First published at 08:25 UTC on March 10th, 2023.
"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.”
In 1933, Fritz Lang gave these words to his visionary f…
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"When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven insane by fear and horror, and when chaos has become supreme law, then the time will have come for the empire of crime.”
In 1933, Fritz Lang gave these words to his visionary figure of a modern terrorist, Dr. Mabuse. If they seem eerily prophetic today, we must remember that Lang had his own model close at hand: Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, which had just seized power in Germany. One of the first acts of the Third Reich was to ban Lang’s yet-to-be-released film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. To Lang the reason was clear: Mabuse and his gang were reflections of the Nazis’ themselves. At that point, Lang felt his films were so popular in Germany that people would demand the ban be lifted. He soon found that he had underestimated the control the Nazis had gained over the film world. Although he claims Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, approached him about becoming the head of German film, since Hitler loved Lang’s films, (a claim no one has ever verified), Lang realized he could no longer control his filmmaking in Germany and left the country, first for France, then for Hollywood.
https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/603-the-testament-of-dr-mabuse
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