Good wizard/bad man: The Testament of Dr Mabuse
2017; Elsevier BV; Volume: 4; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/s2215-0366(17)30094-9
ISSN2215-0374
Autores Tópico(s)European history and politics
ResumoFritz Lang liked to tell the story of the day he met Joseph Goebbels. It was a story he told well and told often. The version he gave director William Friedkin in 1974 is suspenseful, full of cinematic detail. Lang recounts being summoned to Goebbels' office in 1933 to discuss his latest film, The Testament of Dr Mabuse. Silky Goebbels, seated at a grand desk at one end of an impossibly long room in the Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin, is effusive in his admiration for Lang, and for his film, but regrets that it must be censored. Then he offers Lang control of all German film production under the Nazis. Lang, sweating profusely, watches as a vast clock on the wall grinds through the minutes, thinking of his mother's Jewish roots and wondering whether he can get the hell out before the banks close. He liked to say that he packed his bags and left Germany that very night. His wife and creative partner, Thea von Harbou, chose to stay. Lang became the toast of Hollywood; von Harbou, in the aftermath of World War 2, a Trümmerfrau, or rubble woman, helping to clear the destruction wrought by Allied bombs on German cities.
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