ofpsmith Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler is a 4 hour long film, making this the longest film I've ever seen as of this writing. Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) and his gang are planning to pull a huge heist in money using Mabuse's telepathic abilities. But Mabuse is up against state attorney Norbert Von Wenk (Bernhard Goetzke) who is investigating the strange happenings in Berlin. The story comes in two parts and it's a long one. Klein-Rogge does a great job as Mabuse who would later reprise his role in the next film, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. Mabuse's telepathic abilities as well as his abilities to take away someone else's will create a terrifying villain. This film is great. It's a long movie but if you find some extra time on your hands give it a watch.

pontifikator Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (aka Dr Mabuse, der Spieler)This is a two-part film by Fritz Lang. The first part is called "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, An Image of the Times," and the second is "Inferno, People of the Times." Together, the movie is over three and a half hours long. It is based on a novel written by Norbert Jacques, and the script for Lang's film was written by his wife Thea von Harbou (who had been married to one the film's stars, Rudolf Klein-Rogge). The film is difficult but interesting for a number of reasons.The gist of the plot is that Dr. Mabuse (played by Klein-Rogge) is the arch-fiend of all society, an evil genius who can rule the world by the force of his will. He has a gang of henchmen that he controls in various ways: violence, hypnotism, corruption, money. Mabuse is wealthy from various schemes: stock market fraud, counterfeiting, and gambling. Mabuse affects a series of disguises when he gambles. He wins by overpowering the minds of the fellows at his table and making them lose even when they have winning hands. As an arch- fiend, Dr. Mabuse is the god-father of all the James Bond movie villains. The will of Dr. Mabuse is an irresistible force.Our hero is State Attorney von Wenk, played with admirable restraint by Bernhard Goetzke. I'd put Goetzke in the same league as Sam Shepard in terms of looks and acting. Even though it's a silent movie we can tell von Wenk is laconic - there are lengthy scenes of him clenching his jaw as he ponders whatever he's pondering, the camera lingering on his handsome face. Von Wenk is made aware of numerous complaints of card-sharking at clubs and casinos, but it's always a different man (we know, of course, that it's Mabuse in disguise); von Wenk goes out to various gambling halls to ferret out his prey. And the game is afoot.Mabuse and von Wenk meet, both in disguise, and fail to recognize each other. One of the fascinating parts of the movie is that von Wenk has heard of Mabuse as a psychiatrist and actually recommends to one of Mabuse's dupes that the dupe see Dr. Mabuse for treatment; naturally, it ends badly. The bulk of the first part of the movie sets us up to see Mabuse as the arch-fiend with his hordes of dupes doing his bidding whether they know it or not, whether they want to or not. Mabuse runs by his watch, and the beginning shows him constantly checking it and taking his servants to task for not being timely. His stock market manipulations require timing, and he carries them off with aplomb as all around him panic. He's silent throughout the chaotic scenes except for two statements: "I'm buying," then "I'm selling."The film is set in 1922, when the Weimar Republic was at the height of inflation and the depths of morality. Lang gives us "An Image of the Times." Mabuse's speculations and criminal schemes fit into the milieu of the times in Germany. Mabuse has no morals, no scruples; his goal to to get whatever he wants when he wants it. From his point of view, there is only will. Mabuse has the will, and he will have his way.In the second part, we see the havoc wrought on the people Mabuse has, well, abused. Suicides, protracted prison terms, deaths, all at the will of Mabuse. The inferno is in the mind, and Mabuse burns people up, then discards them as the trash they are.I don't recommend this film for beginners in the experience of silent movies. It is very long, and the pacing is leisurely. Lang sets up long portraits of his actors and shows them moodily staring for long seconds. The script is not realistic, and the characters are not naturalistic. The acting sidles toward the stylized arm-thrown-across-the-brow to show anguish, but because nothing is natural in the movie, this style works here without being laughably histrionic. The sets verge toward German Expressionism, but maintain a certain reality that makes the apartments and rooms more believable as actual homes than, for example, the sets in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" is a long series of long portraits of characters and settings. Lang establishes his characters by showing them in inaction.The movie can be seen as a portrayal of the corruption of the Weimar Republic. The years immediately preceding 1922 were fraught with violence in the streets as extremists battled each other for control of cities and states within the republic. The government had started printing money to repay huge debts, but there were no goods to sell to other countries to earn the marks. This led to hyperinflation; one of Mabuse's counterfeiting schemes was to print only US dollars, because other currencies devalued before he could dispose of the counterfeits.But this was also an era of unparalleled creativity, of which "Dr. Mabuse" is a prime example. The cabaret scene in Germany in the Twenties was unrivaled in its sexuality (the various treatments of "Cabaret" bear this out) but also unrivaled in its success as entertainment. The Bauhaus school of architecture and Expressionism in theatre, art, and cinema, are just two of the Weimar Republic's contributions to culture.Be that as it may, instead of the triumph of the will expected by Dr. Mabuse, we find him at the end insane. His attraction to Countess Told is worse the fatal -- Mabuse's will is impotent in the face of her refusal of him. Perhaps "Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler" foretells the rise of Hitler and his minions and dupes. Or perhaps the decadence and collapse of the Weimar Republic spawned arch villains willy nilly. Who can tell?

HulotderSpeiler This film has a plot that is so detailed, so developed, and so complex, that no one would believe it was a silent film. As the plot develops, the character of Dr. Mabuse changes drastically. In Part I, he is an impossibly clever and cunning criminal. He is introduced as a master of disguise who carries out an almost victimless crime with the stock markets. He is not evil, he is just a criminal. But then, you see him hypnotize a rich man in to gambling away large sums of money, abusing his skill as a psychoanalyst, and aiming to ruin and drive insane an innocent man. When state prosecutor von Wenk is introduced, you get the impression that you do not know what Mabuse is capable of.Later, in the film's most memorable scene, the state prosecutor, in disguise, enters a club and goes straight to the card table. There is Dr. Mabuse, in the disguise of a feeble old man. As the state prosecutor takes up his cards, the words TSI-NAN-FU begin to chase him. He is falling under the spell of Dr. Mabuse, and you see the grim determination in the eyes of Mabuse, and you see that he will stop at nothing to rob and kill the state prosecutor. This is the first time that you see true evil in Mabuse.After that, Mabuse seems troubled. He lives by the bottle, and is stern with his accomplices. He shows no mercy to Edgar Hull, the rich man he robbed, and lures him in to a deathtrap with the seductress Carrozza, who is caught. Although Mabuse could easily have gotten her out of prison, he does not bother, he instead, unveiling all his evil, kidnaps Countess Told, and locks her in the room where Carroza lived, showing that he is not going to rescue her, despite her love and claims that he is the greatest man in the world for him.And so Part II begins, with several evil goings on, all the fault of Dr. Mabuse. The Countess will not love Mabuse, Mabuse is slowly driving the Count insane, and Carrozza is still in prison, refusing to reveal to the state prosecutor that Dr. Mabuse is the "Mystery Man" they're looking for. Mabuse does not wish to free Carrozza, he wishes to kill the state prosecutor. He hypnotizes the Count, and commands him to kill himself, and the Count's butler tells the state prosecutor that the Count's treatment only became poor when Dr. Mabuse was visiting. This throws suspicion on Dr. Mabuse for the first time. He handles it gracefully, he blames a hypnotist (him in disguise) who is holding a show that night. This lures the State prosecutor to come to the show, where Mabuse picks people out of the crowd, and convinces them to do random things. Then he takes the State Prosecutor on stage, and puts him in a trance, just before he slips into the trance, he identifies Dr. Mabuse. Mabuse hypnotizes van Wenk to drive off a cliff, but he is saved at the last minute and brings police over to arrest Mabuse. Mabuse and his men stay and fight, but are overpowered, and Dr. Mabuse is forced to flee through an underground passage to his other base, where he counterfeits money. And finds himself unable to get out. He goes insane, and is apprehended. Poetic justice, we have now lost all sympathy for this demented man.Such is a detailed plot that is too sophisticated to be told properly through title cards, and it may require several viewings to understand certain parts. On other elements of film craft than story, first is photography. This is a film with excellent angles and distances, and even a few tracking shots. As well, the use of double exposures and the iris shot show things that can best be expressed through visuals, such as the double exposure showing the face of Mabuse over the stock market.Rudolf Klein-Rogge gives one of the best performances in all of silent film as the demented arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse. His eyes seem to stare straight into your soul, and he never ceases to be convincing in the final scene. But best of all is when he says TSI-NAN-FU, with the utmost and purest of evil contorting his mouth, flaring his nostrils, and freezing his eyes.And finally, this film has excellent expressionistic sets: most notably Schramm's Grill, Mabuse's house, the corner it is at, the Count's mansion, and the club where Edgar Hull meets his demise: 11 Hayden street. All in all, this film is a masterpiece in plot, acting, and every other element of film craft. This is the greatest of all silent films.

mukava991 This film, like many of Fritz Lang's best efforts, mixes pulp fiction, realism, fantasy and social comment, in this case to adapt to the screen Jacques Norbert's serial novel about a diabolical mastermind (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) who can destabilize the national economy by manipulation of the stock market, operate an underground counterfeiting ring manned by blind slaves, hypnotize card players into losing all of their money to him and even engineer a mass hallucination. He changes his identity for every caper via costumes, wigs, prosthetics and fake facial hair. He has in his employ an army of henchmen from slum denizens and cutthroats to a celebrated follies dancer whom he uses as a lure for wealthy victims. And for what? His purpose in life is to "play the game" and undermine his opponent's will. At one point he states that there is no such thing as love, only lust and the will to power (or, as some interpretations go, the will to possess what one desires). When state prosecutor Von Wenk (the sturdy Bernhard Goetzke) launches an investigation into this one-man crime wave his pursuit covers the social spectrum from the dives and gutters of the underworld to the palaces of the nobility.The film is beautifully designed and photographed and organized into scenes and acts. Each scene is a story unto itself. This structuring helps provide a centering or equilibrium for the viewer amidst the cascade of events and characters.Among Mabuse's victims: A bored countess (Gertrud Welcker) who frequents the illegal gambling houses to observe the reactions to wins and losses on the faces of the players so that she can vicariously experience passion. She longs for an adventure the likes of which she can never experience at home with her wimpy husband who spends his time tinkering with antique art objects. Little does she know that she is about to be plunged into the adventure of her life.Another young beauty, this one a prominent cabaret performer (Aud Egede Nissen), has fallen under the spell of Dr. Mabuse, lives in an apartment adjacent to his hotel suite and serves as bait for unsuspecting victims like the wealthy young Edgar Hull (the not-so-young Paul Richter), who is milked of his fortune by Mabuse.No one can defy Mabuse. He seems to be everywhere and know everything, so that if you dare betray him you are as good as dead. This terror ensures his gang's devotion. The similarities to Hitler (or any totalitarian leader with secret police tentacles reaching far and wide) are obvious and this film has been cited often as a foreshadowing of the Hitler era. Part 2 is even subtitled "a story for our time." The notion of conspiratorial forces operating behind the scenes was on the German mind when this film was made.There are many startling parallels between MABUSE and the 1920 classic THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, an interesting fact considering the legend that Lang was involved in the conceptual stage of CALIGARI. Both stories feature a spooky doctor with hypnotic powers who spreads evil through the land. In both films the identity of the central evil character changes: Dr. Mabuse assumes many disguises; Dr. Caligari remains himself until he appears as a psychiatrist at the end. The sign on Mabuse's door reads "Psychoanalyse." Caligari's somnambulist predicts a man will die within hours; Mabuse hypnotizes a man into driving himself over the bank of a canal. The villains even visually resemble each other in both films: Mabuse often wears white fright wigs and high hats reminiscent of Werner Krauss's look in Caligari. MABUSE operates on a wider canvas than CALIGARI. Whereas Caligari's only instrument is his somnambulist slave, Mabuse operates an extensive network of henchmen. At the climax of both stories a word ("Caligari"/"Melior") is animatedly superimposed over the screen action to intensify the impact. The whole of CALIGARI is designed expressionistically; expressionistic sets are used minimally and subtly in Mabuse but the subject of expressionism is briefly discussed in one scene wherein Mabuse describes it as "another game" or words to that effect. The expressionism in CALIGARI is all-encompassing; in MABUSE it is under control, part of a larger design. In both films there are scenes in prison cells. In both films a beautiful young woman who has fainted is carried off and then liberated. In the Kino edition of MABUSE there is one apparent technical glitch: a car chase near the end starts at night and suddenly flips to daylight with no sense of transition. If this was Lang's idea of "day for night" shooting, he overshot the mark hugely.On display here is Lang's penchant for mixing exotic pulp, unadorned realism, and pure fantasy. In MABUSE it is the doctor's magical hypnotic powers that stretch and finally break credulity, woven as they are into an otherwise naturalistic crime melodrama. This mixture of the fantastical and the ordinary occurs in all of Lang's 1920's work, right through WOMAN IN THE MOON (1929). Only with M (1931) does he begin to abandon fantasy and concentrate on social issues, whereupon he steered clear of pulp and exotica until late in life when he returned to the genre in the late 1950s with his India trilogy. But by that time film audiences had long outgrown the conventions of the 1920's. And so ended Lang's career. But the sheer scope and expert execution of this film under the conditions that prevailed in Germany in 1921-22, supervised by a man barely 30 years old, is quite an achievement and should be seen.