Customer Reviews

Fritz Lang - Circle of Destiny

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The fifty-four minute documentary begins with one of my favorite film moments: Fritz Lang appears opposite Bridget Bardot in Jean Luc Godard's Le Mepris. A montage of stills from Lang's German films only and discussions by several German and French directors about the Lang's genius follow this very promising beginning.

Claude Chabrol and Volker Schlondorff are particularly interesting and Patrick McGilligan's sensitive analysis of Lang's life was very helpful, shedding light on the mystery surrounding Lang's first wife's death and Lang's fateful meeting with Joseph Goebbels.

Lang was a fascinating man worthy of a much longer, more in depth documentary. However, this serves as a good starting point for anyone interested in the man who created Metropolis and M.

This documentary simply did not grab me, it is very slow, andTo me, it had several flaws. One, it is mostly in French and German, so one can not just sit back at watch it, you must read the subtitles, second, this film does not have a main narrative, something I really like to see in a documentary, I think it helps to move the story a long. The documentary is soley commentary The last drawback is the lack of information the viewer is provided on Lang's life. It seems to just skim over his life's highlights with out going into very much depth. The one good aspect of this film is it provides a nice visual look into Lang's films, but that is about it

This film is one of the best 54 minute biographies of Frits Lang. It pulls no punches and covers the positives and negatives of his movie career.

The format is sound bite. One point or part of his life will be discussed by five people. Then the next part pf his life will be discussed by the same five people. It would have been more coherent if one person at a time covered his life.

Even though it is not evident from the packaging this film has English captions that you will want to activate. One third is in English one third in German and one third in French. As the cover the different films in each era they also speak that language.

My favorite part is when they tell of Fritz embellishing the story of his meeting with Goebbels in 1933 and why he left Nazi Germany.

The film is also filled with snippets of his various films.


To get more in depth you should read "Fritz Lang" by Lotte H. Eisner

The Spiders Part 1- The Golden Lake, Part 2- The Diamond Ship (1919)


Fritz Lang by Lotte H Eisner

This is more an essay on Lang then a real biography. Covering, briefly, his German films, both before and after sound, this is a collection of talking heads speaking about Lang and what he did and meant to whom ever is speaking (We are given each person who speaks name, but little else so unless you know the name, you are going to be lost on you as to why these people are important). The bits are brief and are inter-cut with tons of still photos taken during the production of his movies.
As a biography it gave me a tiny insight in to Fritz Lang the man, but only a little bit. As an overview of his work it was also lacking since the film seems to assume you know the films already. I loved the photos but not much else. For my money I'd rather revisit one of the commentaries on the Criterion releases of Lang's films, or the commentaries done by David Kalat for All Day Entertainment's Dr Mabuse releases since they fill in a great deal of biographical information as well as details on the movies. Recommended only if you are a huge Lang fan.