I Know Mabuse, And You Sir Are No Mabuse

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse is the sort of film you would get if you let James Cameron direct Terminator 3, which is to say a very well made film that still pales in comparison to its predecessors. Fritz Lang approached the idea of Dr. Mabuse at three times during his career: first as a rising silent film director, second after the immense success of M just before he had to flee Germany, and the third as his final film. The 1,000 Eyes doesn't feel like a final film though. Its technical aspects are as accomplished as they were for The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, though less emphasis is placed on that new fangled sound element. Here, the most distinct feature is the editing, and the viewer can clearly tell that Lang and his editor Walter Wischniewsky are having a lot of fun. Fortunately, the fun isn't limited to them. The cutting on the opening scene hinges on the word "murder," and different scenes are connected by the similarities of sounds. It's entertaining to watch, and saves the film from becoming a bore.

If The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is a commentary on the impending Nazi rise to power, then The 1000 Eyes is all about Cold War paranoia. There are only two major characters who aren't hiding major pieces of their identities (including, strangely enough, the American), but each character only gets one about face. Once the lovably jolly insurance salesman starts noticing things, it's abundantly clear that he's hiding behind a facade. In fact, it's abundantly clear that a twist is coming, but the plot is too full of them to really involve the audience. By the end of the film, I couldn't really tell what the danger was, except that involved a nuclear plant. That's the film's main flaw: it spends too much time in what originally appear to be inanities like the relationship between the American and a suicidal girl. We feel no sense of great danger from this sense of Mabuse because the film is too detached from where the danger is. Similarly, the reasoning behind how some random guy got his hands on the Testament of Dr. Mabuse or how it could have influenced him is not given, leaving us with some random madman with some sort of plan to take over the American's nuclear plant and . . . destroy the world?

This is one place where The Testament is a much better movie. We don't know the extent of the Doctor's plans, but we see that there are people dying and buildings destroyed in this plan. This plan is complete and utter anarchy, and we can clearly see that. The new Mabuse's plan is so vague that it's hard to picture how exactly it will be so destructive. It become a matter of distance. This incarnation of Mabuse is too far from the original, who died at the end of The Testament, and the grand evil plan is too distanced from what we see. Mabuse isn't even responsible for the massive spying system installed in the hotel (damn Nazis). This aspect continues the idea of Cold War paranoia, but it never becomes a significant piece of the story. We can see somebody is watching our hero, but the implications are never addressed.

Perhaps the worst aspect of the film is its pacing. When watching The Testament, it was fun to watch these different story strands slowly coming together. There was a sense of destiny to the plot, a feeling from the very start that things would come together and that it would be exciting to watch. The 1000 Eyes, on the other hand, feels like a collection events tangentially related. There's an American and the girl he saved from suicide (the whole hypnosis aspect is barely mentioned), an insurance man just hanging around, and a police inspector looking into the murder of a television reporter. Only one is even related to the name Mabuse until well over half way into the movie. By that time, I was just hoping the movie would end so I could watch a movie worthy of Lang's talent. Maybe Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, the movie that started the tale of the good doctor.

Ma-bu-se

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse is the sort of film that deserves, if not a critical reappraisal (does anyone actually dislike it?), then at least a rediscovery. Fritz Lang's follow-up to M follows similar themes using similar techniques on a much grander scale. Though this is accurate, I'm afraid it will make Mabuse look like the Casino to M's Goodfellas. Mabuse is a masterpiece, every bit the equal of M. Lang refines his use of sound to make far greater statements than simply suggesting the presence of evil.

M was unique for presenting a number of undeveloped characters surrounding Peter Lorre's Hans Beckert. The only character we knew there was Becker, making him, a child murderer, the audience surrogate by the film's end. Mabuse works in a completely opposite manner, giving us numerous protagonists surrounding a barely developed central villain. We primarily follow Tom Kent (Gustav Diessl) and Inspector Lohmann (Otto Wernicke, reprising his role from M) as the former works within Mabuse's criminal organization and the latter works to investigate why an informant (Karl Meixner) has gone insane. Tom eventually refuses to commit murder for the organization, leading to a direct conversation with Mabuse, literally the man behind the curtain. Here is where Lang's film goes from being a well-crafted thriller to flat out masterpiece.

This is the second film Lang made in the sound era, and it continues his fascination with the new technology. In M, Lang used sound, specifically a whistle of "In the Hall of the Mountain King", to signify the presence of a murderer we didn't even need to see to fear. In Mabuse, Lang uses sound to hide criminal activity we can see. The opening scene, which features the above mentioned police informant in a counterfeiting factory, is covered with the sound of machines running. As such, the action on screen is acted silently, both adding suspense and commenting on how simultaneously useful and useless this new technology really was. Similarly, a key moment in the film, the murder of a doctor who is about to reveal the true identity of the criminal mastermind, the henchmen sent to kill him use the sound of car horns to cover the sound of a gun. Sound here masks the evil in a reversal of Lang's tactics in M. But Lang saves his most potent commentary for the revelation of Mabuse. In fact, he plays with the techniques he developed in M to play tricks on the audience. In M, we know there is a murderer there without seeing him because of his whistle. There is no killer in Mabuse, only the whistle. The revelation is still shocking today, and it sets up an "anything goes" dynamic for the rest of the film.

Being an international film from the 30s does wonders for helping the tension of the ending. It is an international film, so the good doctor may yet get away, but it was made during a time we associate with moral uprightness, so the good guys might prevail. Were this made in Hollywood, we would have no doubt that the doctor would be vanquished and order restored to the world. If it were made today, the doctor would lord over the ending like Noah Cross. Its setting is perfect for its unpredictability, though the film hardly needs you to know its setting to be thrilling. Mabuse is the perfect sort of genre film: technically perfect, ambitious, and willing to play off of the viewers' expectations to make things more thrilling.