Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

Colibel Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Crwthod A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Jackson Booth-Millard From director Fritz Lang (Metropolis), this silent film was featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, and despite it being nearly five hours long I was determined to watch the whole thing. Basically an organisation of criminals led by mad professor Dr. Mabuse (Metropolis's Rudolf Klein-Rogge) are nearing the completion of a big scheme for the big big plan to take over the world, the crook will be able to make huge profits in the stock exchange stealing valuable information. Later the master criminal is also a master of disguise, and turns himself into a stage illusionist, hypnotist and mind reader (imagine an early Derren Brown), and along the way many people are murdered to get his own way. In cahoots with him, passing information about the plan to kill young millionaire Edgar Hull (Paul Richter), is the stage show's main attraction Cara Carozza (Aud Egede Nissen). Obviously the meaning behind the title is that Dr. Mabuse is also a keen gambler, and he tries to psychically manipulate Hull in a card game, which he loses. Soon police investigation into the mysterious crime spree begins, with Commissioner Staatsanwalt Von Welk (Bernhard Goetzke) leading the enquiries, with hardly any leads or accurate information at all, so he needs assistance and sources. In the end, after so many stories within the story, cons, crime and much more Dr. Mabuse is eventually caught in the end and arrested after suffering some kind of breakdown. Also starring Alfred Abel as Graf Told, Gertrude Welcker as Gräfin Dusy Told, Hans Adalbert Schlettow as Georg the Chauffeur and Georg John as Pesch. This is apparently a famous anti-totalitarianism allegory, I would have no idea what that means, I obviously found it too long and complicated at times, crossing to other things going on, and having to read all the dialogue, but there were certainly some memorable visuals, such as the stage show, and ghostly figures walking around, and when I could keep up it was an entertaining enough silent crime thriller. Very good!

Alonzo Church After watching this movie -- which has an immense reputation and less than immense execution, one wonders -- what gets a movie in the pantheon of great films? Is it reputation of the director? Is it the fact this movie probably is the first noteworthy film featuring a super-villain? Is it the good reviews from 1922? Or is it that the sequel to this movie (Testament of Dr. Mabuse) is brilliant, and, frankly, everything this one is supposed to be? Watching this film -- it is hard to figure out the answer. Because this film is a pretty good example of a talented filmmaker gone wrong, rather than anything intrinsically brilliant.First of all, this film is far, far too long. Much of the film is spent with the exposition of Dr. Mabuse's fiendish plots, which are somewhat less, well, earth-shatteringly fiendish than one might expect. There are long scenes of silent actors chatting in front of indifferent sets, with lengthy title cards outlining the Doctor's miserable plots, or the investigator's complicated investigations.Second, rather surprisingly for a film this length, the characters are not well developed. Mabuse, as a human being (as opposed to a mannequin for the makeup artist's art) really does not emerge until the second hour of the film. The film's only interesting character -- the countess who is so bored with life that she goes to the gambling dens to watch everyone else destroy themselves -- gets good moments in the second half of part one, but then just becomes a damsel in distress for most of the second part.Third -- quite honestly, the plot is stupid. The great scheme occupying Mabuse for the bulk of this picture is the good doctor using his skills at hypnotism and disguise to force rich people to lose to him at cards. He could have saved us all a lot of bother if he just hypnotized those same rich people to write him a check. While, in many films of this type, the plots are equally daft, one is forced to spend more time with it because of the length of the film. There are plot twists in this movie that would be embarrassing in a B minus PRC film featuring Lionel Atwill. And, in this one, we get the prototype of a villain so in love with complicated methods of murder, that he has trouble actually getting his murder's accomplished.Fourth, for a crime film, the action scenes just aren't that suspenseful. This a bit of surprise -- in Lang's immediately preceding film "Destiny" -- he displays an extraordinary mastery of pacing, and generating suspense. But in that movie, Lang crowds a lot of plot in a reasonably brief running time and creates a core of sympathetic characters. In this one, there really is not all that much going on for large spaces of the film, and the main character is decidedly not sympathetic.This is not to say this is a bad film. It isn't. There are some great sequences scattered here and there =-- particularly when Mabuse and the investigator out to destroy him sit down to a game of cards. Also, there is no denying that it has been influential. But, if you are searching out good Mabuse, The Testament of Dr Mabuse is a better choice.

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.

J. Spurlin Dr. Mabuse is a name familiar to almost everyone in Germany, but most Americans would have to be told that he's a criminal mastermind, psychiatrist, gambler and hypnotist with supernatural powers. Mabuse is notable for his brilliant disguises and his gang of minions who conspire against people and institutions for the sole purpose of bringing power and wealth to himself. This evil genius is known only as The Great Unknown to those who wish to stop him. Mabuse was created by Norbert Jacques for a novel which has never been out of print in Germany. The director of this film, Fritz Lang, claimed him for his own; and now Mabuse is known not as a character in a novel but as a character in three Fritz Lang films, the first of which is this innovative and hugely influential silent movie.Lang's storytelling techniques are especially innovative, but later spy films, including Lang's own, have greatly improved on what's here and leave modern viewers alert to the slow pace, murky details and confusing plot twists. What hasn't been improved upon is the artistry behind the photographic effects. I don't mean the effects themselves: modern special effects are infinitely more sophisticated. This film's effects have a great impact even—or especially—on today's viewer who is accustomed to a rapid-fire series of elaborate, gaudy computer-generated pictures, like those in, say, Peter Jackson's "King Kong." Nothing in that film is as memorable to me as this movie's scene where the camera closes in on Mabuse and everything around him goes dark, leaving only one glowing, malevolent head floating in the blackness.The highly exaggerated style of acting from everyone in the cast would look idiotic if seen in isolated bits. Von Welk (Bernhard Goetzke), tilting back his head and crossing his eyes as Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) hypnotizes him, would have been a perfect clip for Jay Ward's "Fractured Flickers." As part of this film, every melodramatic moment from the cast is effective in a way that a more naturalistic style can never be.Fans of the Mabuse films, which number many more than just Lang's three, are sometimes disappointed by this first incarnation. This Mabuse allows himself violent emotional outbursts, while the later version is marked by icy self-control. The more familiar Mabuse may be an improvement over this one, but they don't quite replace him, and those films don't quite replace this one. This is a treasure for film historians, and indirectly a treasure for fans of the countless movies influenced by it.For those who simply want a good movie, there's plenty here to reward them, provided they are very, very patient.