The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse) is a 1933 movie by director Fritz Lang, his second sound film, and the second to feature the villain Dr. Mabuse (if the first, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, is counted as one movie in two parts rather than as two films). Many modern filmmakers, including Claude Chabrol, have named Testament as the movie which inspired them in turn to make films.

Synopsis

The film begins with the continuous, cacophonous roar of machinery, as the camera moves slowly through a cluttered workshop of some kind, and finally pans down to show us a clearly nervous young man hiding behind a large trunk with a gun in his hand. Workmen in the shop become aware of his presence, but allow him to think he is leaving undetected until he is outside, when they try to kill him by dropping masonry on him from a great height, and by rolling a barrel at him that explodes upon impact, "accidents" he narrowly avoids.

The next scene fades in with Inspector Lohmann (played by Otto Wernicke) singing opera music as he prepares to leave for the day. His departure is interrupted by a call from the young man we saw in the previous scene, who turns out to be a disgraced police detective named Hofmeister. Despite Lohmann's angry hanging-up, Hofmeister, wound-up and jumping at shadows, calls back trying to tell Lohmann he's been following a huge criminal conspiracy, much larger than the mere counterfeiting ring he at first thought it to be, and he's finally learned the name of the head man who controls the operation. However, before he can disclose the name, Hofmeister's pursuers catch up to him; the lights go out; shots are fired in the dark, and Lohmann's frantic calls for Hofmeister to answer him are finally met ... with the sound of Hofmeister over the phone, singing. Lohmann now needs to find Hofmeister and get the name of the criminal mastermind.

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 makes many references to the rise of Nazism and was banned in Germany by Joseph Goebbels. Notable citations from the film include "the reign of terror" and "the reign of crime".

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.

Cast notes

Klein-Rogge also starred in Lang's Metropolis, as the mad scientist Rotwang.

External links

Criterion Collection essay by Tom Gunning

Fritz Lang

Lang in the 1950's

Born November 5 1890
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died July 2 1976 (aged 87)
Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, United States

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Thea Gabriele von Harbou (December 27, 1888 – July 1, 1954) was a German actress and author of Prussian aristocratic origin.

In 1905, she published her first novel in the Deutsche Roman-Zeitung.
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April 21 is the 1st day of the year (2nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 0 days remaining.

Events

753 BC - Romulus and Remus found Rome (traditional).

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19th century - 20th century - 21st century
1900s 1910s 1920s - 1930s - 1940s 1950s 1960s
1930 1931 1932 - 1933 - 1934 1935 1936

Year 1933 (MCMXXXIII
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German language (Deutsch, ] (help info ) ) is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages.
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Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (German: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler) is the first film in the Mabuse series, about the character Doctor Mabuse from the novels of Norbert Jacques, by Fritz Lang from 1922.
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The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Die Tausend Augen des Dr. Mabuse) is a 1960 film made in West Germany. It is the last film of Fritz Lang and concerned the further exploits of Dr.
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-1933- 1934 1935 1936 1937 ^. 1938 ^. 1939 ^. 1940 ^. 1941 ^. 1942 ^. 1943

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sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before reliable synchronization was made
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villain is an "evil" character in a story, whether an historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain is the bad guy, the characters who fight against the hero. A female villain is sometimes called a villainess.
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Doctor Mabuse is a fictional character created by Norbert Jacques, made famous by the three films Austrian director Fritz Lang made about him over a period of almost 40 years. Although the character was designed to deliberately mimic pulp-style villains in the mold of Dr.
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Claude Chabrol (French IPA: [klod ʃa'bʁɔl]) (born June 24, 1930, Paris) is a French film director and has become well-known since his first film, Le Beau Serge
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Otto Karl Robert Wernicke (September 30, 1893 – November 7, 1965) was a German actor. He was best known for his role as police inspector Karl Lohmann in the two Fritz Lang films M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
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worldwide view of the subject.
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A counterfeit is an imitation that is made usually with the intent to deceptively represent its content or origins.
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M is a 1931 German film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou. It was Lang's first sound film, although he had directed over a dozen films previously including Metropolis.
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Inspector Karl "Tubby" Lohmann is a fictional character, played by Otto Wernicke, in two Fritz Lang movies; He first in M, where he proved so popular he was brought back in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse.
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For the album by dredg, see Leitmotif (album).

A leitmotif (IPA pronunciation: [laɪt məʊ tɪəf]) (also leitmotiv; lit.
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Nazism, National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), refers primarily to the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party, German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or
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Paul Joseph Goebbels (German pronunciation: IPA: [ˈɡœbl̩s]; English generally IPA: /ˈɡɝbəlz/
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Rudolf Klein-Rogge (November 24 1888–April 30 1955) was a German stage and film actor of the 1920s and 30s. He is best known for his roles as the mad scientist Rotwang in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, and as the title character in Lang's Dr. Mabuse series.
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Metropolis is a silent science fiction film created by the famed Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. It was produced in Germany in the Babelsberg Studios and released in 1927 during the height of the Weimar
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