![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Saturday, 9 August 2008 08:47 pm
Review: "Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler"
My folks had never heard of the six-film, multi-decade Mabuse franchise, and I knew of it only from Netflix. But having enjoyed Metropolis and M (hm, Fritz Lang seems hooked on a consonant) and confirmed its general appeal from IMDb, I figured it was worth a look.
I think the most significant stumbling block to people watching the first film is not its extreme age, silence, or foreignness, but its length. It comes in two discs; Netflix labels the first "2 hr 20 min" and the second "140 min" (same difference). Actually, the first is 2 hours and 35 minutes and the second is 1 hour and 55 minutes, so a little shorter overall than they said, but still 4 1/2 hours. I split my viewing over two days, and judging from the post-intermission credits, so did theater audiences. Good thing the included music, composed decades later but still appropriate to the era, is excellent.
Might I note an advantage that silents have over talkies: ease of translation. I probably realized this with Metropolis, but I needed a reminder. Silents have no issues with timing-sensitive dubbing. Only writing gets subtitled, and you probably don't want to look hard at the original anyway. (If you're that curious, you can pause, but given how long words stayed on screen back then, you might not need to.) The other main advantage that comes to mind is the chance to have some stylized intertitles, as done in both the Lang silents I've seen.
There are many valid ways to characterize the movie, among them a period piece, a crime drama, a psychological thriller, and a morality play. The last one is partly evident from the intertitles splitting the story into acts. Maybe "opera" would be a better term.
It certainly has an opera villain. "Gambler" is kind of ironic: you might as well summarize Daniel Plainview as a milkshake drinker. Psychoanalyst Mabuse cheats, steals, manipulates stocks, surreptitiously affects international affairs, abducts, betrays, murders, and deliberately drives people to suicide -- an offense so rare and terrible I know no short way to say it. Oh, and he can hypnotize just by staring at the back of the target's head. Most of these things are quite optional for him and do nothing to make him feel good, yet he has no regrets.
The doctor was conceived as the worst kind of Ubermensch ("There is no love, only passion! There is no luck, only the will to gain power!"). People later saw him as a forerunner of Hitler, but even Hitler had more of a heart. Mabuse is better likened to contemporary movie monsters, or even the devil himself. He's now my favorite villain from among silent films and foreign films, tho that may change with experience.
As you can imagine, the story is unusually grueling for the time, garnering no less than a PG-13 by today's standards. It's also rather sophisticated. At least, I found the first half confusing at times. Maybe I was just slow about seeing thru the many disguises of Mabuse as he went all over Berlin. But really, no matter what look he assumes, a still shot of his cold stare could be useful for birth control. In a pinch, so could his ugly partners in crime, especially when they've drunk themselves gross. The ending is more satisfying than that of The Dark Knight, but of course, we don't see the last of the title character.
It's not my favorite foreign or silent picture, but it's good enough that I'll keep a sequel on my list.
I think the most significant stumbling block to people watching the first film is not its extreme age, silence, or foreignness, but its length. It comes in two discs; Netflix labels the first "2 hr 20 min" and the second "140 min" (same difference). Actually, the first is 2 hours and 35 minutes and the second is 1 hour and 55 minutes, so a little shorter overall than they said, but still 4 1/2 hours. I split my viewing over two days, and judging from the post-intermission credits, so did theater audiences. Good thing the included music, composed decades later but still appropriate to the era, is excellent.
Might I note an advantage that silents have over talkies: ease of translation. I probably realized this with Metropolis, but I needed a reminder. Silents have no issues with timing-sensitive dubbing. Only writing gets subtitled, and you probably don't want to look hard at the original anyway. (If you're that curious, you can pause, but given how long words stayed on screen back then, you might not need to.) The other main advantage that comes to mind is the chance to have some stylized intertitles, as done in both the Lang silents I've seen.
There are many valid ways to characterize the movie, among them a period piece, a crime drama, a psychological thriller, and a morality play. The last one is partly evident from the intertitles splitting the story into acts. Maybe "opera" would be a better term.
It certainly has an opera villain. "Gambler" is kind of ironic: you might as well summarize Daniel Plainview as a milkshake drinker. Psychoanalyst Mabuse cheats, steals, manipulates stocks, surreptitiously affects international affairs, abducts, betrays, murders, and deliberately drives people to suicide -- an offense so rare and terrible I know no short way to say it. Oh, and he can hypnotize just by staring at the back of the target's head. Most of these things are quite optional for him and do nothing to make him feel good, yet he has no regrets.
The doctor was conceived as the worst kind of Ubermensch ("There is no love, only passion! There is no luck, only the will to gain power!"). People later saw him as a forerunner of Hitler, but even Hitler had more of a heart. Mabuse is better likened to contemporary movie monsters, or even the devil himself. He's now my favorite villain from among silent films and foreign films, tho that may change with experience.
As you can imagine, the story is unusually grueling for the time, garnering no less than a PG-13 by today's standards. It's also rather sophisticated. At least, I found the first half confusing at times. Maybe I was just slow about seeing thru the many disguises of Mabuse as he went all over Berlin. But really, no matter what look he assumes, a still shot of his cold stare could be useful for birth control. In a pinch, so could his ugly partners in crime, especially when they've drunk themselves gross. The ending is more satisfying than that of The Dark Knight, but of course, we don't see the last of the title character.
It's not my favorite foreign or silent picture, but it's good enough that I'll keep a sequel on my list.