Der Müde Tod – Blueprint for the German Fantastic

Academic Alison Peirse offers a consideration of Fritz Lang's pioneering silent classic, Der Müde Tod (aka Destiny , or The Weary Death ).

The Fantastic Films Weekend's screening of Destiny on Saturday May 21 is a rare opportunity to view an early and essential part of Fritz Lang's oeuvre, predicated on the production of the fantastic and the experience and embodiment of Death. A recurrent motif in Lang's work, Death appears here as an ominous pale-faced and black robed figure who attempts to bargain with a young wife for her husband's life, predating the iconography and basis of plot of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal by some 36 years.

The framing story of Destiny is situated in Germany where newlyweds are torn apart when Death (Bernhard Goetzke) abducts the young man (Walter Janssen). His young wife (Lil Dagover) pleads with Death and they agree a bargain: if she can save one of the three lives he offers he will return her husband.

Thus, the framing story set up, the film develops an omnibus structure, similar to Paul Leni's German chiller Waxworks (1924) where a young poet writes stories for a waxworks exhibition. He writes two of the stories – an Arabian Nights tale of a greedy Caliph; and torture by Ivan the Terrible – before falling asleep, and having a nightmare about being menaced by the third waxwork, Jack the Ripper. Such portmanteau structures are also notable in Ealing Studios horror classic Dead of Night (1945).

Destiny dizzyingly spreads out across time and space to encompass three interlinked stories set in the Arabian Nights, Venice and Ancient China. In each world Dagover and Janssen play the ill-fated couple and Dagover tries to save Janssen's life. But each attempt ends in his death, the most notable result is Janssen being gruesomely buried alive in the deserts of Arabia.

The narrative actions are bound together across such distinct worlds through the reoccurrence of the three characters and their quest for love and resurrection. The formation of the happy couple resolves each story in Waxworks, whereas the unfortunate young woman of Destiny is not so lucky.

After three failures, sympathetic Death offers to take someone in the living world as a replacement for her husband, but she cannot convince even the most world-weary to take his place. In a final desperate act she runs into a burning house to rescue a baby while its grieving mother is restrained without. But can she give it to the open arms of Death and reclaim her love, or will she return it to the wailing mother who begs outside?

Offering a vision of the inevitability of death not seen before in cinema, Destiny represents Lang's breakthrough into critical and commercial popularity and documents the German Romantic fascination with death and destruction. Lang produces a pure fantasy world fluctuating across continents and time zones, with intricate visual effects and expressionistic sets far advanced of the painted-on walls of Der Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919, Robert Wiene).

Lang's pioneering work became the blueprint for the German fantastic, and was immediately reworked by his contemporaries both at home and abroad: for example the magic carpet flight in Ancient China was modified by Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad (1924); then sumptuously extended by FW Murnau in Faust (1926) where Gösta Ekman and Emil Jannings took to the skies.

The detailed and evocative mise-en-scene of Destiny is also a precursor to the sci-fi world of Lang's Metropolis (1927). Its dystopian vision of the future directly influenced modern reappraisals of film noir and science fiction, namely Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002).

Destiny is a rare text that can only be procured for home viewing on expensive American import. Consequently the opportunity to view this embodiment of the German fantastic in its complete form, in a full theatrical setting with live accompaniment, is a rare treat not to be missed.

© Alison Peirse 2005
a.peirse@lancaster.ac.uk
> Find out more about Alison Peirse at Pixelsurgeon