Fritz Lang's first commercial success, the 1921 "Der Mú de Tod" (literally, "The Tired Death," though called "Destiny" in the Anglophone world) is a mix of striking visual compositions, palpable grief, and romantic swooning. Death (Bernhard Goetzke) is not just personified, but purchases and fortifies a castle with no entryways (the spirits of the dead pass easily through the thick walls) next to a cemetery.

Death takes a young husband (Walter Janssen) from his young wife (Lili Dagover) in a tavern in what seems to be the age of Goethe (i.e., the early 19th century). She finds the castle. An entrances opens for her, and atop a very long and brightly-lit stairway Death (but not death) awaits her. Death is weary and does not relish the grief of the widow. After showing her an immense room in which candles burning down represent the lives of everyone in the world, he therefore offers her three chances to save someone else slated to die (that is, keep the flames on their candles from going out) and thereby redeem her husband from the kingdom of death.

Janssen plays the man fated to die in three different places (and, I think, different time periods, a cinematic equivalent for transmigration of the soul). He is a nonbeliever being chased in (ancient?) Baghdad, a nobleman being hunted down by assassins in (Renaissance?) Venice, and a sorcerer's assistant (or junior practitioner) in (Ming or Q'ing) China condemned by imperial edict. (Goetzke shows up in all three episodes, too.) This itinerary allows for lots of orientalist set decoration and ethnic stereotyping, and some primitive special effects. Considering that it was shot with hand-cranked immobile cameras, the effects and images are all the more remarkable. (Plus there is an elephant in the attempted escape from imperial troops in the Chinese episode. And a whole army produced out of a matchbox. There is also a vivid cockfight and carnival in the Venice sequence.

The last act is the most impressive, and, obviously, cannot be discussed without the "You spoiled the plot for me" harpies descending and ripping me apart. I'll venture to mention that Christian renunciation is involved and that whether "love is stronger than death" is not resolved.

Lang considered the intimacy with death shown in the movie a "Viennese touch," and recorded that the Venice episode was originally first, rather than the Baghdad one. Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler considers "Destiny," encouragement to submit to authority, but then he interprets pretty much every interwar German movie as doing that. Lang told Peter Bogdanovich that "the main characteristics of all my pictures is the fight against destiny, against fate. . . . the struggle of a primarily good human being against accepted social injustice, or the power of corrupt organization, society or authority. . . . One should fight for whatever one considers right, even against superior forces and at the risk of dying. The struggle, the rebellion is [what's] important."

Although "Destiny" has some dull moments and some gauche symbol-driving, the frame remains quite powerful beyond the historical curiosity about special effects exported to Hollywood (specifically, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. who bought the American rights and did not distribute the movie so that he could appropriate elements of it in his "Thief of Baghdad."

Unlike the Kino DVD of Lang's next film, "Die Nibelunglied," the Image DVD script (yuck!), and there is a fairly obtrusively haunted musical score. The video is pretty good, but there are no pristine prints (and no prints at all of many non-talking movies, German and other).

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This a belated contribution to StPatrick's Silence is Golden" writeoff, as well as part of Lean 'n Mean III. Reviews of more Lang movies are on the way...

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