Golden Age of Hollywood Book Club discussion

Creating a thread specifically for this extraordinary work. Spent the last three evenings digesting it. I'm frankly stunned.



So far in my experience of silents, I would have to say that in objective terms, it's likely the best silent film ever made.

I've really never sampled anything else like it; except maybe Fassbinder's thirteen-hour long 'Berlin Alexanderplatz'. It's what 'les Vampyrs' should be, but isn't.

It gives me new appreciation for Lang. The clunky 'Metropolis' never hinted to me that he was capable of storytelling at this high tier.

I've never seen a better production quality in a silent movie.



Visually, it's as crisp and as sharp as something from {serious}, contemporary cinema.

The pacing and editing --for such a sprawling, epic tale --are as impeccable as what any modern director might achieve.

Menacing, edgy, & disturbing; yet also restrained, calm, and controlled.

Although exploring the same campy territory as Rohmer's Fu Manchu and duMaurier's 'Svengali', it's a colossal narrative of Germany's fetish for grotesquerie.



After discovering the true size and scope of this juggernaut, I'm forced to re-order my rankings of all silent cinema to make room for it.

I even wonder if I should shuffle aside every other silent I've ever seen, in order to designate this as my new #1. It should reside at --or very nearly at --the top of my admiration for the whole format.

Well no. I can't go quite that far because after all it is still --at essence --just a lurid, underworld pot-boiler. Seamy; salacious; visceral sensationalism.

So in the end, always some more uplifting work like Murnau's 'Sunrise' must ever be my foremost favorite. But Mabuse is certainly immersive and seductive.



Riveting.

You certainly picked a film(s) that I have enjoyed.

Apparently the first, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler (Gambler) was released as two separate films in 1922 although I'm not sure why. I saw it as one film

Then in 1933, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was released and was a talkie.

These are the two that I have viewed but there were a bunch more released over the years which, I'm sure< couldn't possibly be compared to the classic ones.

The only German actor who could have done justice to the role of Mabuse was Rudolf Klein-Rogge and he was mesmerizing. He was also in Metropolis and he was a very strange looking fellow.

I wasn't sure I wanted to watch the talkie but was pleasantly surprised how well Lang transferred the character to sound. Mabuse was not in the picture very long but when he was, he was terrific.

Those are the three versions I saw as well.

Parts 1 & 2 are available free on Public Domain and also the 'Darkroom' website --four and a half hours runtime.

Then, since I had always heard about a sequel with an exciting 'ticking-bomb sequence' --I went hunting for the mysterious third installment.

Found Part 3 ('Testament') available free and in good quality on Archive.org. 124 mins.

It's true there are a slew of later sequels or worse: re-dubbings or re-shooting into English releases.

All manner of confusing titles: 'the Crimes of Mabuse', 'the Return of Mabuse', 'the Treatment of Mabuse', the Terror of Mabuse. Right up to recent times.

There's one from 1960 with spooky Peter Van Eyck and sultry Dawn Adams!

Oh well. The first three installments done by Lang himself, are light-years ahead of his own 'Metropolis' which frankly I find corny and childish.

Certainly Lang's "M" is comparable to "Mabuse" but "M" is much, much shorter.

As for the lead actor who played Mabuse: I can hardly remember him from 'Metropolis' but it doesn't matter. His zany rantings and ravings are but one element in the overall film.

Almost every actor in the Mabuse series looks physically bizarre in some way. A carnival menagerie of bestial figures.

But the eye-popping array of faces and bodies are part of what is so dazzling.

Casting and characterization is only matched by the variety of the sets, the wardrobe, the hairstyles, the camera angles, the lighting; and even the vehicles in each and every scene.

I'm simply shocked that a production this finely-detailed and superbly nuanced emerged in 1922.

This spectacular variety is what Von Stroheim's 1924 "Greed" should have been. I can hardly bear more than a few minutes of "Greed". There's just so many minutes of a windowless bare plank-floor cabin one can endure.

Anyway. Hurrah for Mabuse!! What a find!

p.s. I'm not sure if it was in 'Mabuse' or some other silent I've seen recently?

Anyway it is a bit of 1920s cinema magic. It's in several silent flicks, of that I'm sure.

How it happens is: you're sitting there watching the plot unfold and a scene materializes where a pianist in a seedy bar, and he is ripplin' away on the ole '88s.

The musical score for the silent film --has been pattering along up until now --at times annoying, at times pleasant.

Suddenly the director moves the camera in for a close-up of the pianist's hands on the keys. The pianist does a 'riff'. You know the kind of thing --all the way from the bass notes down to the high keys.

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmtttttttttttttttttttttt!

And what is amazing is what happens next ---the music accompanying the movie --stops whatever it is doing and reproduces the same piano stroke.

Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmtttttttttttttttttttttt!

When the camera moves back to the crowded bar, the movie score resumes its usual thing.

But its just incredible.

Something else I recall about Mabuse: it was uncanny how many times Lang went in for a close-up on highly-minute detail.

How many times he zoomed all the way in for a close-up of a character's re-winding their pocket-watch or polishing their eyeglasses, or right down on their cup of tea as they poured it and stirred it.

Who else does that? It was zany. Lang spares no expense to place you in that underworld.