The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse (1960)

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse, released in 1960, was Fritz Lang’s third Dr Mabuse movie. Lang directed and co-wrote the screenplay. It was his final movie. The movies Lang made after his return to Germany are a major departure from his Hollywood movies. In some ways they saw Lang returning to his roots. He finally got to direct a version of The Indian Tomb (Lang had written the screenplay in 1920 with his wife Thea von Harbou but that first version was directed by Joe May) and he revived Dr Mabuse, nearly 30 years after his previous Mabuse film.

But in other ways The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse is actually ahead of its time. It’s arguably the first full-blown techno-paranoia thriller, anticipating many of the paranoid themes of 1970s cinema.

This is also possibly the first movie to focus on all-pervasive technological surveillance. Everybody is being watched, and at times the watchers are being watched.

It opens with a reference to the previous Mabuse movie. At first it seems that this cannot be a Dr Mabuse movie - we are told that Dr Mabuse has been dead since 1932. But we know that being dead has not stopped Dr Mabuse in the past.

The opening sequence is the assassination of a TV reporter. It appears to be a heart attack but there never was a serious attempt to pass it off as death by natural causes. The autopsy will inevitably reveal the truth. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie. It’s a double deception. The police are being deceived but the intention is that they should discover the deception.

A young woman, Marion Menil (Dawn Addams) is about to throw herself off a ledge of te Hotel Luxor. American businessman Henry Travers (Peter van Eyck) saves her life. They are immediately attracted and he is drawn into her tangled personal life. She is trapped in an unhappy marriage. She is under treatment by psychiatrist Dr Jordan.

Travers is involved in business deals involving nuclear power and rockets.

A psychic named Cornelius (Wolfgang Preiss) has attracted the attention of Kriminalkommissar Kras (Gert Fröbe) by making predictions that come true. Kras is a hardheaded cop but his case is going nowhere and he’ll clutch at anything that might help.

The case involves a series of murder connected in a mysterious way with the Hotel Luxor.

We, the audience, know something the police don’t know. Everybody in the Hotel Luxor is under surveillance. There are cameras and microphones everywhere. We don’t know who or what is behind this.

It might be Dr Mabuse. But Dr Mabuse is long dead. Or maybe he isn’t. Maybe there is a Dr Mabuse. Maybe Cornelius is Dr Mabuse. Maybe Dr Jordan is Dr Mabuse. Or Henry Travers. Or the shady hotel detective. Or the insurance salesman Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig (Werner Peters) who seems to turn up everywhere. Or Marion’s sinister husband Roberto (Reinhard Kolldehoff). Or the clubfooted man. The assassin No 2 (Howard Vernon) is probably just a henchman but it is impossible to be sure. Anyone could be Dr Mabuse. If there is a Dr Mabuse.

If you get halfway through the movie and realise that you don’t have a clue what’s going on don’t panic. You’re not supposed to know what’s going on. It’s not that the narrative is non-linear, but it is deliberately deceptive. It’s deceptive on multiple levels. This is a movie about being watched and of course we, the viewers, are engaged in watching but we cannot trust anything we see or hear.

There are conspiracies within conspiracies and characters tell lies while they themselves are being lied to. We cannot be sure of the real identities of any of the characters.

This may be a crime movie but it’s also a kind of proto-eurospy movie. Dr Mabuse would appear to be more of a Bond Villain than a master criminal. Always assuming that Dr Mabuse exists.

When Lang relocated to Hollywood in the late 30s he adapted remarkably well. He learnt that Hollywood filmmaking required discipline. He couldn’t make any more four hour movies. The convention of classical Hollywood filmmaking required tightly constructed movies with strong narrative drives. Lang mastered these techniques. But he never forget that this wasn’t the only way to make movies, and occasionally (in movies like Rancho Notorious and Moonfleet) he departed just a little from strict realism.

When he returned to Germany at the end of the 50s he abandoned many of the conventions he had mastered in Hollywood. It’s easy to see why French critics adored The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse. Lang seemed to be doing what the Cahiers du Cinema crowd wanted to see - adopting simplified streamlined techniques and getting a bit experimental with narrative and playing around with ambiguity. Making a movie in which the meaning has to be teased out. They hailed the 70-year-old Lang as a cinematic rebel!

German and American critics savaged the movie but it would be a mistake to see this as Lang ending his career with a failure. It was a huge hit in Germany. It spawned five sequels. It launched an entire franchise. In commercial terms it was a triumph. And its critical reputation has grown steadily.

It’s interesting that two radically different endings were shot. The earlier DVD releases had the ending of the French release. The Eureka Blu-Ray gives us the original ending from both the German and English versions.

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr Mabuse is not just a worthy final film. This is a great Lang film, one of his best. Very highly recommended.