A beautiful young woman staggers out of a time-lost German village in the dead of night, searching for her missing lover. She is drawn by an unknown magnetism to a wild meadow outside a high-walled garden with no discernible entrance. As she stumbles along the line of the wall, she is suddenly brought up short by a horrible sight. Wave after wave of the spirits who have died that day are coming across the field, heading towards her. As she shrinks back against the wall in terror, they flow through her body into the wall. Then, in an instant, she recognizes her lover among their number. His eyes are uncomprehendingly fixed on a point -inside- the wall. She realizes in a flash the identity of the man in black that he went away with, and collapses in a faint as he walks through her body and the wall...

into the oblivion of death.

Now -that's- an image for a 10-year old to take to bed with him, isn't it?

I can think of one character in particular. When he was a young sprout, his parents would let him stay up late on Friday nights and watch the local PBS station in Kansas City. They actually showed old silent movies in those halcyon days of the mid-70's. (Now, of course, in this enlightened day and age, we have truly cerebral entertainments such as THE WEAKEST LINK) The ones that stuck in our young oily tick's mind were the Fritz Lang films that they would show repeatedly, DESTINY (1921) DR. MABUSE Pts. 1 & 2 (1922-23) and METROPOLIS (1926). He was struck by the sensational imagery and the deeply-felt (if sometimes corny) emotions evinced by these early films.

Little did he know that a young boy of the same age some 75 years earlier was having a similar experience. In the throes of a fever, the boy envisioned a dark stranger in a wide-brimmed hat "illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through a wide open window. (Patrick McGilligan-FRITZ LANG: THE NATURE OF THE BEAST, p. 70) As the "tear-stained" face of his mother slowly dissolved, he felt the urge to be led away by Death, but "Helping hands grabbed him, pushed him down, saved him." (Ibid.) The love of death would forever mark the young boy, composed as it was of both "horror" and "affection." Some 21 years later, just after the death of his beloved mother, Fritz Lang would realize his dream on film.

Der Muede Tod (The Weary Death, English title DESTINY) was the first original collaborative effort of Fritz Lang and his soon to-be wife Thea von Harbou to be seen through without producer interference and with the assurance that Lang would helm the film itself. The movie is divided into three parts, surrounded by a framing story about a young woman's search for her lover, who has been taken by death.

We originally see the lovers (Lil Dagover & Walter Janssen) making merry in an old-fashioned horse-drawn coach. Their conviviality is stilled when, making one of the most impressive entrances in film history, a dark, gaunt and spiritually tormented figure (Bernhard Goetzke-thankfully looking nothing at all like Brad Pitt) suddenly appears by the side of the road and hails the coach. The coach stops for dinner at a small time-lost village, and, while the Girl teases a kitten with a piece of string, the young man goes out of the inn with the Stranger, Death.

The film then takes us back to the time when Death first made his home in the town. He arrived one day and leased a plot of land from the village elders (amusingly caricatured by Lang) in order to plant a garden. They are shocked and angered to find that the plot of land has been surrounded overnight by a high stone wall, and they confront Death.
As he leans with his back to the wall, he draws the Greek letters Alpha Tau Omega in the dust and then stares fixedly into the camera, "Only -I- know the way in."

We then shift to the scene I mentioned in the first paragraph. The town apothecary, looking for herbs in the meadow, finds the unconscious Girl and takes her back to his shop. In her despair, she grabs a vial of poison and quaffs it down, collapsing yet again.

This time, she awakens to a sepulchral hall filled with burning tapers. Death appears and informs her that her lover's candle has been snuffed out. "Believe me, my task is a hard one, I am weary of seeing the sufferings of men and hate my duty though I obey," is Death's complaint.

The Girl is crushed, and asks if there is no way to re-light one of the candles, explaining that she has been taught that love is stronger than death. Death gestures towards three candles that are guttering towards their end. If she can change the destiny of even -one- of those souls, her lover will be returned to her. The three costumed stories begin.

The first takes place in 9th-century Arabia, the second in Renaissance Venice during Carnival and the third in ancient China. All are stories of doomed and forbidden love, and all feature Dagover and Jannsen as the lovers. In the first story, Dagover is an odalesque and Janssen is an infidel dog. The second story has Dagover as the Lady Fiametta, whom the Lord Girolamo (Rudolph Klein-Rogge, warming up for his turn as Dr. Mabuse) has evil designs upon. In the third tale, Janssen and Dagover are Liang and Tiaotsien, assistants to a court magician commanded by the Emperor to perform fantastic feats. The stories build from the simplest to the most complex tale, and their scope and grandeur have to be seen to be appreciated. (The effects in the Chinese story are astounding for their time) I shall leave it to you, the potential viewer, to appreciate them on your own.

The movie itself met a cool initial reception in Germany. It was regarded as just another example of dunderheaded Romaticism (one reviewer called it "The Wearisome Death"). "Been there, done that, did not keep the autographed copy of THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER," just about summed it up.

That was before it was released abroad...

It was hailed in England and France as being "one of the most original and impressive films ever made." Two twenty-one year olds, one a handsome Spaniard and the other a rotund Cockney, saw the tremendous possibility for art in cinema after seeing it, confirming their decision to become film directors themselves. After this stunning acclaim, it was re-released in Germany to much better reviews, which left Lang somewhat sanguine:

"When my writer, architect, cameraman and so on give up their lives for months for the preparation of a film, and then again months working on the editing, then the night of the premiere comes and a critic, immediately after seeing the film, sits down to write a critique as quick as possible in order to get it in tomorrow morning's newspaper, and this critique of their long months work is bad, I cannot accept it."

"But if I don't accept a bad critique, then I cannot accept a good one, either." (McGilligan, p. 75)

You can just imagine what he would have thought of Epinions. (g)

The acting in DESTINY suffers from the then-current love of German film audiences for advanced theatrical histrionics. Janssen and Dagover are nonetheless quite good in the lead roles and Goetzke is a revealation as Death, IMO the definitive portrayal of the metaphysical concept on screen. Lang himself acknowledged that von Harbou's script-writing collaboration and general help with the movie was essential to his first real unambiguous success, and this was years after they had split up. (to give you an idea of the nastiness of the split, Lang was half-Jewish and von Harbou became an unregenerate Nazi) Even though her rampant sentimentality would eventually begin to grate on both the audiences and her husband, von Harbou provided the stabilizing force that Lang needed, plus the grounding to keep him from totally going off the wall into his own ego. Lang also collaborated with the cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner (who is credited with the Italian and Chinese segments), who would go on to fulfill the role for Lang that Billy Bitzer did for D.W. Griffith and Gregg Toland did for Orson Welles. DESTINY's print quality is none too good, and the film also suffers from the "Orientalist" perspective that Edward Said complains about, in addition to the usual stupidity of Occidental actors playing Oriental roles. At least in this film the rancid conceit is justified in the name of continuity of metaphor, but modern audiences have to do some "forgiving" of the film anyway.

This movie is also significant in that its success helped fuel the merger of German film studios that would create the giant UFA combine. This, in turn, would give Lang creative authority unequaled anywhere else in the world, and a physical plant that rivaled Hollywood in technical expertise and surpassed it in breadth of vision. 1922-1933 is the period of Lang's greatest fruitfulness, and, although his career in Hollywood would be the envy of his lesser peers, it was in this eleven-year period that he had the greatest freedom to create. We are the fortunate heirs of such great films as the MABUSE cycle, METROPOLIS, M, WOMAN IN THE MOON and SIEGFRIED. Come find out what fans from Bun~uel to Ayn Rand have found out, step into the dark world of Lang.

This is part of matt_harney's Underappreciated Films W/O. Please take the time to check out the following contributions from:

benho -- Gladiator
stargull -- Star Wars Episode One
matt_harney -- Cut and Run
JuiceJW -- Mall Rats
alex_isit -- Peeping Tom
ainsleyjo -- The Other Sister

and

angflowr, ebrown2, girlgoddess, kris-kochanski, JackSommersby, JavaDevil, machkick, mangiotto, Mattels, Mike_Bracken, MrsNormanMaine, Psychovant, scott29, shadow8, teskue, third_man, Vormancian, Wokelstein

The website for the write-off is at:

http://web.mit.edu/bho/www/wo/

I would also like to acknowledge Patrick McGilligan's fascinating, albeit controversial, biography of Lang, FRITZ LANG: THE NATURE OF THE BEAST (Griffin, 1998) as the source of my quotes and much of the background information about DESTINY. It's available from fine booksellers everywhere and amazon.com.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older