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Dr. Mabuse - A Modern German Myth

Years after Fritz Lang's movie Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler) the beginning of Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Dr. Mabuse's Testament) takes place in a counterfeiter garage. Three persons are keeping still while the audience is listening to the roaring of big machines making the room tremble. One person trembles for another reason: it's the suspended officer Hofmeister who hides himself behind the machines to keep track on the bandits. He wants to be rehabilited and when he calls detective superintendent Lohmann to inform him about the counterfeits' location it's too late for him: captured by the bandits he gets mad and won't say anything more.
The first time we see Dr. Mabuse, he is nothing but an infirm mad old man. Prof. Baum, director of the madhouse Mabuse is isolated in, holds a lecture about "brain splitting". A documentary shows Mabuse sitting in his bed and writing endlessly. Though being mentally ill, he writes down his legacy - that means the power of crime!
There is no other person in german movies similar to Dr. Mabuse. Fritz Lang, Germany's brilliant director, shot three films based on the novels of Norbert Jacques: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1932), and Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse, 1961). Though there are a lot of bad adaptions and sequels, Lang's films of '22 and '32 are milestones in german movie history. Though Mabuse gets killed in the last Mabuse movie of 1964, Dr. Mabuse lives on: his name and appearance became a myth, representing a cold intellect whose one and only target means destruction of state, law, and order. He resembles the french character Fantômas, a phantom haunted by the unlucky inspector Juve in about thirty novels by the authors Allain and Souvestre.
Mabuse and Fantômas movies are films about speed: changes of identities are as important as wild car chases. The prologue of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler shows a feverish picture of post-(WW I) war Berlin and thus the grown importance of time and time control. An unscrupulous character like Mabuse wants to tear down this system of a new time - not to build up a new system or re-establish the old one but to build up "a state of total uncertainty and anarchy". He plans "attacks against money as the basic necessity for existence and certainty of the being of a capitalistic time". So he supports inflation of money by counterfeiting, plans bank-robberies and attacks against power plants and chemical factories, crimes that are commited by bandits working for him.
When Dr. Mabuse gets mad at the end of Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler it seems that the danger has been banned. But Prof. Baum's supposed scientific observation inevitably turns into the total identification with the centre of evil. The living corpse Mabuse sketches the apocalypse, a handbook for total extinction of whole mankind. Through this last will Mabuse wants to become a highhanded master of the boundaries between life and death, thus proclaiming his victory over death. His ideas are executed by his observer, the hypnotized Prof. Baum, so science is defeated by Mabuses world of threat and chaos. In Lang's movie Dr. Mabuse dies in the moment Prof. Baum takes over Mabuses's identity.
Lang's movie ends claustrophobicly: the viewer is left alone with the mad Prof. Baum tearing Mabuses papers into pieces. The detectives aboard, symbols of law and order, leave the sickroom because Baum's illness is beyond their scope. But it's just a matter of time when Mabuses evil spirit starts again to ban a new disciple.
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist and sort of Adolph Hitler's brain, didn't like Lang's movie of 1932. This was because nazi film reviewers erratically thought Mabuse was a synonyme for Nazi movement (many reviewers do so today). While being in exile, Lang supported this impression but it can be taken for grant that due to Lang's political indifference he was much more interested in technical aspects (like in Metropolis) and character studies (like in the Mabuse movies) than into making a political statement. When Goebbels, though, offered Lang to become leader of german directors, Lang escaped to USA.
Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse has been banned in Nazi Germany. Goebbels: "I will ban this movie because it proves that a group of men prepared to go to any lengths, if they really want to, is able to lift a state out of its hinges." Dr. Mabuse and his destructive power were forces even Nazis were afraid of. Mabuse is a modern myth, a synonyme of absolute power and willingness to total destruction. Fritz Lang's ingenious movies create a monument to this remarkable person. This was reason enough for us to pay tribute to him.

Manfred Berndtgen, Ute Simon

Source:

Norbert Jacques, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, Rogner & Bernhard bei Zweitausendeins; Michael Farin, Günter Scholdt (Eds.), 1994 (german)