
||||||||||||||||||||
