Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

the audience applauded

Thanks for the memories!

Awesome Movie

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Dr. Mabuse is a master criminal. He and his gang organize a theft of a contract between Holland and Switzerland. In the ensuing market crash, he is able to clean up and then sell when it rebounds after the contract is recovered. In the next scam, he hypnotizes Edgar Hull, son of a rich family, and wins massively gambling against him. Hull is left with a 150k Mark debt despite having no memory of the loss. Prosecutor Von Wenk is investigating a series of similar gambling scams and nobody has any memory of the incidents.I saw the 3 hr 50 version. It is an early silent classic. It brings a dark crime drama to the screen. Director Fritz Lang is pushing the envelop. The running length is a little daunting. Dr. Mabuse is a great character. I like the movie whenever he's on the screen. The protagonist Von Wenk doesn't show up until much later and isn't quite as compelling. There is the memorable circular gambling stage but Lang could have done more with that. There are many differences from more modern films. It would definitely be much tighter if made now. There is plenty of great work. This is exceptional for its time.

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler is a 4 hour long film, making this the longest film I've ever seen as of this writing. Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) and his gang are planning to pull a huge heist in money using Mabuse's telepathic abilities. But Mabuse is up against state attorney Norbert Von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) who is investigating the strange happenings in Berlin. The story comes in two parts and it's a long one. Klein-Rogge does a great job as Mabuse who would later reprise his role in the next film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Mabuse's telepathic abilities as well as his abilities to take away someone else's will create a terrifying villain. This film is great. It's a long movie but if you find some extra time on your hands give it a watch.

I really urge you to watch this, but watch beyond the caper, watch the character beyond the simply nefarious evil mastermind that he appears as, and you'll be stunned with the the complexity of forces at work; at the center is a man who - having mastered the mind - can guide vision into shaping worlds and, from the inverse point-of-view of the unwitting victims, the shaped world as the stage of some indecipherable, chaotic spiel.So what this really is, is the precursor of film noir. The genre as later assumed by American hands - once Germans fled there - transferred Mabuse out of sight, but the fundamental movement remains: we had to assume the notion that somewhere, on a cosmic station above, the images that down here formed reality were being controlled and manipulated. What the protagonists in these films experienced as a world of fertile, opportunous chaos, and would therefore exploit to their own advantage, was eventually revealed to be a chimera of the mind led astray; the world was being supervised and kept in ledgers all along.This is pretty amazing stuff to have then; we can see the manipulator inside the manipulated world, and the motions that bring consequences on both ends of the illusion. The first scene shows Mabuse dealing cards with on them the faces of the players, the actors who are about to perform in the orchestrated fiction - Mabuse's inside the film, and also Lang's film about Mabuse. And there is a woman who is our surrogate viewer in all this; she watches the gamblers from a distance, searching faces for thrills and sensations. All this touches at the heart of self-referential cinema in ways that still astound by how erudite, how in-sightful. Viewers who are looking for films about the mind weaving films will be delighted. There is one scene that will be absolutely unequaled in film until the second great cinema of Resnais and Tarkovsky some forty years later. It shows Mabuse operating an illusion on stage before a packed theater; the entire audience watches transfixed at people magically walking out of a screen into the middle of the auditorium - and vanishing at a snap of the fingers - none of them realizing the confrontation that is actually playing out within the fantasy.But there is an extra layer that further elevates this. So what is perceived by the players as unluck or the chance turn of a card, from our double perspective rooted in Mabuse's mind is revealed as part of the same, decisive plan. Yet Mabuse is not a godlike presence, he is steeped in human passions; icy but on occasion petulant, seething, lusting, the mask full of emotional cracks.So, on one level we have a controlled reality as a puppet show of absurdities, but on the other end finally we get a glimpse of the mind cracking under the weight of what it must control, under the burden of the operated illusion. The final vision is a nightmare where these controlled images animate themselves against their tyrant. Tellingly it happens in a locked room; the blind people that were tasked by Mabuse to deal with his fortunes, in fact his counterfeit fortunes, now transform into apparitions of guilt.Few films have so deeply influenced our cinematic vision, from Vertigo to Lynch. It has been since disguised and embellished, but it's revealed here for the first time.

Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Part one of Fritz Lang's epic two part series as Dr. Mabuse making a potion that will allow him to rob people at the card table but soon one of his former victims and the State Attorney are hot on his trail. Needless to say, this thing is masterfully directed by Lang who builds the perfect underworld and allows a really beautiful and exciting film to take place. The cinematography is also brilliant and the performances are nice as well. There's a bit of a dry spot towards the end but the climax is perfectly executed to make way for part two.Dr. Mabuse: King of Crime (1922) *** (out of 4) Part two of Lang's epic has Dr. Mabuse slowly coming unraveled. I found the first part of the film to be more entertaining overall but the ending to this part can't be topped as it shows Lang in an early stage doing something that would later be seen in M. The ending inside the tunnel and the follow up of Mabuse being "haunted" contains terrific atmosphere and manages to be quite creepy as well. However, the first part of this film really drags in spots mainly because the camera is taken off Mabuse and centers on the other characters, none of which are as interesting as Mabuse. With the two films running nearly four-hours, Lang manages to make a very impressive epic, although some of this could have used some editing.