DER TIGER VON ESCHNAPUR/DER INDISCHE GRABMAL (1959)

Fritz Lang had originally been set to direct these stories written by his wife Thea Von Harbou very early in his career but the project was effectively stolen from his by his producer Joe May. By the time it was remade in 1938 Lang was already in Hollywood. In the late Fifties he was lured back to Germany to finally tackle the project himself. A huge production, THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR and its companion film THE INDIAN TOMB is essentially a load of old nonsense about plots and counter plots in a Maharajah's palace and a love triangle featuring a prince, a beautiful dancing girl and a German architect. The plot is silly beyond belief with a man wrestling a stuffed tiger, Indian gods, evil priests, murder, tiger hunts, elephants, torture, chases, caves etc. It is also wonderfully entertaining because Lang is intelligent enough to treat his comic book material seriously and straight-faced without pretension and, more importantly, without condescension. Blessed with beautiful Hollywood star Debra Paget, Lang makes good use of her and the actress certainly works for her money. The two dance routines are tremendous with the one in THE INDIAN TOMB featuring a near naked Miss Paget in a way that I doubt would have been allowed in her native American productions at the time. Hero work is adequately handled by Paul Hubschmid. Now restored and released on DVD with some nice extras and a 40 page booklet, the films together offer three and a half hours of great, if undemanding, entertainment. A must for Lang fans. Rating ****

Debra shakes her booty

HANGMEN ALSO DIE (1943)

Made the same year as Douglas Sirk's HITLER'S MADMAN which was based on the same events, Fritz Lang's HANGMEN ALSO DIE is one of the great director's most undervalued films. The film may be a blatant piece of wartime propoganda but this drama of paranoia, nazis and betrayal harkens back to the director's DR.MABUSE films. Brian Donlevy plays the assassin of Reichsprotekor Heydrich who escapes detection by accidently implicating the family of a famous professor. Hostages are taken, tortured and exccuted and the professor's daughter, at first willing to betray Donlevy is slowly convinced to help the resistance by turning the tables on an informer. The film depicts dramatically the decisions people had to make in such circumstances very convincingly. The use of studio exteriors, stark (typically Langian) shadows - particularly in the interrogation scenes at Gestapo headquarters - gives the film a strong expressionistic feel. Performances are strong with Donlevy, Anna Lee, Walter Brennan, Dennis O'keefe and Alexander Granach all turning in excellent work. Eagle eyed viewers will spot the great Dwight Frye in an uncredited performance as a hostage. Co-wriien by Berthold Brecht. Rating ****

THE BLUE GARDENIA (1953)

THE BLUE GARDENIA is a very minor film in the Fritz Lang canon and except for a couple of scenes has little of the visual flair of the director's other films. Based on a novel by Vera Caspary of LAURA fame, the film is really neither noir or mystery - although to be fair to the film the twist ending is fairly signalled early in the story and is not just the tacked on "convenient" revelation it might seem at first. Lang completists like myself will want to see it anyway and its stars - Ann Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Southern and Raymond Burr - are watchable. Rating ***

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (2009)

An official remake of Fritz Lang's last American film this is pretty sub-standard stuff and simply not in the same league as the same director (Peter Hyams) excellent remake of Richard Fleischer's THE NARROW MARGIN. Hyams seems to still be using the "direct by numbers" kit that somebody bought him a few years back rather than using the undoubted talent he exhibited earlier in his career. None of this is convincing and the characters are mere cardboard cut outs. Douglas as the one dimensional villain of the piece not only looks more like his father with every passing year there were times in this film when I thought Kirk had come out of retirement. Rating **

Maria! I've just met a robot called Maria......

Great news for all movie buffs, especially fans of the great director Fritz Lang. Just as Kino International has completed its restoration of Lang's masterpiece METROPOLIS for 2009 release, a complete print of the film has been discovered in Argentina. The newly discovered print runs for nearly three and a half hours - much longer than any print in circulation today. Although badly scratched the film has been shown to critics and Kino International hope to include the newly discovered footage in their 2009 release.