Fritz Lang Epic Collection [5 Discs]

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 5
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1
• Screen: Black and White
• Subtitle: Spanish, French, English
• Features:
  • [None specified]

AWARDS

• Berlin International Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 2010

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 2001

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Alfred Abel - Joh Fredersen
       Willy Fritsch - Prof. Helius
       Rudolf Klein-Rogge - Haghi
       Klaus Pohl - Georg Mansfeldt
       Paul Richter - Siegfried
       Margarete Schoen - Kriemhild
       Gustav Froehlich - Freder
       Gerda Maurus - Frieda Venton
       Gerda Maurus - Sonya Barranikowa
       Lien Deyers - Kitty
       Rudolf Klein-Rogge - Rotwang
       Rudolf Rittner - Markgraf Rudiger von Bechlorn
       Craighall Sherry - Secret Service Chief
       Willy Fritsch - No. 326 (Det. Donald Tremaine, English version)
       Bernhard Goetzke - Volker von Alzey
       Theodor Loos - Josaphat/Joseph
       Louis Ralph - Hans Morriera
       Fritz Rasp - Walt Turner
       Hans Adalbert von Schlettow - Hagen Tronje
       Heinrich George - Grot (Foreman)
       Georg August Koch - Hildebrand
       Lupu Pick - Mosimoto (Matsumoto, English Version)
       Brigitte Helm - Maria/Robot

• Director:

  Fritz Lang

• Producer:

  Fritz Lang, Erich Pommer

• Screenwriter:

  Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou

• Cinematographer:

  Curt Courant, Oskar Fischinger, Karl W. Freund, Carl Hoffmann, Otto Kanturek, Günther Rittau, Walter Ruttmann, Fritz Arno Wagner

• Composer (Music Score):

  Werner Richard Heymann, Willy Schmidt-Gentner

• Production Designer:

  Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht

• Art Director:

  Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut, Karl Vollbrecht

REVIEWS:

• Set around the apocalyptic year of 2000, Metropolis has had a seminal influence on science fiction and futuristic movies as diverse as The Bride of Frankenstein, Blade Runner, and Dark City. Featuring literally a cast of thousands, Metropolis creates a reality so complex and artistically unified the viewer gets swept away to this future world. Director Fritz Lang's surreal and occasionally incomprehensible storyline is overwhelmed by a visually spectacular exercise in German expressionism. Master cinematographer Karl Freund fills the screen with an array of stylized shadows, oblique camera angles, geometric images, and nightmarish labyrinths. The film's dialectical theme may seem dated in these post-Marxist times, and its message that the head and the hand can do no good without the heart may seem a little romantic to more cynical ages, but the warnings about techno-demagoguery continue to have modern relevance. The actors give typical silent-film performances, full of exaggerated expressions and broad gestures, but they express their characters' fragile humanity despite these mannerisms. Rudolf Klein-Rogge's unforgettable work as the evil genius Rotwang became the template for all subsequent mad-scientist performances. Despite being a critical and popular disappointment on its initial release, the film eventually gained cult status and was rediscovered by critics and audiences alike. When it was re-released in the 1980s, some missing footage was restored and a synthesizer-heavy soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder was added, to much gnashing of critical teeth. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
• Like its predecessor, Siegfried's Death, the very title of Kriemhilde's Revenge gives away a plot that functions mainly as a framework for Fritz Lang to work out one of the major thematic preoccupations of his career: the destructive power of vengeance. The question is not if Kriemhilde (Margarete Schoen) will succeed in avenging the death of her beloved Siegfried at the hands of the malevolent Hagen Tronje (Hans Adalbert von Schlettow) -- but when. Grim, steely eyed, and terrifyingly single-minded, Kriemhilde transforms herself into the very personification of vengeance, bent on annihilating anyone and anything that stands in her way. The action in Kriemhilde's Revenge shifts from the opulent court at Worms to the desert kingdom of the Huns, whose monarch (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) Kriemhilde has agreed to marry as part of her plan. The film's visual scheme, while no less spectacular than that of Siegfried's Death, is much less stately and angular, reflecting the Huns' more humble, almost savage homeland. After she lures Hagen and his conspirators (including her own brothers) into her husband's castle, Kriemhilde's revenge takes the form of a final, epic battle (one of many awesome set pieces in Lang's films) that accomplishes her goal while laying waste to virtually the entire kingdom and everyone in it. Taken together, Siegfried's Death and Kriemhilde's Revenge form a silent era landmark -- operatic retellings of ancient myths that exploit all of Lang's silent film artistry. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
• With its monumental sets, heroic action, and sweeping, epic narrative, Siegfried's Death is one of Fritz Lang's greatest silent film spectacles. Like his more famous Metropolis, every scene is a meticulously composed, eye-popping triumph of visual design. Lang treats the story (which would have been well known to contemporary German audiences) more or less as a pretext for creating dazzling images of vast, mist-enshrouded forests, towering castles, and kings, queens, and heroes decked out in elaborate costumes. Early on in the film, the action seems almost perfunctory. Siegfried's nemesis, Fafner the Dragon, which Lang designed himself and is one of the mechanical marvels of the silent era, hardly puts up a fight, but his death provides one of Lang's earliest and most potent images of fate's unseen hand. Fafner's death throes shake a single leaf from a tree that falls on Siegfried, who is bathing in the dragon's blood to render himself invincible. The leaf prevents the blood from touching a small part of his back, providing the single vulnerable spot that will lead to his inevitable defeat later. After Siegfried's battles with Fafner and the Nibelungen, the rest of the film sets aside action and concentrates on the nest of lust, treachery, and vengeance in the royal court at Worms, setting the stage for the equally stunning sequel Kriemhild's Revenge. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
• In the tradition of his popular Dr. Mabuse films (Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse), Fritz Lang's Spies revolves around the baroque schemes of a criminal mastermind -- in this case, Haghi (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), a master spy who operates from a secret office inside a bank. The plot is a virtual template for all espionage movies to come. It's full of double agents, secret documents, assassinations, and even a love story between two agents on opposite sides of the vast game Haghi is playing. In contrast to Lang's silent masterpieces Metropolis and Die Nibelungen: Siegfried, with their gargantuan sets and stately, myth-like plots and pacing, Spies is made with swifter strokes. It begins with a quick-moving montage of murders, heists, and other crimes that sets the mood for the fast-paces, densely plotted action to follow. This, and a brilliantly designed and edited later passage which finds the hero, Agent 326 (Willy Fritsch), trapped in a train car about to be obliterated by an oncoming locomotive, are two of the film's great action sequences. Its ending, in which master-of-disguise Haghi's surprising secret identity is revealed, provides one of the most shockingly surreal moments in Lang's ouevre. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

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