House by the River | Das Todeshaus am Fluss

The sound film Lang gave a new cinematic tool in hand and with “M” (German title: “M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder“) he delivered in 1931 a sound film debut, which skillfully used sound as a supporting medium of the image. The recurring “In the Hall of the Mountain King“, askew by child murderer Beckert, lent the diseased and driven figure another gloomy level and at the same time dissolved the story. With his second sound film, “Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse“, Lang returned to an “old acquaintance” in 1933, once again bringing the archetype of criminal genius to the screen. After its premiere, however, the film was banned by the National Socialists, as the psychiatrist in the main character who writes a manual for criminals, the Reich Propaganda Ministry was too clear an allusion to Adolf Hitler’s captivity and the writing of “Mein Kampf”.

1933 should also be the year in which Lang left Germany. Although propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels urged him to stay in Germany, he even offered the direction of the German film, Lang however did not want to be restricted by the Nazis in his creative work and emigrated first to France, where he filmed Ferenc Molnár’s “Liliom” adapted. In the same year he moved to the US, more specifically to Hollywood, where he turned in 1936 at MGM “Blind Rage” and also significantly involved in the founding of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. Thus, he continued his work in the US, but he could hardly join old successes. From the 1940s, Fritz Lang devoted himself to various films, including “People Hunting” (1941), “Even Executioner Die” (1943) and “Ministry of Fear” (1944) the anti-Nazi film. His Film Noir “Dangerous Encounter” (1944) and “Strait of Temptation” (1945) were also well received by the audience, but the end of the 1940s proved to be difficult and Lang’s “Secret Behind the Door” of 1948 was both critical as well as audience a flop. In addition, disputes with several producers to problems and so it Lang in the early 1950s to Republic Pictures, a small studio, which was known primarily for B-movies. “House by the River” was therefore created on a budget and without the participation of famous Hollywood greats. However, the performance of the actors and especially the direction Langs were praised and also subsequent films were again more attention. Lang first returned to Europe in 1956, where he directed four more films. Finally, however, he returned to the US, where he died on 2 August 1976.

Film Noir – Light and Shadow and Smoke:

The French film critic Nino Frank mentioned for the first time the term “Film Noir” to describe a series of Hollywood films of the early 1940s, which in his opinion, a darker variety of crime film embodied. To this day, the exact definition of disagreement and the question of whether the film noir is now a stylistic device or its own sub-genre, perhaps the thriller, remains unanswered. On the one hand, an attempt is made to capture the whole thing in time and the era of Film Noir ranges from 1941 with “The Trace of the Falcon” to 1958 with “In the sign of evil“. Even stylistic elements such as strong light-dark contrasts are used as a criterion for definition.

Director and film critic Paul Schrader, for example, divides the classic Film Noir into three temporal periods: These begin with the so-called “wartime period”, those films of the time of the Second World War, which were written between 1941 and 1946. Here the well-known and romantically somewhat transfigured image of the lonely private snooping man who sits alone in his smoky office and through whose door a mysterious client steps. Schrader calls the second phase the “post-war realistic period”, the period of realism after the war. It extends to 1949 and deals more with the reality of crime, as it occurs on the street, with corruption and the everyday life of the investigative authorities. The third and final period – which dates from about 1949 to 1953 – is called Schrader “period of psychotic action and suicidal impulse”,  which is characterized by disturbed personalities and self-destructive actions.

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