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Fritz Lang

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Fritz Lang, the director behind films such as Metropolis, Mabuse the Gambler and M in Weimar Germany and Fury and The Big Heat in Hollywood.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-born film director Fritz Lang (1890-1976), who was one of the most celebrated film-makers of the 20th century. He worked first in Weimar Germany, creating a range of films including the startling and subversive Mabuse the Gambler and the iconic but ruinously expensive Metropolis before arguably his masterpiece, M, with both the police and the underworld hunting for a child killer in Berlin, his first film with sound. The rise of the Nazis prompted Lang's move to Hollywood where he developed some of his Weimar themes in memorable and disturbing films such as Fury and The Big Heat.

With

Stella Bruzzi
Professor of Film and Dean of Arts and Humanities at University College London

Joe McElhaney
Professor of Film Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York

And

Iris Luppa
Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Division of Film and Media at London South Bank University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Available now

55 minutes

Last on

Thu 30 Dec 2021 21:30
Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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LINKS AND FURTHER READING

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READING LIST

Stella Bruzzi, ‘Imperfect Justice: Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and Cinema’s Use of the Trial Form’ (Law and Humanities, Taylor and Francis Online, Volume 4 (1), 2010)

Ian Cameron (ed.), The Movie Book of Film Noir (Cassell Illustrated, 1994), especially ‘Film Noir and Suppressive Narrative: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt’ by Douglas Pye

Paul Coates, The Gorgon’s Gaze: German Cinema, Expressionism and the Image of Horror (Cambridge University Press, 1991)

Lotte Eisner, Fritz Lang (University of California Press, 1977)

Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (Routledge, 2000)

Thomas Elsaesser, BFI Classics: Metropolis (BFI Publishing and Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)

John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (eds.), Close Up 03 (Wallflower Press, 2008), especially ‘Weimar Cinema’ by Iris Luppa

Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision And Modernity (BFI Publishing, 2000)

Anton Kaes, BFI Film Classics: M (BFI Publishing, 2000)

Iris Luppa and Douglas Pye, ‘M: Leading the Blind’ (Movie 2, 2011)

Joe McElhaney (ed.), A Companion to Fritz Lang (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015)

Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema: Hitchcock, Lang, Minnelli (Suny Press, 2006)

Patrick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (Faber and Faber, 1997)

Douglas Pye, ‘Seeing By Glimpses: Fritz Lang’s The Blue Gardenia’ (CineAction! 13-14, 1988)

Michael Walker, ‘While the City sleeps’ (CineAction! 29, 1992)


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Broadcasts

  • Thu 30 Dec 2021 09:00
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4
  • Thu 30 Dec 2021 21:30
    Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4

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