A Master in Two Worlds

Fritz Lang casts a long, dark shadow over the history of the movies, stretching from the Golden Age of the German cinema in the ‘20s to Hollywood through the ‘50s, capped by a return to Berlin just as the wall was going up. Man’s struggle against his fate was his theme, and the superheroes of his vast UFA Studios spectacles in Germany were just as tormented and driven as the everyman heroes of his American films.

Working in a bold Expressionist style that revealed a fatalistic pessimism that never left him, Lang anticipated the gangster movie, the James Bond thrillers and the space travel adventure; he was so expert at creating suspense that director Claude Chabrol once declared, “Without Lang there would be no Hitchcock.”

Lang’s “Metropolis” (1926), a futuristic fable that was a plea for humane treatment of labor on the part of management, and “M” (1931), in which the criminal world, for reasons of self-preservation, pursues an elusive serial child-killer (an unforgettable Peter Lorre) are in continual revival. His Hollywood films, starting with his anti-lynching drama “Fury” (1936) and his Bonnie and Clyde-like “You Only Live Once” (1937) and including such classic ‘40s film noirs as “Scarlet Street” and “The Woman in the Window,” both starring Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson, and the crime film “The Big Heat” (1953) show up regularly on TV.

A major two-part retrospective, “The Minister of Fear: Fritz Lang in America,” opens Friday with a 20-film series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be followed Sept. 28 by “Fritz Lang in Germany.” In connection with this series, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is presenting in association with the Goethe Institute of Los Angeles an exhibition Friday through Oct. 14, “Fritz Lang: Vienna-Berlin-Paris-Hollywood” produced by the Berlin Film Museum.

The academy’s exhibition will be composed of production stills from Lang films, costume and set design drawings, video stations showing film clips and audio stations featuring remarks on Lang by his fellow Vienna native, Billy Wilder; by Marlene Dietrich; and by Glenn Ford, who starred in Lang’s “The Big Heat” (1953) and “Human Desire” (1954).

Lang and his films were complex. His large-scale works of the ‘20s evoked a mythical Germanic past (“Die Nibelungen”), a corrupt present (“Dr. Mabuse”) in which a master criminal could wield widespread power in an unstable, frenzied, high-living society and prophesied a future in which the brutal gap between management and labor would be bridged by the kindness of enlightened captains of industry (“Metropolis”).

Such was Lang’s visionary power that Adolf Hitler and his movie-loving minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels, felt that Lang was the ideal choice to lead the film industry of the Third Reich, deciding to overlook “The Testament of Dr. Mabuse” (1933), in which Lang’s evil hero has descended into madness, spouting Nazi slogans--and which Goebbels promptly banned. Lang’s response was to flee to Paris, where he made one film, the charming and poignant “Lilion” before producer David O. Selznick brought him to Hollywood.

Lang would always feel like a displaced person, and he brought his fatalistic vision to bear upon a wide range of American experience. He dealt with mob hysteria in “Fury” (1936), his first Hollywood film, and after the outbreak of World War II, made celebrated anti-Nazi thrillers, “Man Hunt” (1941); “Hangmen Also Die” (1943), on which Lang collaborated with fellow exile Bertolt Brecht; and “Ministry of Fear.” (1944).

Lang was as formidable a presence in person as his films were on the screen. Born in Vienna in 1890 the son of a prominent architect, Lang had studied painting, traveled and in his youth supported himself by painting postcards and posters and with drawings for newspapers. World War I changed all that; wounded three times in battle, with permanent eye damage, he tried his hand at script writing while recuperating in hospitals. By 1919 he had launched a directing career that would span four decades.

The quintessential image of Lang would have him dressed in a chalk-striped suit, gray hair combed straight back from a face with strong, sculpted features, a monocle in his left eye, his cigarette in a holder--the very portrait of the elegant, slightly sinister, continental rake he actually was. In public appearances he kept up this image to the end--one writer described him memorably as “a Roman ruin of a man”--but in private he dressed casually and wore glasses like ordinary folk. (In later years he wore a black patch over his right eye as well as glasses; once in a hotel lobby he was asked if he was John Ford.)

He spoke an unforgettable racy, highly idiomatic, strongly accented English in a deep, at times booming, voice. He had great wit and great charm, and yes, he could be a holy terror with a cruel streak. (Hollywood art director Rudi Feld, a key UFA publicity staffer in the ‘20s and a gifted artist, recalled that when Lang didn’t like one of Feld’s posters, which are now museum pieces, he simply tore it up.)

Yet Lang was also a man of kindness, sensitivity, patience and tact. If, as has been reported, he could instill fear and loathing on the set among those who did not meet his demanding standards he could similarly inspire steadfast devotion among friends and colleagues. On the otherwise trouble-plagued “Rancho Notorious” (1952), starring Marlene Dietrich, so harmonious was his working relationship with screenwriter Daniel Taradash, a notable Hollywood veteran, that Taradash speaks of Lang with respect and affection to this day. He had similarly rewarding relationships with costume designer Edith Head, as much a legend as Lang himself, and her husband, art director Wiard (Bill) Ihnen. Joan Bennett’s loving, amusing letters to Lang could make him smile even as the myriad infirmities of old age were closing in on him as remorselessly as the thieves and crooks encircled Peter Lorre in “M.”

From the early ‘40s until his death at 85 in 1976, Lang lived in a pleasant, sun-filled, spacious Spanish-style home--given a sleek Richard Neutra-designed modern interior--perched on a promontory overlooking Mary Pickford’s estate Pickfair in Beverly Hills. In the late ‘30s, Lang and his most durable companion, the chic, red-haired Lily Latte, formed a foursome with Pickford’s devoted stepson Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Dietrich, who had known Lily since their Berlin childhoods.

In going through Fritz’s correspondence after his death, Lily remarked how in his proud way he really had struggled hard to fit into the Hollywood system. It was impossible to get him to consider his Hollywood work in the same breath with his German films; so many of his American movies were made amid frustrating circumstances that it was perhaps hard for him to appreciate what he had accomplished in spite of everything.

In making his American films, Lang faced both professional and personal obstacles. For example, Lang ran into union problems on the film “Fury” because he did not yet understand that he was supposed to stop shooting for a lunch break. And in making the film “Clash by Night” (1952), Lang later felt guilt over not being sufficiently sensitive to its star, Barbara Stanwyck, who was going through the breakup of her marriage to Robert Taylor at the time.

Roddy McDowall, who had made his American film debut at age 12 in Lang’s “Man Hunt” (1941), arranged a warm reunion between Lang and Stanwyck on a set where McDowall and Stanwyck were shooting a TV movie. Late in his life, Fritz got another big lift when he at last had a chance to meet Luis Bunuel, whom he admired greatly, and Bunuel confirmed that it was true that he was inspired to become a filmmaker after seeing Lang’s “Destiny” (1921), a superbly wrought, three-part fable of love and death.

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Other favorites were George Sanders, Vincent Price and Anne Baxter, and he remained concerned with Peter Lorre’s personal and professional difficulties over the years. Of the studio moguls, he seemed to have actually been fond of Darryl Zanuck, but was absolutely convinced that it was Howard Hughes who had him blacklisted during the height of the McCarthy era, albeit briefly. However, after a year and a half of unemployment, Columbia’s Harry Cohn came to his rescue. Cohn let him direct “The Big Heat,” the best picture of Lang’s last active decade. In preparing for an all-crucial lunch with Cohn, Lang said with a laugh, “I asked myself, ‘Do I want the job? Yes!’ So I left the monocle at home!”

Like Jean Renoir, Josef von Sternberg and King Vidor, Lang reached the point where he could no longer get a picture deal even though he would have liked to continue working. Eventually, international film maven Pierre Rissient arranged a project several years before Fritz’s death that would enable him to direct again with the proviso that if he were unable to complete the picture, Chabrol would step in and take over.

“I turned them down,” Lang later explained. “My eyesight is just too bad now, and it wouldn’t be fair to them to accept. I hate to say it, but I will never make another picture.” On his last birthday he said that if he could direct again he would want to show how television robs the imaginations of young people.

Fritz Lang faced the end squarely but refused to go gently into the night. He would frequently say, “It’s easy to grow old, it’s hard to be old,” inevitably adding with a shrug and a sigh, “It can’t be helped.” Asked by The Times to comment on turning 85 he said, “Ha! If I did, you’d have to print it in your pornography section.” He knew well what he had accomplished in his career, yet always insisted, “I was just a hard worker.”

Not too long after LACMA opened, the museum assembled a Lang retrospective, with Lang invited to attend the opening night. Barred by a guard at the back entrance, Fritz exclaimed, “I was not afraid of the Nazis, and I’m not afraid of you!”

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Schedule of Events

“The Minister of Fear: Fritz Lang in America,” a retrospective of the director’s work, screens Fridays and Saturdays at LACMA, Bing Theater, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A., Friday through Sept. 1. Tickets are $7, general; $5, museum and AFI members, seniors (62 and older) and students with valid ID. All shows start at 7:30 p.m. (323) 857-6010.

* Friday: “Fury” (1936) and “You Only Live Once” (1937)

* Saturday: “The Big Heat” (1953) and “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” (1956)

* Aug. 10: “You and Me” (1938) and “Hangmen Also Die” (1943)

* Aug. 11: “The Woman in the Window” (1944) and “The Blue Gardenia” (1953)

* Aug. 17: “Human Desire” (1954) and “Clash by Night” (1952)

* Aug. 18: “Scarlet Street” (1945) and “La Chienne” (1931)

* Aug. 24: “Man Hunt” (1941) and “While the City Sleeps” (1956)

* Aug. 25: “Ministry of Fear” (1944) and “The House by the River” (1950)

* Aug. 31: “The Return of Frank James” (1940) and “Western Union” (1941)

* Sept. 1: “Rancho Notorious” (1952) and “Moonfleet” (1955)

“Fritz Lang: Vienna-Berlin-Paris-Hollywood,” an exhibition featuring documents, original scripts, sketches of set designs and costumes, will be at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 247-3600, Friday through Oct. 14. The gallery is open Tuesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, noon-6 p.m. Closed Mondays.