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THE TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE
(Das Testament das Dr Mabuse)
Rating:  ½
Germany. 1933.
Director – Fritz Lang, Screenplay – Fritz Lang & Thea Von Harbou, Producer – Seymour Sebenzal, Photography (b&w) – Karl Vass & Fritz Arno Wagner, Music – Hans Erdman, Art Direction – Emile Hasler & Karl Vollbrecht. Production Company – Nero Filmgeselleschaft/Constantin/Deutshe Universal.
Cast:
Otto Wernicke (Inspector Karl Lohmann), Oscar Beregi (Professor Baum), Gustav Diessl (Tom Kent), Vera Liessem (Anna), Karl Meixner (Hofmeister), Theodor Loos (Dr Kramm), Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Dr Mabuse)
Plot: Inspector Lohmann receives a phone call from an old colleague who has evidence of a counterfeiting ring. But the colleague is killed before he can tell Lohmann anything more. Lohmann’s investigation reveals the activities of the organization of his old rival, the criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse. But Mabuse is now locked in the insane asylum of Professor Baum where he sits in a cell obsessively writing screeds of plans for criminal operations. Lohmann realizes that Mabuse is mentally controlling Baum and using him to run his operation and that he is planning a scheme to plunge Germany into chaos via orchestrated acts of sabotage.
Dr Mabuse, The Gambler (1922) was one of the biggest hits of silent German cinema and for director Fritz Lang. Lang’s image of a criminal mastermind lording over a decadent post-War Germany and imposing his evil by sheer willpower was a memorable one. Indeed the figure of Mabuse’s super-criminal was fairly much the role model for the supervillains of the James Bond films and others. Lang went onto considerable success with his Siegfried saga (1922) and in particular Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) and then in the 1930s returned to make this sound sequel to Dr Mabuse. It was a project that was encouraged personally by Joseph Goebbels who, prior to the film’s release, offered Lang the head of the Nazi propaganda ministry. Horrified at the thought, Lang instead fled to France (and later relocated in the US). And after came out, due to Lang’s betrayal, Goebbels saw The Testament of Dr Mabuse as having subversive anti-Nazi elements – you can draw perhaps allegories between Mabuse writing his schemes in the asylum and Hitler composing Mein Kampf in a jail cell, and between the acts of sabotage to bring the nation down and the Nazi Krystalnacht – and demanded its withdrawal.
Lang employs remarkable directorial style to create his shadowy crime-world. There’s one memorable sequence where assassins shoot a victim waiting at a set of lights, blowing horns to distract the noise of a gunshot and the victim’s car staying behind as the lights change and the others pull away – it’s a shot you could easily have imagined taking place in a Hitchcock film. There are other fine scenes – the tensely edited scenes with the hero and the heroine locked in a cell with a bomb about to go off; the climactic car chase to the chemical plant, shot in low angles contrasting tires flashing past and the underlit trees overhead. Perhaps though in moving to the sound era, Lang has become bogged down by the faults of many early sound films – an over-reliance and fascination with dialogue. The film is certainly driven by a more complex and multi-stranded plot than the first film and is not as visually stark and striking. This is a Mabuse film that belongs more to the film noir and the spy melodramas that Lang spent his time making in the US than the world of Expressionist exaggeration that Dr Mabuse drew from. Nevertheless Lang makes effective use of bare walls, stark surroundings, shadow contrast and off-screen light sources to create an eerily subterranean criminal underworld.
The scenes between the hero and heroine have dated. But Otto Wernicke as the diligent nemesis Inspector Lohmann gives a boisterous magnanimous performance and Oscar Beregi is marvelously sly and crafty as the possessed asylum head. Both succeed in giving fine performances, even when filtered through subtitles. Alas Rudolf Klein-Rogge’s piercingly intense presence as Mabuse has been cut back, much to the film’s detriment.
The other Dr Mabuse film are:– The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960) – also directed by Lang, The Return of Dr Mabuse/The FBI Versus Dr Mabuse (1961), The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1962) – a remake of this, The Invisible Dr Mabuse/The Invisible Horror (1962), Dr Mabuse vs Scotland Yard (1964), The Death Ray of Dr Mabuse/The Secret of Dr Mabuse (1964). Dr Mabuse was modernized by Claude Chabrol as Dr M/Club Extinction (1990).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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