Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (Austrian German:[ˈfriːdrɪçˈkrɪsti̯a(ː)nˈantɔnˈlaŋ]; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), better known asFritz Lang (Austrian German:[ˈfrɪtsˈlaŋ]), was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.[2] One of the best-knownémigrés from Germany's school ofExpressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by theBritish Film Institute.[3] He has been cited as one of the most influential filmmakers of all time.[4]
Lang's work spans five decades, from the Expressionist silent films of his first German creative period to his short stay in Paris and his work as a Hollywood director to his last three films made in Germany.[5] Lang's most celebrated films include the futuristic science-fiction filmMetropolis (1927) and the influentialM (1931), afilm noir precursor. His 1929 filmWoman in the Moon showcased the use of amulti-stage rocket, and also pioneered the concept of arocketlaunch pad (a rocket standing upright against a tall building before launch having been slowly rolled into place) and the rocket-launchcountdown clock.[6][7]
Lang was born in Vienna, as the second son of Anton Lang (1860–1940),[8] an architect and construction company manager, and his wife Pauline "Paula" Lang (née Schlesinger; 1864–1920). There is no documented evidence of the true identity of Anton Lang's biological father; he was born as an illegitimate child of a maid from Moravia.[9] Anton Lang was described as a "lapsed Catholic," and was a builder and partner in Honus and Lang, an important construction company[10][11] Pauline Lang was bornJewish and converted to Catholicism. Fritz Lang was baptized on December 28, 1890, at theSchottenkirche in Vienna.[12] He had an elder brother, Adolf (1884–1961).[13]
Lang's father was ofMoravian descent.[14] At one point, he noted that he was "born [a]Catholic and very puritan".[15] Ultimately describing himself as anatheist, Lang believed that religion was important for teaching ethics.[16][17][18]
After finishing school, Lang briefly attended theTechnical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art. He left Vienna in 1910 to travel throughout Europe and Africa, later Asia and thePacific area. In 1913, he studied painting in Paris. He was arrested by the French authorities as an "enemy alien," but escaped to Vienna, where he was drafted into the Imperial Austrian Army.[19]
At the outbreak ofWorld War I, Lang lived in the house of his parents in Gars am Kamp (both his parents are buried in Gars) in Lower Austria, where he used to paint. After this he returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in theAustrianArmy, fighting in Russia andRomania. Lang was wounded four times and lost sight in his right eye,[20] when he then saw a Max Reinhardt show for injured soldiers and played in a Red Cross revue. For a short period of time he was also located inLjutomer where he stayed withKarol Grossmann where he initially got interested in movies.[21] During his convalescence he began writing plays and simple scenarios with Austrian film directorJoe May devising a two-reel film from a Lang scenario. At the end of the war, Lang began to mingle with the demobilized Berlin artists[22] and was discharged from the army with the rank of lieutenant in 1918. Lang briefly acted in the Viennese theater circuit before being hired as a writer atDecla Film,Erich Pommer's Berlin-based production company.
On 13 February 1919, in the Marriage Registry Office inCharlottenburg, Berlin, Lang married a theater actress named Elisabeth Rosenthal. Rosenthal died of a single gunshot wound in their bathtub on September 25, 1920, the shot[23] deemed to have been fired by Lang's World War IBrowningrevolver.[24][25][26][27] Lang and his future wife Harbou claimed that Rosenthal had shot herself, and Lang and Harbou were charged with failure to render aid. The charge was soon dropped.[28]
Lang started work as a director at the German film studioUFA, and laterNero-Film, just as theExpressionist movement was building. In this first phase of his career, Lang alternated between films such asDer Müde Tod ("The Weary Death") and popular thrillers such asDie Spinnen ("The Spiders"), combining popular genres with Expressionist techniques to create a synthesis of popular entertainment withart cinema.
In 1920, Lang met his future second wife, the writerThea von Harbou through director Joe May. Harbou co-wrote and directed the filmDas wandernde Bild with Lang.[29] She co-wrote every Harbou-Lang film till 1933, includingDr. Mabuse, der Spieler ("Dr. Mabuse the Gambler," 1922 – which ran for over four hours, in two parts in the original version, and was the first in theDr. Mabuse trilogy), the five-hourDie Nibelungen (1924), the dystopian filmMetropolis (1927), and the science fiction filmWoman in the Moon (1929).Metropolis went over budget, to the UFA's detriment. It was a financial flop, as were his last silent filmsSpies (1928) andWoman in the Moon, produced by Lang's own company.[citation needed]
In 1931, independent producerSeymour Nebenzahl hired Lang to directM for Nero-Film. His first"talking" picture, considered by many film scholars to be a masterpiece of the early sound era,M is a story of a child murderer (Peter Lorre in his first starring role) who is hunted down and brought to justice by Berlin's criminal underworld.
Lang was hard to work with. During the climactic final scene inM, Lang allegedly threw Peter Lorre down a flight of stairs in order to give more authenticity to Lorre's battered look.
In the films of his German period, Lang produced an oeuvre that established the characteristics later attributed tofilm noir, with its recurring themes of psychological conflict, paranoia, fate and moral ambiguity.
Lang started having an affair with the Austrian actressGerda Maurus during the filming ofSpione (1928).
At the end of 1932, Lang started filmingThe Testament of Dr. Mabuse. AsAdolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, the new regime banned the film on March 30 as an incitement to public disorder.Testament is occasionally deemed an anti-Nazi film, as Lang had put Nazi phrases into the mouth of the title character. A screening of the film was cancelled byJoseph Goebbels, and it was later banned by theReich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.[30] In banning the film, Goebbels stated that the film "showed that an extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence", and that the film posed a threat to public health and safety.[31]
Throughout his marriage with Harbou, Lang was known for being a philanderer. Two of his lovers of these years includedGerda Maurus, the leading actress in Lang's last silent filmsSpione (1928) andWoman in the Moon (1929), and Lily Latte in 1931.[32] In the early 1930s, Harbou started an affair withAyi Tendulkar, an Indian journalist and student 17 years her junior.[33]
According to Lang, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called Lang to his offices to inform him thatThe Testament of Dr. Mabuse was being banned but, nevertheless, he was so impressed by Lang's abilities as a filmmaker (especiallyMetropolis), that he offered Lang the position of head of German film studio UFA. Lang said it was during that meeting he had decided to leave for Paris – but that the banks had closed by the time the meeting was over. Lang claimed that, after selling his wife's jewelry, he fled by train to Paris that evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind.[34][35][36][37] Despite this, Lang's passport of the time showed that he traveled to and from Germany throughout 1933.[38]
Lang left Berlin permanently on July 31, 1933, four months after his meeting with Goebbels and his initial departure. He moved to Paris,[39] having divorcedThea von Harbou, who stayed behind, earlier in 1933.[40][41]
Lang made twenty-two features in his 20-year American career, working in a variety of genres at every major studio inHollywood, and occasionally producing his films as an independent. He became anaturalized citizen of the United States in 1939.[42]
Signing first withMGM Studios, Lang's crime dramaFury (1936) sawSpencer Tracy cast as a man who is wrongly accused of a crime and nearly killed when a lynch mob sets fire to the jail where he is awaiting trial. However, inFury, he was not allowed to represent black victims in a lynching scenario or to criticize racism, which was his original intention.[43][44] By the timeFury was released, Lang had been involved in the creation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, working withOtto Katz, a Czech Jew who was aComintern spy.[45] He made four films with explicitly anti-Nazi themes,Man Hunt (1941),Hangmen Also Die! (1943),Ministry of Fear (1944) andCloak and Dagger (1946).Man Hunt, wroteDave Kehr in 2009, "may be the best" of the "many interventionist films produced by the Hollywood studios before Pearl Harbor" as it is "clean and concentrated, elegant and precise, pointed without being preachy."[42]
His American films were often compared unfavorably to his earlier works by contemporary critics, although the restrained Expressionism of these films is now seen as integral to the emergence and evolution of American genre cinema.Scarlet Street (1945), one of his films featuringEdward G. Robinson andJoan Bennett, is considered a central film in the film noir genre.
One of Lang's most praisedfilms noir is the police dramaThe Big Heat (1953), known for its brutality. As Lang's visual style simplified, in part due to the constraints of the Hollywood studio system, his worldview became increasingly pessimistic, culminating in the cold, geometric style of his last American films,While the City Sleeps (1956) andBeyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956).
Lang, as his health worsened with age, found it difficult to find congenial production conditions and backers in Hollywood and contemplated retirement. The German producerArtur Brauner had expressed interest in remakingThe Indian Tomb (from an original story by Thea von Harbou, that Lang had developed in the 1920s which had ultimately been directed byJoe May),[46] so Lang returned to West Germany[47] to make his "Indian Epic" (consisting ofThe Tiger of Eschnapur andThe Indian Tomb).
Following the production, Brauner was preparing for a remake ofThe Testament of Dr. Mabuse when Lang approached him with the idea of adding a new original film to the series. The result wasThe Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), whose success led to a series of new Mabuse films produced by Brauner (including the remake ofThe Testament of Dr. Mabuse), though Lang did not direct any of the sequels. Lang was approaching blindness during the production,[48] and it was his final project as director.
Lang's American and later German works were championed by the critics of theCahiers du cinéma, such asFrançois Truffaut andJacques Rivette. Truffaut wrote that Lang, especially in his American career, was greatly underappreciated by "cinema historians and critics" who "deny him any genius when he 'signs' spy movies ... war movies ... or simple thrillers."[53]
Lang is credited with launching or developing many different genres of film.Philip French ofThe Observer believed that Lang helped craft the "entertainment war flick" and that his interpretation of the story of Bonnie and Clyde "helped launch the Hollywood film noir".[54] Geoff Andrew of theBritish Film Institute believed he set the "blueprint for the serial killer movie" throughM.[55]
In December 2021, Lang was the subject for BBC Radio 4'sIn Our Time.[56]
^Weide, Robert (Summer 2012)."The Outer Limits".DGA Quarterly. Los Angeles, California: Directors Guild of America, Inc.:64–71. Archived fromthe original on January 28, 2019. RetrievedJuly 25, 2022. A gallery of behind-the-scenes shots of movies featuring space travel or aliens. Page 68, photo caption: "Directed by Fritz Lang (third from right), the silent film "Woman in the Moon" (1929) is considered one of the first serious science fiction films and invented the countdown before the launch of a rocket. Many of the basics of space travel were presented to a mass audience for the first time."
^"Fritz Lang".New York Times.In latter-day books and articles about his world-famous son, Anton Lang is usually described as an architect. In fact, Baumeister, a German word often confused and translated as "architect" in English and French, means more precisely that Lang's father was a builder or executor of architectural plans. He had the additional honorific, in city archives, of Stadtbaumeister, which simply meant that he was licensed to appear as a project manager before Vienna municipal boards.
^David, Eric (August 25, 2009)."The Master of Darkness".ChristianityToday.com. RetrievedJanuary 6, 2023.
^Tom Gunning (2000).The films of Fritz Lang: allegories of vision and modernity. British Film Institute. p. 7.ISBN978-0-85170-742-6.Lang, however, immediately cautions Prokosh, 'Jerry, don't forget, the gods have not created men, man has created the gods.' This is more than a simple statement of Feuerbach-like humanism or atheism.
^Kermode, Mark (2013).Hatchet Job: Love Movies, Hate Critics. Pan Macmillan. pp. 25–26.ISBN978-1-4472-3052-6.The Austrian-born film-maker Fritz Lang once commented that, although he was an atheist, he supported religious education because 'if you do not teach religion, how can you teach ethics?'
^Barson, Michael (July 29, 2020).""Fritz Lang"".britannica.com. RetrievedAugust 11, 2020.
^Smiljanić, Z., 2025. Fritz Lang: Ljutomer - Berlin - Hollywood. 1. izd. izd. Ljutomer; Ljubljana: Kulturno turistično društvo Festival; Založba ZRC.str.144. ISBN 978-961-05-0895-3
^Brook, Vincent (September 18, 2009). "4. The Father of Film Noir: Fritz Lang".Driven to Darkness: Jewish Emigre Directors and the Rise of Film Noir. Rutgers University Press. pp. 58–78.doi:10.36019/9780813548333-005.ISBN978-0-8135-4833-3.
^Michel Ciment:Fritz Lang, Le meurtre et la loi, Ed. Gallimard, CollectionDécouvertes Gallimard (vol. 442), 04/11/2003. The author thinks that this meeting, in fact, never happened.
^Havis, Allan (2008),Cult Films: Taboo and Transgression, University Press of America, Inc., p. 10
^Thomson, David (2012)The Big Screen: the story of the movies New York: Farrar, Straus and GirouxISBN978-0-374-19189-4 pp. 64–65; Lang's version deemed suspect
Friedrich, Otto (1986).City of Nets:A Portrait of Hollywood in the 1940s; New York:Harper & Row;ISBN0-06-015626-0. (See e.g. pp. 45–46 for anecdotes revealing Lang's arrogance.)
Youngkin, Stephen (2005).The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre.University Press of Kentucky.ISBN0-8131-2360-7. – contains interviews with Lang and a discussion of the making of the filmM.
.jpg)
